Your Right To Know: AFP plan won’t stop media raids
News Corp Australia boss Michael Miller has slammed a proposal that would allow police to ask journalists for information to avoid raids as “nothing more than window dressing”.
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Press freedom advocates have slammed a proposal asking journalists to hand over confidential documents to avoid police raids on their homes as “meaningless,” “window dressing” and proof the Morrison Government “had not listened” to concerns about the public’s right to know.
The new proposal, made by the Australian Federal Police and Department of Home Affairs, would allow police to request documents and the names of confidential sources from journalists without the use of force, and could allow news organisations to “challenge” requests.
But the new regime would be voluntary and, according to the proposal, would “not limit the ability (for police) to apply for a search warrant” on a journalist or newsroom.
The submission to the parliamentary press freedom inquiry followed months of campaigning for the public’s right to know and legal reform by media organisations, and came as the ABC slammed the raid on its newsroom last year as “an assault on public interest journalism”.
The proposed new system, called a “Commonwealth Notice to Produce Framework,” could be written into the Crime Act, and used to request sensitive information from the media as part of police investigations.
“This would offer an alternative to executing a search warrant in person, give parties more flexibility to serve and produce material, and provide an opportunity for professional journalists and media organisations to put forward any strong, countervailing arguments not to produce material pursuant to such an Notice,” it read.
But News Corp Australia executive chairman Australasia Michael Miller said the proposal overlooked “genuine concerns held by all media over government overreach and secrecy,” misrepresented legal reforms sought by the industry, such as contestable search warrants, and came nine months after media raids.
“The Federal Government has made clear that its preference is to maintain the bad laws which enable governments to hide from Australians what they are doing,” Mr Miller said.
“The offer of a notice regime rather than contestable warrants offers no comfort and is nothing more than window dressing.
“If anything, it provides even more powers preventing journalists from telling Australians what their government is doing.”
Media Entertainment and Arts Alliance chief executive Paul Murphy also said the scheme would not protect press freedom or prevent police raids on media organisations like those seen on the ABC’s Ultimo office and on the home of News Corp journalist Annika Smethurst in June last year.
“Our reading is that it’s meaningless,” Mr Murphy said.
“This proposal does nothing to address the problems with the warrant system. It does nothing to introduce much-needed legislative change to provide positive protections for journalists and whistleblowers.
“All it does is introduce an additional step in the process but it still leaves in place the prospect of warrants being issued, raids occurring and material being seized.”
Mr Murphy said there was a “desperate need” for legal reform to ensure the public had the right to know about issues that directly affected them, and to ensure journalists could contest warrants against them and protect whistleblowers.
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Shadow Attorney-General Mark Dreyfus also criticised the proposal, saying it “changes nothing”.
“Even if adopted, it would still leave journalists facing the threat of prosecution and jail just for doing their job,” he said.
The proposal emerged as ABC managing director David Anderson revealed the news organisation would not appeal the Federal Court decision that upheld the raid on its Ultimo newsroom last year, despite calling the action an attack on press freedom.
“The AFP raid was an assault on public interest journalism and the Federal Court ruling was a blow to media freedom and democracy in Australia,” he said.
“But we don’t believe we can litigate our way to reforming fundamentally bad laws.
“All Australians should be highly concerned at this outcome, the position the ABC has been put in and what this means for all journalists and the public’s right to know.”
AFP officers confiscated more than 120 files on two USB sticks during the raid, which followed another on Ms Smethurst’s Canberra home over a story she wrote about expanded government spying powers in 2018.
University of Queensland School of Law senior lecturer Dr Rebecca Ananian-Welsh said the court’s ruling against the ABC should not harm other legal challenges to media raids but proved that Australia urgently needed new laws to protect the public’s right to know.
“You would be forgiven for thinking Australia’s implied freedom of political communication was a right to free speech but the court is clear that that’s not what it is at all,” she said.
“Maybe when we realise that free speech is not a right in this country, that press freedom has no protection, it will make sense to engage in law reform.”
Originally published as Your Right To Know: AFP plan won’t stop media raids