His lawyer Mark Davis said McBride had no option but to enter a guilty plea for theft of Commonwealth property and breaching the Defence Act after Justice David Mossop shut down an attempt to argue to a jury that while he disobeyed orders,he had a duty to act in the public interest.
On Friday,Mossop also refused an application from McBride’s team for access to secret information held by the Commonwealth that they argued would prejudice his defence if withheld.
“That was a fatal blow to us,” Davis told this masthead.
Former senator Rex Patrick,who founded the Whistleblower Justice Fund,described the outcome as a “dark day for democracy in Australia”.
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“The attorney-general could have stopped this but refused to,and now we have a whistleblower facing years in jail,” Patrick said.
Greens’ justice spokesman David Shoebridge described it as “a brutal outcome for David McBride and for every potential whistleblower in the country”.