Former Australian spy Witness K has announced he will plead guilty to breaching the Intelligence Services Act by revealing information about the bugging of the Timor-Leste cabinet in 2004. His lawyer Bernard Collaery is now facing trial separately. The below is Collaery’s most recent statement on the matter.
It is with a heavy heart that I shall enter the dock of the courtroom where I have spent my entire career supporting the rule of law. Those principles hold that ministers are as bound as any ordinary citizen to maintaining ethical and legal codes of behaviour.
I shall defend my profession, the legal advice that I gave to an honourable client, and the right of the journalists named in the charges to have exposed unlawful conduct after the raid on my home and chambers and the seizure of my brief. The prosecution approved by the federal attorney-general is a likely turning point on whether we have equality before the law and true freedom of expression against abuses of power. I shall fight for what I and most Australians believe in.
Let us be under no misapprehension. Mighty forces are at play here to hide dirty political linen. I am familiar with Australia’s security legislation and its practical implementation. It is why I was approved to provide independent legal advice to members of the security services.
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As I have said before, in providing Witness K with advice it became apparent that the misconduct complained of was a culture unrelated in any way, and, in fact contrary to Australia’s national security interests. It was a cheating culture motivated by commercial interests and an abuse of process to utilise our service men and women in its implementation. It threatened to undo the great work done in Timor-Leste by our defence forces in which I am proud to have two family members serving.
I considered K’s complaint of a “changed culture” enunciated prior to seeing me, to be genuine and the changed culture it revealed to be unlawful. I wish to emphasise that K had written approval of the Inspector-General of Intelligence and Security (IGIS) to seek my opinion and to take legal action. I stand by that advice. The accusation that K conspired with me is contemptible.
K has endured six long years of enforced seclusion, unrelenting stress and pressure and now this charge. Australia was well served by having a person of K’s integrity and character in its security services.
It is a national disgrace to see K treated like this and I hope and pray that K, who acted on my advice, will have the strength to see this out.
I find myself obliged to make a choice as to which jurisdiction I am to be tried in before I may give factual instructions to my lawyers. Under the law introduced to fight terrorism I await permission from the federal attorney-general before I may explain my case to my own lawyers. I have waited 14 months to do this.
You might forgive me for thinking after more than 40 years in the law that I might understand injustice. Clearly, I have more to learn. I can say no more because I am silenced by a law we gave our political leaders to fight terrorism.
Crikey has covered the Witness K trial extensively. Read more here.
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What’s happening here is a travesty. Our government should obviously not have been bugging Timor-Leste’s cabinet room and having done so they need to face the music just as any other organisation or individual who abused their power and ignored their responsibilities should. Tragically though, we have given our government powers to fight terrorism that it apparently abuses at will. This of course means that the terrorists have already won. We are not fighting them or their ideology, rather we are selling our own values up the river.
The application of security services to commercial espionage by multiple countries is a very inconvenient truth.
Bernard, as a fellow lawyer, I have been appalled at the treatment to which this nasty and secretive government has subjected you and your client. That K has been apparently been forced to plead guilty to whatever the trumped-up charges have been to save his sanity sickens and angers me.
The criminal here is Christian Porter.
As I understand it, Downer and his departmental head should have served gaol time by now. Yet the Labor Party conspires to cover it up. Why?
Our justice system is being eroded by dodgy people & vested interests in positions of power.
At least Witness K & Bernard Collaery can look themselves in the eye in the mirror – Christian Porter cannot. Ditto Downer, Brandis, Gillard, Dreyfus. Neither of the major parties has clean hands on this.
I continue to be disappointed that this story is totally missing in ABC news bulletins. As for the SMH, I don’t know. I no longer read it closely. It is certainly not a prominent story.
What is needed is a Four Corners investigation, or something of similar weight. I suspect that one of the reasons for the Witness K trial being ignored by the mainstream media is due to its complexity, and an in-depth story could gain it some traction past the gutlessness and cronyism that continues to suffocate it. Sadly, the ABC, fearful of the government ending its existence, is unlikely to do this.