The AJF Speaks at the Senate Inquiry into Secrecy Legislation Reforms
Click here to read the AAP's article covering the reforms: https://aapnews.aap.com.au/news/secrecy-laws-face-tough-pathway-through-senate?section=top-stories
Or keep reading to access Peter Greste's opening statement at the Senate Inquiry into the Secrecy Provisions Amendment (Repealing Offences) Bill 2026.
Senators, thank you for the opportunity to appear before your inquiry. I represent the Alliance for Journalists’ Freedom – an advocacy group that campaigns for the right for the media to report as freely as possible on the activities of government. I am joined by Michael Bradley – the managing partner at Marque Lawyers who worked on our written submission.
Our starting position is that government always works better when it is as open and transparent as possible. Transparency is crucial for good government. It reduces abuses of power, it makes the system more efficient, and it promotes public trust and confidence.
A degree of secrecy is important of course, but only around information that is genuinely sensitive, or that would be genuinely damaging if it was released.
Australia has become the world champion of national security legislation. The former Independent National Security Legislation Monitor James Renwick KC said successive parliaments had passed 130 new security laws since 9/11 – more than any other country. And he wrote that five years ago, in 2021. We do not deny the need to update our legislation to deal with new threats, but Mr Renwick was rightly cautioning against knee-jerk legislation in response to terrorist incidents, that often intrudes on rights and freedoms. In other words, those laws have often damaged the principles of the system that parliament was trying to protect.
These amendments are the first significant reversal of that trend since 9/11. We commend the government for taking on many of the recommendations we made in our initial submission to the National Security Legislation Monitor’s inquiry into the Secrecy Provisions. Removing the offence of “dealing with” sensitive information means it is no longer an offence for a journalist to merely receive a document. Removing the security classification as an indicator of harm is also an important step forward. Overall, we recognise that the proposed amendments go a long way to improving transparency without compromising essential secrecy and security.
But the bill before you is not perfect. For example, we believe the terms “interferes with”, “prejudices” and “harms” in section 122.4(a)(d)(iii) are still too vague. The appropriate point for determining criminality is when actual harm occurs. For transparency to be effective, whistleblowers must be able to gather information and evidence of wrongdoing and transmit that to appropriate parties. And sometimes that includes journalists. That is why the term “interferes with” should be repealed and both “prejudices” and “harms” should either be repealed or clarified.
We also remain concerned about section 123.6 which requires the Attorney General’s consent before prosecuting a journalist. We recognise this was intended as an extra safeguard, but we maintain that any time a journalist’s case is referred to the AG, their decision – whichever way it goes – will be regarded as political. Instead, we believe the exemption for journalists should be written into law. And we still believe the defence s122.5(6) requiring the reverse onus of proof violates the principle of the presumption of innocence.
Senators, in thinking about these issues, we always go back to the AFP raids of 2019. You will recall that federal police went to the home of News Corp journalist Anika Smethurst on one day, and then to the ABC the next. The stories the police were investigating were outstanding examples of responsible journalism evidently in the public interest. Both relied on leaked classified information, but neither exposed anything that might genuinely damage national security, and both triggered important public debates.
The AFP investigations and the subsequent prosecution of David McBride for his role in the ABC’s Afghan Files story were sobering examples of just how damaging Australia’s overbearing security framework can be.
The amendments before the Senate do ease that culture of secrecy, but David was charged and convicted of theft of Commonwealth property, and unlawfully communicating military information under the Defence Act, and so he would not have been protected by these changes.
That is why the AJF continues to advocate for broad improvements to our transparency framework. They include reforming Whistleblower laws to give future David McBrides adequate defence, overhauling Freedom of Information, and introducing an overarching Media Freedom Act that would have prevented the raids in the first place.
Those reforms remain overdue and necessary. Without them, journalists and sources are still dangerously exposed and our government unnecessarily secretive.
Senators, we have consistently argued that while there is a necessary tension between the work of journalists and the security and intelligence agencies, they are not in opposition. When journalists can report freely on the government while protecting their sources, it demonstrably improves the way the government operates, while maintaining public trust and confidence.
The UK’s National Security Legislation Reviewer Lord David Anderson KC has said: “Public consent to intrusive laws depends on people trusting the authorities, both to keep them safe and not to spy needlessly on them ... Trust in powerful institutions depends not only on those institutions behaving themselves (though that is an essential prerequisite), but on there being mechanisms to verify that they have done so.”
The AJF maintains that a free, well-resourced media with well protected sources is one of the most important of those mechanisms.