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In light of the ministerial direction issued to the Australian Federal Police by the Home Affairs Minister Peter Dutton on August 9, it would be a spectacular contradiction in policy if the Australian Federal Police’s current pursuit of journalists were to end in prosecutions.

Fox guarding the henhouse; poacher in charge of the game-keeping. Choose your idiom, but appointing the parliamentary joint committee on intelligence and security to inquire into press freedom is guaranteed to get the opposite result to what is ostensibly intended.

In a rare show of unity, the heads of Australia’s biggest news organisations – the ABC, Nine and News Corp – have called for stronger legal protections for press freedom in the wake of this month’s police raids on journalists.

When you go online and write something nasty about a person, or even a small business, you risk being sued for defamation. But if someone else goes online and writes something nasty about a person on your social media page, can you be held liable even though you didn’t write it? Depending on who you … Read More

In their raids on media organisations, journalists and whistleblowers, the Australian Federal Police have shown themselves to be the tool of a secretive, ruthless and vindictive executive government.

The grisly details of the murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi are well known. It was a horrible crime, but perhaps less unique for its brutality than for the sustained public attention, and the chance that there may yet be justice.