Police raids on the media smack of totalitarianism

The outrageous raids on Annika Smethurst’s home and the ABC offices are what you might expect from, say, the Stasi in the former East Germany. Even in his Canberra bubble, Scott Morrison cannot babble his way out of this one by saying everyone must obey the law. Neither can Peter Dutton and Christian Porter.

If the law stinks, change it. This is a democracy and what characterises it is that, within certain extreme limits, we are free to express views without persecution and have a right to know what our governments are up to. The AFP chief should be called before parliament to explain himself.

Ron Sinclair, Bathurst, NSW

In the first century AD, the Roman poet Juvenal coined the phrase “who will guard the guardians?”. This was a rebuttal to Plato, who, in dreaming of an ideal society, argued that an elite known as the guardians would rule for all. Now, the Australian Federal Police are out hunting witches, we should ask who will police the police?

We have built a dangerously repressive culture in this country, perhaps with its roots in the mercantilist early European settlements. Every day we hear of outrageous behaviour from public and private sector organisations — think the banking royal commission, the Australian Taxation Office bullying taxpayers, state governments stitching up shady deals with shady customers, and withholding the details with that magical phrase “commercial in confidence”.

Today, with the ATO, we see that a whistleblower can be threatened with 150 years in jail, thus ensuring that all whistleblowers will fear the shooting of messengers and shut up.

Baden Eunson, Brighton East, Vic

Your editorial (“Balance national security with public right to know”, 7/6) is important at a time when democracy in the West appears to be dying. A free press is vital to sustaining a true democracy. Otherwise, we have a situation such as in the old Soviet Union where bureaucrats and political leaders decided what people should know. The issue at stake is alleged war crimes committed by Australian soldiers in the Middle East. It is unacceptable for bureaucrats to claim it will take years to investigate the alleged war crimes of a small number of soldiers. It appears that the press is being muzzled.

What one suspects from the actions of these bureaucrats is that they are trying to hide the truth through protracted investigation processes and seeking to conceal this. It has nothing to do with national security.

Bill Mathew, Parkville, Vic

Some journalists are protesting too much. The public does not always have a right to know, in particular sensitive information that could endanger national security, the lives of those who collected the information and our relations with Britain and the US who provide much of it.

Journalists do not have higher levels of morality and intelligence than the rest of us peasants and it’s time some of them, especially at the ABC, learnt to work within the law and recognise theirs is but one voice and sometimes an ignorant one.

Doug Hurst, Chapman, ACT

There is a vast difference between freedom of the press and accepting and then publishing confidential government information that you well knew was illegally obtained.

There is no proof that the government or the military were trying to cover anything up in regard to Afghanistan and SAS operations. One should remember that the SAS were operating in a theatre of war where the enemy wore no uniform and what some desk-jockey lawyer perceives as innocent civilians would probably be far removed from the truth in the circumstances of the conflict.

Our SAS troops were in the front line of dirty warfare, not a game that has a cut and dried set of rules. Then some desk-jockey lawyer reckons there is a cover-up bigger than Watergate and says the ABC changed what he wanted published.

You have to be kidding me; the ABC should never have published any of it in the first place and screaming freedom of the press does not wash in these circumstances. All the ABC wanted to do was embarrass the federal government and to hell with the consequences and any possible damage it may cause our military service men and women.

Don Smith, Noosa, Qld