“There should be a public inquiry, not just into the mistreatment of whistleblower David McBride, but also into serious allegations about the inhumane conditions other inmates face at the AMC,” says letter writer ANDREW WILLIAM HOPKINS.

The fact that Australian Army war crimes whistleblower David McBride has been granted a chance to appeal against his five years and eight months sentence at the dreadful Alexander Maconochie Centre prison in Canberra is long overdue.

It is important to understand that this occurred only because of the tireless efforts of Prof Ross Fitzgerald and other key supporters who continued to reveal the inhumane conditions that Mr McBride was facing.

In a number of articles, Prof Fitzgerald also documented in detail, with first-person corroboration, deeply disturbing revelations about the terrible treatment of other prisoners at the AMC.

It is a condemnation of all the mainstream media that the only outlets that were courageous enough to publish Prof Fitzgerald’s revelations were CityNews and John Menadue’s national newsletter Pearls and Irritations.

But the campaign to free David McBride has only just begun. Whether or not the Public Defender’s Office can help with his appeal is unclear.
The federal government may spend millions of dollars opposing McBride’s appeal.

If so, there is an urgent need for those who value justice and the human rights of prisoners to contribute to his online fundraiser.

The appeal may not happen until mid 2025. Well before then, there should be a public inquiry, not just into the mistreatment of Mr McBride, but also into serious allegations about the inhumane conditions other inmates face at the AMC.

It is ironic that probably the worst jail in Australia was named after one of the world’s greatest prison reformers, Alexander Maconochie.

As Neal Price explained in a letter supporting a call for a federal parliamentary inquiry into the AMC, in 1840 Maconochie became governor of the brutal Norfolk Island prison colony.

In four years he had made remarkable progress in prisoner rehabilitation. Despite, or more likely because of his success, in 1844 the authorities shipped Maconochie back to England.

Is it beyond the dreams of avarice to hope that the disturbing revelations about the AMC prison are publicly debated?

And that they are widely covered, not just by CityNews and Pearls and Irritations, but by the mainstream media as well.

Andrew William Hopkins, Galston NSW

City News, 12 October, 2024