ABC raid: defeat sparks call for law reform

ABC fails in its legal bid to block federal police poring over documents collected in controversial raid last year.

ABC executive editor John Lyons is followed by an AFP officer as they walk out of the main entrance to the broadcaster’s Sydney HQ. Picture: AAP

The federal government has been confronted with renewed calls for reform to media freedom after the ABC suffered a devastating loss in its legal challenge to last year’s police raid on his Sydney headquarters.

The Federal Court’s rejection of the ABC’s challenge means the Australian Federal Police has moved one step closer to using 124 seized documents in criminal proceedings against a whistleblower.

Former military lawyer David William McBride has given media interviews admitting he leaked material to the ABC but has said he will defend his actions because he was acting out of a duty to inform the community about illegal conduct by the government.

The AFP has said it will make no use of the documents until at least 4.30pm next Monday.

The raid on June 5 concerned a series of reports in 2017 by ­Daniel Oakes and Sam Clark that raised allegations of unlawful killings by Australian forces in ­Afghanistan.

ABC managing director David Anderson said the accuracy of those reports had never been challenged and the broadcaster’s defeat in court was further evidence of the urgent need for ­explicit protections for public ­interest journalism and whistleblowers.

“When the AFP executed its search warrant here at the ABC last June 5, its raid was seen ­­­— ­internationally — for exactly what it was: an attempt to intimidate journalists for doing their jobs. Not just the journalists named on the search warrant, but all journalists,” Mr Anderson said.

Michael Miller, the executive chairman of News Corp Australasia, publisher of The Australian, said the court’s ruling did not change the fact that Australia was an increasingly secretive society.

It was becoming a society that kept people in the dark and ­punished journalists for doing their job.

Mr Miller said the Right to Know coalition of media organisations was determined to continue its campaign to change laws that were at odds with a free and open democracy.

The concerns of the ABC and News Corp are in line with those of federal Labor, which said the ABC raid “confirms journalists still face the threat of prosecution and jail just for doing their job”.

Labor legal affairs spokesman Mark Dreyfus and opposition communications spokeswoman Michelle Rowland said “police shouldn’t be raiding journalists just because they are embarrassing the government of the day”.

When asked what he made of the ABC’s courtroom defeat, Scott Morrison said: “I make of it that the court case has been run and it’s had a finding.”

The raid on the ABC — and another on the Canberra home of News Corp journalist Annika Smethurst — have subjected the government to united calls for ­reform from all parts of the mainstream media.

The Right to Know coalition is calling for contestable hearings when police seek warrants to raid the media; exemptions for journalists from laws that would put them in jail for doing their jobs; better protection for public sector whistleblowers; arrangements that limit the number of documents stamped “secret”; and better freedom of information and defamation laws.