Media Watch snoozed as we lost LIKE a watchdog barking after your house has been ransacked by burglars, the ABC’s Media Watch finally has reported on the national security legislation that could see journalists jailed for 10 years. For weeks I have been telling anyone who would listen that ASIO’s new “special intelligence operations” and the secrecy surrounding them threaten to put Australia behind Burkina Faso on the World Press Freedom Index. Unfortunately, Media Watch has been too busy looking for typos in News Corp Australia publications to notice. Despite my best efforts to moderate the excesses of the legislation in the Senate, it is probably too late to do anything. First, I opposed the legislation entirely because Attorney-General George Brandis failed to show how ASIO’s existing powers were insufficient for it to do its job. When it became clear that the bill would pass into law, I proposed amendments that sought to provide a public interest defence for journalists as well as allow them to expose corruption or misconduct in relation to an SIO. With all my amendments rejected and able to win support only from the Greens and senators John Madigan and Nick Xenophon, I tried to apply sunset clauses to the worst parts of the bill. Sunset clauses allow unusually draconian laws — unless a future parliament decides otherwise — to automatically expire at a set date. Brandis responded: “We do not foresee that the augmentation of ASIO’s powers by these provisions is something that is going to expire.” George Orwell would have put it as: “We have always been at war with Eurasia.” Brandis’s implication was: “The war on terror is a war without end.” What is happening to free speech in Australia is reminiscent of the famous quotation, “First they came …” about the cowardice of intellectuals in totalitarian states. In Australia, first they came for Andrew Bolt and Mike Carlton, with the government reneging on legislation to repeal section 18C of the Racial Discrimination Act. Now, legislation has been rushed through that threatens to jail journalists or even bloggers for reporting on ASIO’s SIOs. However, it does not stop there. The latest tranche of security legislation before us, the foreign fighters bill, contains even more nasties. First, it allows for “delayed notification search warrants”. These will allow the Australian Federal Police to search your home, your correspondence and your underwear drawer without having to tell you about it for at least six months. They’re also allowed to impersonate your friends while they’re at it. As in the case of SIOs, “unauthorised disclosure” of the existence of such a warrant is a serious offence. And, as with the previous national security legislation, there is no public interest defence and no protection for the exposure of corruption or misconduct. This is not even about a major intelligence operation. The provision seems calculated to remove the AFP from all journalistic scrutiny. Then there’s the new offence of “advocating terrorism”, which takes the traditional and perfectly workable law against incitement and turns it into a monster. Under common law, incitement always required intent — to cause violence or terrorism, say — as well as proximity. There had to be a causal link between words spoken and deeds done. This new law is so broadly drafted that not only does it capture a general statement endorsing violence with no particular audience in mind but also requires only that the speaker is “reckless” as to whether what they say may cause terrorism. As George Williams has noted, this is likely to criminalise a range of legitimate speech. All those campaigns to “free West Papua” or “get Israel out of Gaza” may become tedious after a while, but the possibility of attaching criminality to them is absurd. Even worse, organisations can be proscribed (listed as terrorist bodies) for “advocating terrorism”. The problem here — and one that the offence does not anticipate — is that an organisation may find itself listed on the basis of the views of only a few members. Even leading international corporations struggle to keep directors lined up and singing from the same song sheet; how much harder will that be for community associations run by amateurs? It is good that the media watchdog has finally woken from its long sleep. However, if it cannot defend its own freedoms, where does that leave the rest of us? David Leyonhjelm is the Liberal Democrats senator for NSW.
Posted on: Thu, 09 Oct 2014 01:55:08 +0000
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