iscover
Silence is king in the Australian government and Department of Defence. Those who have had dealings with either group can attest to the almost suffocating claustrophobia of keeping information quiet, the perpetual fear of blame laid by higher political masters and the less than enthusiastic approval of the bare minimum to the public.
As a journalist, through my own experience and those of my media colleagues, we rise to meet the barrier every day: inquiries that go unanswered for weeks as standard, personnel and industry unable to speak out with legitimate concerns due to the fear of reprisal/exile, loss of accountability on major project budgets or deadlines, and always the overzealous protection of even basic information.
Until now, that picture has been largely incomplete without specific reasoning behind the government’s “less is more” approach to media relations.
Truth through a Tarnawsky window
Silence is rarely accidental – it’s cultivated, rewarded and embedded into institutional culture, she said in a public statement through her own Substack, entitled Power and silence: The strategy of saying nothing.
Inside Defence and government structures, silence is learned early and learned well; personnel will maintain discretion and align with higher ranks or they will be shunned and sidelined.
“Very few people enter politics intending to stay silent. Most arrive with energy, conviction, and a belief that good ideas which are clearly argued will find their way through. They ask questions, flag risks, and push for clarity,” Tarnawsky said.
“At first, this is tolerated; sometimes even briefly welcomed, until it begins to disrupt the equilibrium. Then the feedback shifts: ‘Be careful.’ ‘Not yet.’ ‘Let’s not escalate this.’ Silence rarely feels like surrender; it feels like pragmatism.
“What people learn quickly and without instruction is that speaking up carries a cost. Silence, by contrast, often carries reward. Silence keeps you in the room. It preserves access and signals alignment. Knowing when to default to it keeps doors open that close quickly for those who become inconvenient.
“Silence becomes habitual, then normalised. You do not wake up one day and decide to abandon your values; you simply stop voicing them. Eventually, you stop noticing their absence altogether. At that point, silence is no longer just caution; it becomes a form of complicity.”
Silent strategy and the ‘No comment’ nugget
Those who work in the defence industry are often versed in the high degree of confidentiality present in projects pertaining to national security. Silence is cohesion and disagreement is chaos and treachery.
There are often sensitive operations, intelligence capabilities and strategic decisions that cannot and should not be paraded into full public view. However, that line has become increasingly blurred between legitimate secrecy and concealing of truly questionable projects or conduct.
Agencies have moved beyond “what should be protected” and into the dark realm of “what can be released”. Hide more, reveal less.
“Silence in politics is not only relational, but an operational tactic … When scrutiny emerges, ‘no comment’ is a calculation. Advisers assess not only the substance of a claim, but the likely lifespan of the story. Sometimes the most effective way to neutralise attention is not to rebut it, but to deprive it of fresh material,” Tarnawsky said.
“’No comment’ serves several purposes at once. It limits oxygen, avoids fresh angles, reduces quotable material, and shortens the news cycle.
“Often this happens in parallel with distraction. Attention is redirected as another issue is amplified. Nothing has been answered, but without new information, the media moves on.
“Inside the system, this is framed as discipline. Message control. Risk management. From outside, it can feel like evasion … without new material entering the public domain, many stories struggle to maintain momentum.
“Silence becomes a way to try to outlast scrutiny. And over time, the public learns that certain questions will not be answered; not because they lack merit, but because withholding information is deemed less costly than transparency. This is how silence moves from tactic to structure. It’s not loud enough to provoke outrage, not explicit enough to breach rules, but persistent enough to thin trust.”
Final thoughts
The Australian government has long rewarded compliance in silence, not open transparency and integrity. However, actions have consequences and it now finds itself in a greater situation where a significant portion of the public no longer trusts what is being endlessly refined, thoroughly approved and then released piecemeal for consideration.
How can the public trust the version of the truth it is being shown when Defence and government no longer know what must be protected and what should be open for questioning?
Tarnawsky warned that “when silence becomes the dominant currency of power, something essential begins to erode: public trust weakens, accountability fades, and the truth becomes negotiable”.
“Democracies rarely collapse in a single dramatic moment. They erode gradually in the spaces where speech disappears. Silence may serve power. Democracy depends on those willing to question it.”
Robert Dougherty
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