Yesterday’s spectacular series of raids on Australian journalists by the Australian Federal Police
are a turning point in how democracies view the role of the press and
leaks: the raid targeted News Corp’s Annika Smethurst over her reporting
on a secret plan to grant the Australian Signals Directorate – a spy
agency – the power to surveil Australians; 2GB radio’s Ben Fordham over
his reporting on human rights abuses of refugees; and ABC Sydney’s
offices over their 2017 Afghan files reports, which documented
war-crimes and other misconduct by Australian military personnel.
All of these reports are months or even years old, and yet the
Australian police carried out their raids now, prompting many to ask
what has changed to inspire these unprecedented attacks on journalism?
The most notable and obvious change is legal: Australia’s 2018 passage
of sweeping new surveillance laws and new secrecy offenses paved the way
for the action, which puts at risk such key journalistic virtues as
source confidentiality and the courage of the press to challenge and
reveal official misconduct.
The Australian authorities insist that the raids were not coordinated and that it’s all a coincidence. As Caitlin Johnson points out,
that’s a hell of a coincidence, and if it’s true, it’s even scarier
than the idea that the raids were coordinated – instead, it means that
Australia’s cops and prosecutors have gotten the message that it’s open
season on public interest journalism and are acting accordingly, with
lots more to come.
Australia is a politically unstable state whose governments routinely
fail – the country has gone through five prime ministers since 2013.
Partly, that’s due to the nation’s deeply unequal wealth distribution,
with the majority of money and property in the hands of an aging,
reactionary, racist
gerontocracy who remain committed to the nation’s genocidal “White
Australia” project and whose dependence on fossil fuels has turned them
into vigorous climate deniers and environmental criminals.
The country’s elites rely on voter suppression and other
antimajoritarian tactics to remain in control, and are extremely
vulnerable to revelations about official misconduct.
Thus it is that Australia has more “security laws” than any other
democracy in the world. The raids on journalists are just a high-profile
expression of this quiet slip into a security state – targeting journalists has always been a fraught business for states as journalists (by definition) are the sort of people who can get the word out.
But the journalists are just a canary in the Australian authoritarian
coal mine. The attacks on journalists are part of a wider assault on
migrants, dissidents, environmentla campaigners and others who threaten
the wealth and privilege of an aging minority of climate-denying white
supremacists.
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