Peter Dutton rejects appeal to drop action against journos

Peter Dutton has rejected calls from the nation’s media chiefs to drop AFP investigations into journalists raided last month.

Peter Dutton. Picture Kym Smith.

Home Affairs Minister Peter Dutton has rejected calls from the nation’s media chiefs to drop Australian Federal Police investigations into journalists raided last month over leaked secret documents arguing “nobody is above the law’’.

News Corp and the ABC appealed to the Home Affairs Minister yesterday to try to stop any police action against three journalists targeted in last month’s raids, as the united push to protect press freedom continues.

Managing Director of the ABC, David Anderson, Executive Chairman, Australasia of News Corp, Michael Miller and CEO of Nine, Hugh Marks. Picture: John Feder

But Mr Dutton said today he would allow police investigations to go on.

“If you’ve got top secret documents and they’ve been leaked, it is an offence under the law,” Mr Dutton told the Nine Network.

“Nobody is above the law and the police have a job to do under the law … I think it is up to the police to investigate, to do it independently, and make a decision whether or not they prosecute.

Annika Smethurst, who was raided by the federal police. Picture: Kym Smith

AFP officers inside the ABC during the raid. Picture: John Lyons

“All of us stand up for press freedom. There is no question of that in our country.

“Where you have secret documents … these are laws that go back decades in western democracies where if you have top documents that have been leaked it is an offence against the law.”

The AFP raided the home of News Corp journalist Annika Smethurst last month over a story last year suggesting the country’s cyber spy agency could for the first time monitor Australians.

The next day, ABC headquarters were raided over the ABC’s The Afghan Files, in which hundreds of pages of secret defence force documents were leaked to the broadcaster and written up by Oakes and Clark.

Revelations the media companies had written to Mr Dutton came as human rights lawyer Amal Clooney warned that leaders of oppressive countries were looking at Australia’s actions against journalists.

Foreign Minister Marise Payne told the Global Conference for Media Freedom in London that Australia needed to strike a “sensible balance” between protecting the national interest and upholding the public’s right to know.

But Ms Clooney declared: “What happens in a country like Australia or the UK or the US will be looked at by every other leader in the world and potentially be used as an excuse to clamp down even further on journalists. Journalists all around the world are less safe if the rhetoric, or even policies or laws, of states that are supposed to be free are actually a threat to journalists in those countries.”