Gay Alcorn theguardian.com, Thursday 23 October 2014
‘Our freedom of speech and freedom of the press are not things we should blindly entrust to anyone’
Lachlan Murdoch: ‘Would the Gallipoli campaign have been a special operation?’ Photograph: Dan Himbrechts/AAP
Lachlan Murdoch has attacked new laws that could see journalists jailed for up to 10 years if they disclose information about a “special intelligence operation”, saying they are a serious attack on the freedom of the press in Australia.
Murdoch, delivering the Keith Murdoch oration in Melbourne on Thursday night in honour of his grandfather, said “trust us, we’re from the government” was the common refrain of those seeking to censor the media.
“But trust is something that should not be a consideration when restricting our fundamental freedoms,” he said. “Our freedom of speech and freedom of the press are not things we should blindly entrust to anyone.”
Murdoch, who is the co-chairman of 21st Century Fox and News Corp, the dominant newspaper publisher in Australia, said a “special intelligence operation” lasted in perpetuity.
“Forever. Long after an operation is complete. And breaching it has no defined defences, despite such defences being well understood under Australian law,” he said.
“If course, it is left ambiguous what a ‘special intelligence operation’ is, as it is left up to government agencies at the time to decide.”
Under the laws passed with the support of Labor and the Palmer United party early this month, Australian Security Intelligence Organisation officers have greater immunity from prosecution if they commit a crime in the course of a “special intelligence operation”.
Anyone who discloses information about an operation – including whistle-blowers or journalists – risks five years in jail, or 10 years if the disclosure endangers anyone’s health or safety or the conduct of an operation.
Murdoch outlined his grandfather’s famous actions as a journalist facing official censorship during the first world war to highlight the dangers of suppressing information of vital importance to the public. He said the story had “remarkable relevance to today” in regard to threats to press freedom and freedom of speech.
Keith Murdoch visited troops at Gallipoli and, appalled at the bungled military campaign and the inability of reporters to tell the truth, agreed to British reporter Ellis Ashmead-Bartlett’s request to carry a letter to London with an unfiltered report to be given to the British prime minister.
The letter was confiscated and Murdoch was arrested, but he wrote his own letter to Australian prime minister, Andrew Fisher, about the incompetence of the campaign and the misery of the soldiers.
“Would the Gallipoli campaign have been a special operation?” Lachlan Murdoch asked during his speech. “Would Sir Keith have been arrested with Ashmead-Bartlett’s letter to spend the next 10 years in jail?”
Media organisations protested against the “special intelligence operations” laws, concerned they would stop journalists exposing bungled ASIO operations and were designed to prevent Edward Snowden-style revelations.
But News Corp’s flagship national newspaper, the Australian, has supported the provisions. In an editorial last month, it said they were necessary to protect citizens against a growing terrorist threat.
“We do not believe that our investigative reporters, including those who regularly write on defence and security matters, will have their work significantly affected by these new laws,” it said.
But Lachlan Murdoch, considered most likely to succeed his father, Rupert, as the head of the film, television and publishing empire, clearly disagrees. He contrasted Australia’s lack of constitutional protection of freedom of speech and the press with protections in the US.
“Already we have literally hundreds of separate laws and regulations that currently govern the working press [in Australia],” he said. “Even a subset of these laws is entirely sufficient to govern how journalists work. We certainly do not need further laws to jail journalists who responsibly learn and accurately tell.”
