{"id":3034,"date":"2019-06-14T21:43:41","date_gmt":"2019-06-14T21:43:41","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.16news.com.au\/?p=3034"},"modified":"2019-06-14T21:43:41","modified_gmt":"2019-06-14T21:43:41","slug":"speech-to-rally-on-press-freedom","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.16news.com.au\/index.php\/2019\/06\/14\/speech-to-rally-on-press-freedom\/","title":{"rendered":"Greens Speech to Rally on Press Freedom"},"content":{"rendered":"
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\"Senator<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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\nThanks for coming together this morning to stand up for democracy, to uphold truth and to protect public interest.
\nWe are outside the office of Paul Fletcher. The Communications Minister who has shamefully remained largely silent through this chilling saga.
\nThe AFP raids we have seen on the home of Annika Smethurst and the ABC offices last week are a blatant, brazen attack on democracy, press freedom and the community.
\nWe should all be very concerned by this. The AFP \u2013 the Government\u2019s law enforcement arm \u2013 is getting extremely broad warrants to disrupt the vital work of journalists. They rifled through a reporter\u2019s home and personal belongings and scoured through emails of the national broadcaster \u2013 our ABC. And once they\u2019ve seized emails and documents, national security laws mean they are able to alter them \u2013 completely legally.
\nIf these unprecedented raids don\u2019t ring alarm bells for us, nothing will. These are dangerous and scary tactics on so many levels. Whether or not they were designed to do so, their result is the intimidation of whistleblowers, journalists and news organisations. For whistleblowers in particular, these raids are a clear and chilling message that if you dare to speak to a journalist in public interest — if you dare to reveal information the public has a right to know \u2013 the AFP is going to come after you.
\nThis will stop citizens from divulging what they know, this will stop ordinary people from coming forward with information they know should be in the public domain. This intimidation fits neatly into the Government\u2019s efforts to hide themselves from public scrutiny. I can\u2019t tell you how many times my Freedom of Information requests have been fobbed off, delayed, and complicated by demands for additional and often meaningless details. They are needlessly costly, time-consuming and a confusing process that hampers the release of information that should already have been in the public domain.
\nThe only avenue left for transparency is through information provided by the good citizens of our country. Now this is in real jeopardy. I know that journalists have become fearful of being raided and arrested for stories that they might be chasing and thinking of writing.
\nWe know the AFP has not ruled out arresting journalists and the Home Affairs Minister Peter Dutton has no qualms about journalists going to jail for revealing secrets in the public interest.. Let\u2019s not forget that this is the same Peter Dutton who lashed out at his critics in the media last year, declaring the ABC and The Guardian are “dead to me” over their reporting of his views on South African refugees. Let\u2019s also not forget the selective dropping of the investigation of the \u2018medevac\u2019 leak which served the political interests of the government. This should raise serious questions about the politicization of law enforcement in our country.
\nEven if they didn\u2019t order them directly, the government is responsible for these raids. It is the minister who sets the direction of the agencies and it is the government that have vastly expanded the reach of the AFP and intelligence agencies. This is a government that wants to do its dirty work without any scrutiny whatsoever. This is a government so emboldened and uninhibited by their recent election victory that they reject any form of accountability and transparency.
\nThe Greens have always stood strong on freedom of speech and press freedom. We have refused to support laws that expanded the powers of intelligence agencies and created new offences for journalists and whistleblowers for disclosing information about their operations. We have warned of the consequences of opening the door to building a surveillance state. And we will continue to stand up for a democratic state where freedom of speech and freedom of the press debates are not hijacked by those who only want the freedom to be a bigot or the community\u2019s right to know is not curtailed under the guise of national security.
\nJournalism is not a crime. We will not stand by while journalists are attacked for doing their job. We cannot allow them or their sources to be silenced by undemocratic laws, threats and intimidation. We must speak up with outrage and without fear. We must fight for legislative protections for journalists and whistleblowers.\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Thanks for coming together this morning to stand up for democracy, to uphold truth and to protect public interest. We are outside the office of Paul Fletcher. The Communications Minister who has shamefully remained largely silent through this chilling saga. The AFP raids we have seen on the home of Annika Smethurst and the ABC … Continue reading “Greens Speech to Rally on Press Freedom”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3034","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-aussie"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.16news.com.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3034","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.16news.com.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.16news.com.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.16news.com.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.16news.com.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3034"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.16news.com.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3034\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.16news.com.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3034"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.16news.com.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3034"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.16news.com.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3034"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}