A fine example. How those in power attack your right to know
IT was a chilling phone call from his boss that made diplomat John Campbell realise the rules for Australia's public servants were changing fast. Campbell was in Geneva, serving as Australia's ambassador for disarmament in the late 1990s. A veteran diplomat of 35 years, he knew the boundaries of what he could say and what he could not. Or so he thought.
"Then one day I got this phone call (from my superior),'' recalls Campbell. "He said there were rumours that during a lunch I hosted in Geneva, I had said publicly I did not understand why John Howard did not apologise to indigenous Australians. I then found out that the department had already launched an investigation into it behind my back."
Campbell did not make the comments at a public lunch but in private with some Aboriginal leaders who were in town.
Even so, he knew a line had been drawn through his name. He had not anticipated the changing breeze from Canberra about the limits of free speech and independent thought in the public service.
"It made me realise how the culture was changing," says Campbell, who was later forced out of the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade after clashing with Foreign Minister Alexander Downer. "Howard has demanded much tighter control of government at all levels and he and his ministers do not accept any form of dissent."
Just how little dissent the Government is willing to broker has been on display this week. The conviction for contempt of two journalists on Monday follows two high-profile government-backed legal witch-hunts against public service whistleblowers.
The convictions would not have caused such alarm had the journalists or the whistleblowers jeopardised national security by revealing Australia's military secrets or disclosed information that undermined life or safety. The only injury they caused was political: the information disclosed embarrassed the Government. This, it seems, is reason to spend millions of dollars in taxpayers' money to prosecute them.
"You know, one doesn't expect this sort of thing in Australia,'' convicted whistleblower Allan Kessing says. "I was looking forward to the usual golden retirement, pottering around the garden, a little bit of travel, a small but adequate superannuation payment. I was looking forward to, yes, a wonderful life, and now it's been just shattered.''
A former middle-ranking Customs officer, Kessing, 59, spent more than half his superannuation payout defending charges that he leaked a Customs report to The Australian. The report, which had been ignored by his superiors for two years and had never been seen by a minister, detailed serious security weaknesses at Sydney airport.
The 2004 story severely embarrassed the Government, which - after initially denying the problem -- subsequently spent more than $200 million upgrading airport security. The nation's airports are safer because of the leak.
"This man should be feted. They should be throwing rose petals at him,'' says John Hartigan, chairman and chief executive of News Limited, publisher of The Australian.
Instead, Kessing was hunted down by the Australian Federal Police, charged and found guilty of breaching the Commonwealth Crimes Act, and given a nine-month suspended sentence.
In a separate case, Herald Sun journalists Michael Harvey and Gerard McManus were this week convicted of contempt and each fined $7000 for refusing to name the source of a story about a federal government plan to cut benefits to war veterans. Public servant Desmond Kelly was convicted but later cleared on appeal for leaking the story.
The plight of these two journalists and two whistleblowers are the toxic fruits of an insidious trend in Australia towards greater government secrecy.
Openness and accountability are being undermined by the changing nature of political decision-making and an Orwellian determination to control the flow of information. The message is clear: journalists and their government sources trade information at their own risk. Gone are the days when governments would treat leaked information as an unpleasant but inevitable part of the ebb and flow of public debate.
Now unauthorised leaks are treated as a crime and their perpetrators prosecuted.
"If some people seem surprised that I have called in the police to deal with leaks, they shouldn't be,'' says the head of the Prime Minister's Department, Peter Shergold. "I always have and I always will.''
The Government says it has a right to expect discipline and loyalty from its public servants. "Public servants do not have a moral responsibility to act on their own judgment of the public interest when they assess the Government has got it wrong,'' Shergold says.
A 1997 US congressional report into secrecy and government highlights the dangers of going too far in demanding discipline from its servants: "Excessive secrecy has significant consequences for the national interest when, as a result, policy-makers are not fully informed, government is not held accountable for its actions and the public cannot engage in informed debate."
The Australian Government has led the way in slowing the flow of information to the public, therefore protecting itself from scrutiny. It has fought to make freedom of information laws all but ineffective as a means of analysing government.
Yet this is not simply a party-political issue; state Labor governments have been just as spartan with their public accountability as has the Howard Government in Canberra.
"Whistleblowers are being hunted down and prosecuted, and journalists who refuse to name their sources in breach of their ethical responsibilities are being dragged to court with them," Hartigan says.
"It's time for a proper public interest test to ensure that people doing the right thing aren't routinely punished.''
Media companies are so concerned they have banded together to lobby for change. An unlikely coalition - including News Limited, Fairfax Media, the ABC and the commercial television networks - has formed the Right to Know campaign. The coalition has asked former NSW Independent Commission Against Corruption commissioner Irene Moss to examine 500 legal prohibitions limiting the release of public information in Australia.
At a federal level the trend towards greater secrecy in government has been fuelled by several factors. The traditional role of public servants to give frank and fearless advice to their political masters has ebbed alongside a desire from politicians to exert greater control.
The Howard Government has accelerated this trend, with public servants ceding much of their power to ministerial advisers who zealously control the flow of information.
During the Bob Hawke-Paul Keating era, Canberra press gallery journalists could routinely call people inside government departments and ask questions. Now all media inquiries must be referred back to a central spokesperson. Public servants caught speaking with journalists without clearance risk punishment. Those who leak information without permission risk jail. Therefore the information outlets are almost entirely controlled at a central point by ministers.
Most media leaks out of Canberra today are authorised and come from ministers' offices, not unauthorised disclosures from brave public servants. When police are called in to investigate an unauthorised leak, it is usually an uneven battle: phone and computer records and emails often leave a visible trail.
The Government's hard line on whistleblowers means that, without a change to the laws, journalists will increasingly end up in court. Their refusal to divulge sources - a rock-solid ethical practice - will lead to more convictions of journalists guilty of doing their jobs. To avoid this, federal Attorney-General Philip Ruddock last month introduced a bill to parliament. However, the bill offers no absolute protection for journalists; it merely gives judges some discretion in not compelling journalists to reveal sources. Whistleblowers still have no protection.
Yesterday Ruddock urged the Victorian Government to consider offering a pardon to Harvey and McManus.
Any pardon would have to come from Victorian Attorney-General Rob Hulls, who attacked Ruddock, saying: "It is truly extraordinary that the man responsible for the situation these journalists find themselves in should now be crying crocodile tears about their predicament.''
But Ruddock is standing firm over whistleblower legislation, arguing he will not support protection for public servants who break the law to reveal government secrets.
"The real battle for appropriate legal protection for journalists and whistleblowers is just starting,'' Hartigan says.
So far, the legal pursuit of journalists to reveal their sources has been ineffective, if not counterproductive. In 1995, The Australian's editor Paul Whittaker, then working as an investigative reporter for Brisbane's The Courier-Mail, narrowly avoided jail for contempt after he refused to answer almost 430 questions at a commission of inquiry.
The inquiry was set up to determine who had leaked to Whittaker and Marian Wilkinson, then a reporter at The Australian, information about a politically sensitive investigation into allegations of corruption concerning former Labor minister Graham Richardson. Richardson was accused of being supplied with prostitutes by Gold Coast businessmen in exchange for making favourable representations on their behalf to a giant US defence contractor.
The articles alleged the Australian Federal Police had "run dead" on the investigation and highlighted a bitter row between law-enforcement agencies over the case.
Whittaker's home was raided and AFP officers threatened to shut down production of the newspaper for days, if necessary, to search the Courier-Mail offices, "inch by inch", after Whittaker refused to assist them.
The police raids came just a few months after Whittaker declined to answer questions at the inquiry that he believed were aimed at identifying his sources for the series of Walkley Award-winning stories.
Inquiry commissioner Russell Hanson QC repeatedly warned Whittaker he faced charges of contempt of the Supreme Court for failing to answer questions. "If a judge (of the Supreme Court) sees you've been totally stonewalling and obstructive, I don't see it will stand you in a great deal of stead,'' Hanson told Whittaker during a gruelling two days in the witness box in August 1995.
"I am damned if I do (answer) and damned if I don't,'' Whittaker told the inquiry.
Whittaker escaped the prospect of a jail sentence after the Criminal Justice Commission's four commissioners surprisingly voted not to instigate contempt proceedings.
Then CJC acting chairman Lew Wyvill QC said in a statement at the time: "The journalist has demonstrated that he would not reveal the source of his information. A finding of contempt by the Supreme Court would in all probability result in a fine or a limited jail sentence, but it is extremely unlikely this would lead Mr Whittaker to reveal his sources. Instigation of a contempt action would lead to further protracted and costly legal proceedings, which at the end of the day would do nothing to assist the finalisation of this matter. In these circumstances, it is extremely difficult to justify taking such action solely for the purpose of punishing Mr Whittaker.
"It should not be assumed from this decision that the CJC has abandoned recourse to contempt proceedings as a means of compelling compliance with its directions in the future.''
The multi-million-dollar inquiry failed to identify the source of Whittaker's articles.
In both the Whittaker and the Harvey-McManus cases, the courts were unable to compel the journalists to give up their sources. This lack of success, and the bad publicity such cases bring, is pushing the Government to seek a more effective solution.
But the fate of journalists will always be linked to that of the whistleblowers who provide them with the information. If there is no protection for whistleblowers, hopes for a better balance between government secrets and the public's right to know will be unrealised. And the slide towards less accountable, less transparent governments will continue unabated.
http://www.news.com.au/story/0,23599,22512289-5013456,00.html
Topic: AUSTRALIANS are the victims of a secretive culture (Read 1092 times)