You asked, and we (tried to) deliver! Here is everything you need to know about the Australian Federal Police raids on journalists/the media last week broken down as much as possible.
What actually happened?
ICYMI, here’s what happened in chronological order.
Monday, 3rd June 2019
- 2GB Drive presenter Ben Fordham reported on-air that up to six illegal asylum seeker boats could be headed to Australia from Sri Lanka, based on intel given to him by an anonymous senior Government official.
- One hour later, a Department of Home Affairs official called the show producer to say that information was confidential and an investigation would be launched into the official who leaked it.
- Home Affairs have asked Ben to tell them who his source was. His response: “There’s not a hope in hell of that happening… under no circumstance will I be revealing my sources on this story or any story.”
Tuesday, 4th June 2019
- AFP turn up at NewsCorp political editor Annika Smethurst’s place unannounced on Tuesday morning, with a warrant to search her home, laptop and phone in relation to a story she wrote for The Daily Telegraph in 2018.
- Her story had revealed secret emails from the Department of Home Affairs, discussing plans to give government intelligence agency the Australian Signals Directorate (ASD) permission to monitor the emails, texts and bank accounts of everyday Australians. Basically, an explosive report that alleged the ASD was getting ready to spy on all of us. *Note: Her article is behind a paywall, but there is a decent summary here.
- The AFP went through everything in her home, presumably to try to track down how she got the confidential information. it took seven hours.
Wednesday, 5th June 2019
- Busy week for the AFP! Now they turn up at the ABC’s Sydney HQ for their next raid. However it wasn’t a surprise, and the ABC already knew the raid was coming.
- It was in relation to a bunch of stories published in 2017, broadly known as ‘The Afghan files’. The stories focus on allegations that Australian Special Forces (our most elite soldiers) committed war crimes whilst in Afghanistan. Again, the reporting relied heavily on secret or highly confidential documents from the Department of Defence.
- The AFP’s warrant stated that they could ‘add, copy, delete or alter’ any material in the ABC’s computers potentially relating to the stories. Together with ABC lawyers and high-level staff, they went through over 9000 documents in a process that took eight hours—apparently focusing on the work of specific journalists.
- ABC Executive Editor actually live-tweeted the whole thing, and it’s a fascinating read if you’re interested.
Why is the Government interested in these specific stories?
The three stories at the centre of the Australian federal police raids were unrelated, but all had something in common: they revealed highly confidential government documents and communications.
The journalists revealed this information to the public because they believed that the Australian people deserved to know—that the stories were in the public interest.
So the Government, somewhat understandably, wants to know who’s leaking information to the press.
There are two arguments here: firstly, that releasing certain sensitive info could compromise our national security and/or the safety of the people protecting our country, or otherwise limit those very secretive agencies from being able to do their job—protect us. Secondly, that a ‘leaky’ Government is not a good look internationally and other powerful countries like China or the U.S. may see us as a risky partner in important international affairs.
That seems kind of reasonable—why is everyone very mad-slash-scared atm?
It’s complicated.
In very basic terms, the heavy-handed and all-encompassing approach of these three Australian federal police raids is perceived as a threat to the freedom of the press in Australia.
Essentially, freedom of the press in a democracy means:
- Journalists need their sources to be able to provide information about when the Government might be abusing its power.
- Journos need to be able to publish those stories in the media, so that the people (us!) can know whether or not the Government is in fact abusing its power.
- The public can then use that information to decide whether or not they are happy with their Government, when it comes time to vote for one party or another at election time, i.e.: democracy.
The above is particularly true when the information directly relates to the people, as in the case of Annika’s story about the ASD wanting to spy on all members of the public. You’d want to know if you were being spied on, right?
Freedom of the press allows her to tell you that information.
However, in the case of the ABC’s Afghan Files, that story was less about the Australian people and more about the actions of a specific government group—the Defence Force.
Publishing the details of alleged abuses of power, corruption, or shady dealings within a section of the governmentis one of the few ways to put pressure on other institutions and bodies to pay closer attention to the problem and potentially step in.
Put it this way: if the Defence Force privately investigated themselves, would that be fair? Freedom of the press allows media outlets to bring this information to light for total transparency.
The AFP raids seemed to be an attempt to intimidate and shut down all of the above. To scare sources out of talking to journalists and limit the media’s ability to report on the very real, potentially dodgy af things happening within government bodies.
Are they even allowed to do that?
In a word: Yup.
Part of why people are so outraged—and why the rest of the world is watching closely—is that Australia has very few laws protecting journalists and whistleblowers (people who speak up about corruption within their organisations).
There is no right to free speech in our Constitution, or in any laws.
However, there are laws that prohibit Government workers and public servants from revealing unauthorised internal information to external sources. It is also a crime to publish that information. America has more protections for the press than we do—ironic, given how much their current President hates any negative news story.
It is important to understand that these media raids were completely within the law.
It’s a big reason why many are calling for Australia to create its own Bill of Rights, to protect some of the values essential for democracy.
What’s going to happen next?
It’s hard to say. The ABC is planning to legally challenge the search warrant that was used in their raid, and it has roughly two weeks to do so.
Will ‘leakers’ be intimidated sending information out into the world? Will journalists be scared to run stories revealing Government abuses of power? Is this the beginning of a more controlled, limited Australian media Or is all just going to stay the same?
I don’t know and my head hurts.