Twelve months ago to the day, the Australian Federal Police were inside the Canberra home of News Corp journalist Annika Smethurst, rifling through her private possessions in the hunt for the source of a story.
The following day, the Sydney offices of the ABC were raided, and plans to raid the offices of News Corporation on June 6 were cancelled after the global condemnation of the AFP’s actions.
The June 2019 raids grabbed global attention about the state of press freedom in Australia because dawn raids of journalists are the type of thing you would expect to see in a despotic police state, not a country prides itself as being a liberal democracy.
It would be nice to think that the outcry over the AFP raids had led to improved protection for press freedom in Australia. But instead, progress has been unsatisfactory, to say the least.
The AFP has decided against charging Smethurst for reporting that senior government figures were considering allowing the Australian Signals Directorate to commence domestic spy operations against Australians. However, ABC journalists Dan Oakes and Sam Clark are still waiting to hear if they will be charged for their investigative report, The Afghan Files, which revealed war crimes allegations had been made against Australian forces operating in Afghanistan.
Current laws allow governments to hide information from the public and punish any who reveal that information. Twelve months after the raids, those laws still exist and new laws have been enacted that further criminalise journalism.
A cloak of secrecy shields the government from scrutiny and embarrassment. Governments are empowered to hunt down whistleblowers and any journalist to whom they reveal information. New laws provide for prison terms of up to 20 years for telling the truth.
Media organisations, including MEAA, are seeking six reforms to the spate of bad laws:
- The right to contest the application for warrants before a superior judge;
- Exemptions for journalists from laws that would put them in jail for doing their jobs;
- Protections for public sector whistleblowers;
- A new regime to limit which documents can be stamped "secret";
- A properly functioning freedom of information regime; and
- Defamation law reform.
Just this week in the US, where the work of journalists is protected by the First Amendment, we have been shocked to see news media, including Australian television crews, targeted by law enforcement in assaults that can only be seen as an attempt to intimidate and silence. And our members Julian Assange and Yang Hengjun remain in prison just for revealing information in the public interest that embarrassed powerful governments.
Press freedom is at the very core of the work of the MEAA Media section. We will continue to campaign to ensure that journalists in Australia and around the world are free to do their jobs of informing the public without fear of jail.
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