AFP raids target ambassador to Iraq’s husband

The home of a federal official and husband of Australia’s ambassador to Iraq was searched.

Commonwealth official Cameron Gill, whose Canberra home was raided on Wednesday.

Australian Federal Police have searched the Canberra home of a commonwealth official, the husband of Australia’s ambassador to Iraq, three months after raiding journalists who had ­received leaked national security documents.

The raid came just hours before the nation’s peak legal body warned of a “creeping erosion of media freedoms”.

Police executed a warrant to search Mr Gill’s home, with six officers staying at the property for more than five hours on Wednesday morning ­before leaving with garbage bags full of evidence.

Mr Gill, a former senior government adviser believed to work at the Australian Signals Directorate, is married to Australia’s ambassador to Iraq, Joanne Loundes.

The AFP refused to say whether the raid was connected to the investigation of News Corp Australia journalist Annika Smethurst, whose house was searched in June after she reported a leak suggesting that ASD could for the first time monitor Australians.

“As this is an ongoing matter, it would not be appropriate to comment further at this time,” an AFP spokeswoman said. “The search warrant activity is in relation to a commonwealth official.”

News Corp Australia executive Campbell Reid condemned the AFP’s latest raid, saying it was ­engaged in a “process of intimidation” to prevent whistleblowers from speaking with journalists.

Mr Gill’s wife, Joanne Loundes, Australia’s ambassador to Iraq.

Mr Gill was a senior adviser to former Coalition defence materiel minister Mal Brough and stayed on as an adviser when Dan Tehan took over the portfolio in 2016.

The Australian has confirmed that after seven months in Mr Tehan’s office, Mr Gill moved into the office of former cabinet secretary Arthur Sinodinos. He returned to the bureau­cracy in 2017.

Department of Home Affairs secretary Mike Pezzullo declared last month that the person who leaked the documents to Smethurst should go to jail and that ­officials were homing in on the source of the story.

Mr Pezzullo told a parliamentary committee in August that the leaker had been identified and he was concerned about the suspect’s position in the public service. “Frankly, subject to judicial process and fair process, they (the leaker) should go to jail for that,” Mr Pezzullo said. “It is completely unacceptable for someone to have given the journalist that document or at least passed on a screenshot or passed on some imagery of it. It is a crime.”

Mr Reid said the AFP’s raids on journalists were not intended to intimidate journalists but the people who had the courage to talk to them. “We are seeing that process of intimidation continue,” Mr Reid said.

News Corp Australia is publisher of The Australian.

AFP officers take evidence from Mr Gill’s home. Picture: Gary Ramage

One day after raiding Smethurst’s Canberra home in June, the AFP searched the ABC’s Ultimo headquarters over the publication of stories by Dan Oakes and Sam Clark about the conduct of Australian soldiers in Afghanistan, based on documents leaked by former military lawyer David McBride.

Neighbours of Mr Gill said they would be surprised if the ­bureaucrat did anything that could damage his career.

“I’ve always regarded them both (Mr Gill and Ms Loundes) as very professional and very hardworking people,” a neighbour said. “He is just an everyday guy aspiring to do well in his profession. It seems strange that he would do anything wrong.”

The ASD has made a ­submission to a parliamentary ­inquiry into press freedom, ­declaring there must be “robust mechanisms in place to protect information” held by the spy agency.

“Unauthorised disclosures risk exposing the capabilities the government relies on to protect Australians and Australian interests from global threats,” the submission says. “Disclosures can also undermine Australia’s relationships with international partners that we relay on for ­national security capability.

“If our partners cannot trust us to keep information confidential, they will be less willing to share future intelligence that could protect Australians and Australian.”

The submission says the disclosure of sensitive information could put the lives of Australians living overseas at risk, including military personnel.

Law Council president Arthur Moses SC on Wednesday criticised Mr Pezzullo for his response to Smethurst’s article. Warning of “creeping erosion of media freedoms”, he said disclosure of classi­fied information by the media should be criminalised only if it could be proven to have posed real harm to national ­security.

“What became apparent … was a very emotive response by an individual (Mr Pezzullo) in relation to this in effect being part of a ‘Canberra game’ where one agency was potentially leaking information against another agency,” Mr Moses said. “That is not relevant to national security. That is a game between two departments. That should never be the trigger for there to be a raid on the home of a journalist in respect of gathering information.”

Mr Moses said there had been 75 pieces of federal national sec­urity legislation passed since the September 11 terrorist attacks in 2001 representing a “slow erosion of our freedoms”.

Mr Gill’s lawyer, Kamy Saeedi, declined to comment when he left the Canberra property yesterday.

“It’s a very complex situation at the moment, there is a lot going on … it’s sensitive and I cannot comment,” Mr Saeedi said.

Additional reporting: Richard Ferguson