Today, I came across something which quite frankly shocked me. The AFP Tweeted out the following Tweet.
On the surface, this might seem like a harmless attempt to tell people about efforts to notify and help those affected by the bushfire, but this singular Tweet truly masks a horrifying truth of an allegedly impartial agency that investigates serious crimes Tweeting about a matter, not in their interests whatsoever.
According to the Australian Federal Police’s own charter:
You can expect us to:
be professional, impartial, fair, honest and reasonable in our dealings;
The AFP is allegedly meant to be an impartial agency, although, given recent events surrounding certain allegations against LNP politicians, suffice to say confidence in AFP’s impartiality is not exactly the highest right now.
At first, I honestly thought it was a parody account (which would have made sense), but this is a real Tweet by the AFP. I had to ask myself, “Am I overreacting, is anyone else seeing what I am seeing?” you only have to see the replies to the Tweet to see that many take issue with the AFP advertising the government.
As you can see, people are legitimately questioning this Tweet and why the AFP published it. Did the AFP write it, were they asked/instructed by the government to do so? Why was this published?
The AFP has some explaining to do about this Tweet. Will they be called into question and who investigates the AFP over charter violations like this (if anyone)?
There is cause for concern when the very agency that exists to investigate serious crimes, as well as politician misconduct and illegal activity, appears to be putting out PR pieces for a government currently embroiled in controversy on numerous fronts.
Given all of the controversy surrounding other political matters like the rort sports situation, Angus Taylor and a plethora of other controversies and allegations in amongst one of the worse bushfire seasons on record: this will probably get buried along with everything else.
