Here’s the likely outcome of the AFP raids on Annika Smethurst and the ABC: after a couple of days of jumping up and down, the media will move on. News Corp will go back to supporting any increase in security agency powers proposed by the Coalition. Nothing will change. And security bureaucrats and politicians know that. There will be more raids, in the future, and the same cycle will play out.
Some journalists and commentators might grumble that Labor has failed to do its job in opposing the endless extensions of security powers and the readiness of the government to call in the flatfoots when embarrassed. Just so, but as Crikey noted yesterday, the moment Labor actually tries to play the role of opposition on such matters, it cops “soft on terrorism” from the media. There are no votes, and not even any nebulous goodwill, for Labor in doing its job properly.
And if the media, distracted by the next shiny thing, loses interest in depredations of the police state, Australia has few civil society bodies to pursue the issue. Digital Rights Watch, EFA, civil liberties bodies and lawyers’ groups will complain. But we lack a body like the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) or the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) in the US that will proactively litigate against governments suspected of breaching basic rights. Moreover, we lack the legal framework for such challenges: there are no mechanisms that can be used to restrain the powers of government against its citizens, beyond the “implied freedom of political communication” invented by the High Court to protect TV station revenues in the 1990s.
Is there anything the media could do, now that it has realised that we’ve turned into a police state that will attack the media if it plays its role of holding the powerful to account? Even if outraged media executives extracted from the government a commitment that there would be no more raids, or that leak investigations would no longer target journalists, or that senior bureaucrats would lose their power to sool the coppers onto media organisations, that wouldn’t address the problem, which is that there is no structural restraint on national security laws and agencies.
In Australia, we’re reliant on the goodwill of security bureaucrats and their ministers not to abuse their massive powers. Unlike in other Anglophone countries, there is no real oversight of them by parliament — not while the Parliamentary Committee on Intelligence and Security remains unreformed. They can hide behind “national security” and “that’s an operational matter” to block Senate committee probing. And remember, these raids are the result of senior bureaucrats and government ministers responding to being embarrassed. Imagine what it would be like if someone genuinely malicious, with an agenda of corruption or other criminal intent, had access to such power? A system that relies on the goodwill of its operators to not inflict damage on society is a disaster waiting to happen.
What’s needed is a constitutional, or entrenched, bill of rights that would provide a systemic protection — one that would enable the media and civil society groups to litigate against government agencies to prevent them from abusing basic rights, or obtain redress if they do.
For people like me who’ve long opposed a bill of rights, this is something of a bitter pill to swallow. But the refusal of our major parties to protect basic rights demonstrates that our existing system has failed. And yes, it’s problematic that a bill of rights is — wrongly — automatically associated with the left and identity politics. In fact, a bill of rights, in acting as a check on government, is as much a libertarian and conservative mechanism as a progressive one. And it is about protecting not merely individual rights but the institutions that play a key role in our democracy. The media is a crucial element of any healthy democracy; a bill of rights that protects the workings of a free press would be a fundamentally conservative document, one aimed at protecting the institutions that have served our democracy well over the last century. As the example of the United States demonstrates, a bill of rights is not merely compatible with a deeply conservative polity that champions freedom; it is crucial to it.
A concerted media effort to change the debate around a bill of rights in Australia, and shift it from the political margins, where it is the plaything of leftwingers determined to push identity politics, to the political centre where it can protect us against our governments in ways that our major party politicians refuse to, would represent a real chance of curbing the police state that we have developed in Australia. It just needs some clear thinking and focus from journalists, editors and producers.
44 thoughts on “Media raids prove that Australia needs a conservative bill of rights”
TheRabidHamster
June 6, 2019 at 12:17 pmAnd or a new AFP commissioner.
Kay Matthiesson
June 6, 2019 at 1:39 pmBernard, why on earth were you opposed to a bill of rights in the first place? Please explain?
kyle Hargraves
June 6, 2019 at 2:27 pmBernie must have had a “senior moment” as he made that declaration. Trawl the archives from 2015-2017 and you’ll discover for yourself : otherwise! The (idiotic) topic is a Crikey fetish.
Ruby
June 6, 2019 at 2:37 pmKyle ,it may be an idiotic topic according your overbearing omniscient intelligent self bearings but mere sentient idiots do sometimes need protections from their own idiocy ,and what’s more , they sometimes acquire the smarts to understand it …
kyle Hargraves
June 6, 2019 at 4:03 pmGood luck with the project Ruby but I’ll warrant what earthy goods I possess that even with such an august document the “sentient idiots” will be winging about the same [insert noun of choice relating to metaphor here] thereafter with whatever hue of government conducts their affairs!
AR
June 6, 2019 at 4:52 pmA Bill of Rights, like a verbal contract, is not worth the paper it’s written on.
kyle Hargraves
June 6, 2019 at 7:26 pmSamuel Goldwyn was a man who had few equals in accurately comprehending human nature and anticipating the consequences thereof.
kyle Hargraves
June 6, 2019 at 5:00 pmQuoting the 20th century American philosopher Robert Nozick as to a rather severe rejoinder to Locke : “its NOT worth the paper that it is NOT written upon” (in the case of Australia)
AR
June 6, 2019 at 5:51 pmI was quoting that Great Amerikan filosofer, Sam Goldwyn.
Arky
June 7, 2019 at 9:07 amIt depends on what the “Bill of Rights” is meant to include.
While the US Bill of Rights includes the famed First Amendment right to free speech, that absolute right to free speech makes it almost impossible for them to block hate speech.
The US Bill of Rights includes the right to bear arms, and we’ve all seen how that has turned out.
What are we actually proposing here, a constitutional right for the media to publish anything they want? It doesn’t take long to imagine how that could be abused by an unscrupulous media, and we HAVE an unscrupulous media.
Wayne Cusick
June 7, 2019 at 11:30 amNo right in the US Bill of Rights is absolute.
Except, apparently, the right to bear arms.
kyle Hargraves
June 7, 2019 at 3:07 pmSo called ‘hate speech’ Arky, is, in point of fact, free speech. In a mature society the ‘hate speech’ is dismissed with the indifference it deserves.
Only in a society where the inhabitants have to be contained in a glorified play pen is ‘hate speech’ given any credence at all and for which the inhabitants require laws.
Your point about unscrupulous media wafts to all corners of the play-pen in the masquerade of ‘hate speech’ : as Voltaire observed.
Pamela
June 6, 2019 at 1:50 pmVery interested to hear your change of mind on Bill of Rights Bernard. Do you think that you are alone or are other Journalists rethinking previous positions?
After 20 years of face to face experience of Governments of both persuasions treatment of non-citizens in this country, I am naturally a supporter of a Bill of Rights. I know many think that our law provides an adequate protection against excess.
Perhaps few have faced the brute reality of AFP officers on their doorstep? They might review their belief if they had experienced search powers, detention powers etc.
The ABC and Smethurst raids are a shock to all. However do we have the imagination to realise that Liberty Freedom and Rights can be eaten away so easily. Years of working with refugees has taught me how precious and fragile these are.
Will the media maintain their rage and do something with it? Will all of us?
klewso
June 6, 2019 at 1:55 pmSo what advantages are there to “(news) media” – complicit in such governmental abuse?
Wayne Cusick
June 6, 2019 at 2:10 pmSurely the media falls under freedom of speech, something that conservative types have been talking about for years.
If we truly have freedom of speech, as they assert, then it must protect media outlets.
As we don’t have our own Bill of Rights, such rights must originate in the UK’s bill of rights. From Wikipedia:
“Along with the Act of Settlement 1701, the Bill of Rights is still in effect in all Commonwealth realms. Following the Perth Agreement in 2011, legislation amending both of them came into effect across the Commonwealth realms on 26 March 2015.”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bill_of_Rights_1689
Wiki isn’t the most reliable source. So here’e one from the Parliament of Australia
“Bill of Rights
A Bill of Rights is a law that sets out the rights of a country’s citizens. The term derives from the United Kingdom Bill of Rights 1688 which asserted the rights of parliament in relation to the monarch (in particular establishing freedom of speech in parliament), and included rights affecting the individual, such as the prohibition of excessive fines and cruel and unusual punishment. In the context of the rule of law an important provision was that laws should not be executed, dispensed with or suspended without parliament’s consent.
While the UK Bill of Rights 1688 is part of Australian law, when people talk about a bill of rights for Australia they generally mean a more substantial document which would comprehensively set out the rights of Australian citizens and protect them from infringement by the government or by other legislation. Australia does not have a specifically Australian bill or charter of rights at the Federal level but it is a party to international ‘foundation’ rights documents such as the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (1948).”
https://www.aph.gov.au/About_Parliament/House_of_Representatives/Powers_practice_and_procedure/00_-_Infosheets/Infosheet_23_-_Basic_legal_expressions
From my non-legal perspective it seems that our rights are covered in the UK Bill of Rights and/or the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
Graeme Richardson
June 6, 2019 at 2:19 pmWe need the same protection to respond as the Pollies have when pursued by the AFP. Send back a blank sheet of paper as a response to the issues raised -Michaelia Cash comes to mind.
kyle Hargraves
June 6, 2019 at 2:24 pmThe topic has been done to death. Salient publications from Crikey date from 11 Dec 2008 and 11 Feb 2010 along with others circa 2016-17 (from the archives).
Despite appeals to the contrary it is fair to say that this topic amounts to yet another hobby horse of Crikey’s. The emotional appeal resides with the desire to place a band-aid on the social and political ills that have their orgins in singular events from buskers and street artists in Alice Springs to raids by the AFP. The bleating is all so incredibly child-like.
To another contributor, I have made some comments on this topic “Federal police raid ABC in assault on press freedom” for 06 June (anniversary of D Day) but there is a lot more to be said. Section 18C of the R.D. Act is sufficiently weird in itself and has already compromised free speech in regard to Editorials and cartoons but I await with interest the reconciling the laudable objectives of the divine document with such aspects as “special Rights for the Religious Right” or any other identity-smitten group.
A particularity ambitions contributor attempted to reconcile the “failure” of the election with the writings of the 20th century philosopher John Rawls. His reading of Rawls was not all that it might have been but, nevertheless, I (for one) invite the dear gentleman to endeavour to locate Rawls (or whomever)
in the context of a Bill of Rights.
The first “hurdle” is the reality, even for Rawls, that there is, now, no such thing as a Social Contract as such a Contract was once understood. Rawls, along with many others, accepts that (1) people are not going to resolve their disagreements of value and (2) we’re not going to agree on what the good society is. There is certainly NO path to the end goal of a “good society” even if broad characteristics can be identified.
At this point the summaries that Bertie Russell has in his “History of Western Philosophy” are worth the review because, once upon a time, the matter was a good deal LESS hopeless.
Wayne Cusick
June 6, 2019 at 3:14 pm“Section 18C of the R.D. Act is sufficiently weird in itself and has already compromised free speech in regard to Editorials and cartoons”
From what Bernard is saying we would not have the right to free speech because we do not have a bill of rights. In an earlier post, which is still under moderation, I suggested that rights of Australians are codified either under the UK Bill of Rights, which apparently covers all Commonwealth countries, or the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, to which Australia is a signatory. Or both.
Without those, Australians would not have freedom of speech, or religion.
David Thompson
June 6, 2019 at 8:09 pmMention of the fact we are signatories to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, Wayne, might provide some guidance as to how effective a Bill of Rights may ultimately be.
To my lay eye, given the UDofHR seems to have begat International Human Rights Law, particularly Crimes Against Humanity (incl War Crimes), and also spawned much work on the Rule of Law – in support, I reckon it’s instructive to consider Oz’s ‘signature’, and whether or not that’s made a scrap of difference to how the nation regards the ‘rights’ of their own, or ‘the other’.
Nauru? Manus? Assange?
Or, closer to home, and the very immediate past – ‘The Afghan Files’? Those and related files (McKenzie & Masters) do seem to contain some evidence of various Crimes Against Humanity, yet the state seems very keen that such evidence not see the light of day, much less the International Criminal Court – oh, that’s right, we’re a ‘Rule of Law’ country, so we get to investigate our own – unlike Africans, who are always referred to The Hague.
Then, of course, there is our ‘mentor’, the USofA, who recently threatened to exclude the Chief Prosecutor of the ICC, Bensouda, from entering the US, should she think it reasonable to investigate any of the 1M+ complaints/accusations lodged re Afghanistan, should those complaints involve any Amerikan personnel.
So, what happened? The ICC threw in the towel, and left it to the US to investigate their own.
And, I have some further instructive very recent news from this arena.
I suggest becoming acquainted (I’m doing this because the links I prefer would very likely disappear into moderation) – where was I – oh, yeah, with the names ‘US Congressman Duncan Hunter’ and ‘Navy Seal Eddie Gallagher’.
To quote the good Congressman, from an interview he gave recently, an interview in which he advocated for Eddie the SEAL to be ‘given a break’ -from allegations made from within his SEAL cohort, that he was a war criminal (Iraq);
“So how do you judge me?” he asked. “I was an artillery officer and we fired hundreds of rounds into Fallujah, killed probably hundreds of civilians… Probably killed women and children if there were any left in the city when we invaded. So do I get judged too?”
Now I suggest taking a cue from the word “Fallujah”, and acquainting yourself with a book written by recent Senator, Jim Molan, entitled;
“Running the War in Iraq”, which is previewed;
“It’s the most controversial conflict of our time: a war which has divided citizens, politicians, and militaries, resulted in headlines about torture and suicide bombings, death and destruction. there’s no single identifiable enemy and no exit strategy. So how will the war in Iraq be won? What will victory look like? In 2004, when Australian Major General Jim Molan was deployed to the war to oversee a force of 300,000 troops, including 155,000 Americans, he faced these and other questions on a daily basis. In Running the War in Iraq he gives a gripping insider’s account of what modern warfare entails – the ghastly body count, the complex decisions which will mean life or death, the divide between political masters and foot soldiers – and the small, hard-won triumphs.”
Molan ran the “2nd Battle of Fallujah”, which kicked off late in ’04.
Fallujah was also where there was so much depleted uranium used (in combination with white phosphorous), that ‘medical and nuclear authorities’ have described it as ‘worse than Hiroshima’.
The Universal Declaration of Human Rights, and all it begat, mean squat to this nation, signed, or not.
We talk big on ‘values’, but never, ever ‘live ’em’.
mark e smith
June 6, 2019 at 3:32 pmYou could have just answered the question in a simple manner kyle. I’m none the wiser still. And BK didn’t bother reminding us why he didn’t like BoR’s either. We’ll just muddle along ourselves.
Conservatives traditionally dislike BoR’s because it gives more power over important decisions to “unelected judges”. Which actually means unelected judges over malleable elected politicians. I can see their point with their use to tie the rest of us down with special treatment for this year’s favourite oppressed identity group. The conservative rationale is that in reality people don’t want actual equality in proportion to the degree they go on about it. They want “some people are more equal than others” type of equality.
However most Americans would die in a ditch for their BoR especially conservatives. This suggests not surprisingly that the contents of these rights lists are all important.
I’m generally in favour of all institutions and processes to make governing, and especially changes, more difficult. The Senate may well be unrepresentative swill a lot of the time but it tends to, admittedly inadvertently, protect we plebs from excess and protect the govt of the from the same. Workchoices anyone ?
Kfix
June 6, 2019 at 7:15 pm“You could have just answered the question in a simple manner kyle” lol if only…
kyle Hargraves
June 6, 2019 at 9:14 pmI’ll assume the liberty of referring to the (less than coherent) article “Australia lags behind the rest of the world on a bill of rights” where Mark acknowledges my sentiments on the matter. I was anticipating a rebuttal or 50 and my next card was the one that David Thompson played – all the way back to The (Brit/French – the Yanks ignored it) League! Yeah! that wonder worked! It failed in its principal objective of an ‘end to war’ .
As to complexity – we haven’t begun. For those that are enamoured of the proposal, try getting a revised balance of power which includes the Courts, ALL financial transactions and the philosophical stuff that has been mentioned across an electorate; 25% (roughly) of whom would prefer Pauline as PM. Kiwis are politically supine in comparison to Australians – but Peters did realise that capital gains was going to be an issue.
Trump does in fact have a few virtues. In particular he knows the usefulness of a sledgehammer to bring people around to his way of thinking. What is the phrase ?
– oh yes : “great guy” – but not everyone is a “great guy”; only the selected.
The first world electors have swung to the Right – significantly over 50 years. Goldwater, in 1964, could NOT take a trick but Regan (16 years hence) walked into the White House on more or less Goldwater’s policies; – a bit of an over statement but not by much!
Its not going to happen so I CAN rest easy but were the initiative to be adopted it would make about as much sense as the Kiwis changing the expletive flag – which, similarly, was confronted with common sense – eventually. The movement had its own Not For Profit group but was abetted by a the then PM.
There are any number of issues confronting the country and many have been remarked upon by others but a BoR and arguing about Australian emissions (or angels on pins) is not among them.
Luckyduck
June 6, 2019 at 2:44 pmWe have three more years of this government. Media raids are likely to increase not decrease. You people in the media were cheering the football kicking, policy free zone Scomo and congratulating him on running a great campaign. Crikey was always running an anti ALP rant.
Even before these raids, ALP got scant support from the media. Even when the LNP was running the country to the ground, media were questioning ALP about their policies.
In three years time, when the next election comes around all you media will be running round like puppies and be grateful for crumbs from the government but will become all righteous questioning Labor. It has always been like this and will continue to be so in future. I have no hope for this country with such supplicant media.
Cambo
June 6, 2019 at 5:37 pmI agree Luckyduck.
Serves us right.
gerryinoz
June 7, 2019 at 5:46 amWell said Luckyduck. Most ‘top’ journalists are in the class of our political rulers and have never dug a ditch or picked between paying the insurance and buying new shoes.
I vividly remember ‘top’ journalists scurrying to Abbott’s thank you party after the 2013 election, full of glee and bright eyed with anticipation of favours rewarded.
We need more journalism from the bottom half of society by ratbag journalists with a massive axe to grind.
AR
June 7, 2019 at 6:38 amIf “We need more journalism from the bottom half of society by ratbag journalists with a massive axe to grind. ” isn’t a Siren call to Jack Robertson of this parish I don’t know what is.
He surgically precise account, linked previously, of bearding the Blotster over the Wilkie ONAnist file was a masterclass in understatement. (And yes, JR can be as delicate & unobtrusive as a stiletto ‘twixt the ribs.)
kyle Hargraves
June 7, 2019 at 1:17 pmI took the comment as an simple minded endorsement of either the ABC or The Guardian or Yahoo News or what passes for mainstream in the USA.
For those publications one only has to reflect upon the punctuation and grammar to say nothing of nouns being impressed into the service of adjectives. As for the content, in the case of Yahoo (but by no means exclusively) the less said the better.
Sidneydb
June 6, 2019 at 3:12 pmA “Bill of Rights?” What a wonderful idea! Perhaps like the U.S.A. one where police shoot unarmed innocent people, including children, with no repercussions? Where judges send people to prison (like we do) based on the colour of their skin! But you know all this. We once thought the North American constitution was invincible. Look at now though!
Even if the suggestion is acted upon by relevant political forces, who, exactly, is going to write it? One can imagine Scott Morrison writing in a hymn or two each day so as to repent our (not his) sins. Perhaps Peter Dutton would have input, and we all walk round with a statement of identity and ethnicity and citizenship on our (compulsory white) T shirt? Perhaps some of those learned professors from the universities? But they would have to renounce their corporate fees and sponsorship for at least two years before starting. Even Anthony Albanese would want a plain statement that the state is god and any argument would be worth six months in Barwon prison. (Please pick your own states principal cage here.)
Yes! It is not a bad idea to have a “Bill of Rights” but we need the right people to write it. Those right people must be in political office. If the right people are in political office we don’t need such legislation because they would be doing the right thing for all the people, including journalists. So the simplest answer is to change those 151 members of the lower house and the 75 members of the Senate to people who understand what human rights are. Probably a harder task than writing a Bill of Rights!
AR
June 6, 2019 at 5:57 pmYou put it in a nutshell – “If the right people are in political office we don’t need such legislation” – but when, not if, the wrong’uns have their arses on the Treasury bench then no piece of parchment will be any use except as toilet paper.
loveRt
June 6, 2019 at 11:48 pmQuote – “If the right people are in political office we don’t need such legislation”
We are a democracy, we can vote and have the right to protest
A healthy democracy needs a well educated, informed, compassionate, politically engaged electorate. And there’s ya problem. If that was the case we would never have stood for the creation of police state Australia, we would not have been stupid enough to swallow the whole thing hook line and sinker. But we have never even made it an election issue. We just voted the same bastards back in again. If the creation of police state Australia was somehow related to a price spike in the cost of beer then things might be different.
Solution ? On a personal level emigration sounds good. I hear Canada accepts asylum seekers from Australia. On a national level we need to create a better electorate for the future – but it’ll be too late by then.
Sorry to be negative but I’ve been watching this slow motion train wreck for too long.
peter
June 6, 2019 at 3:24 pmEncouraging Bernard has come to see the need for an Australian Human Rights Act or Charter. Better late then never! To be fair he has at least grasped that all Australians need such protection. Not just journalists, or whistleblowers but ALL of us. There is not a single comparable democracy in the world today that doesn’t give its citizens such fundamental protection, either constitutionally or legislatively.
Regrettably the LNP is implacably opposed and the ALP was never more than lukewarm in its support at a federal level. The last time there was a concerted campaign for a Human Rights Act for Australia, in the mid 2000s, the mainstream media and journalists were noticeably MIA.
I wonder will events of past week spur so action? Sadly I doubt it.