At both state and federal level Australian citizens are finding their right o speak truth to power is being seriously eroded.
This is just the lastest move.....
Bills passed by the Australian Parliament 28 June 2018:
The Guardian, 26 June 2018:
The espionage bill could
criminalise protests and communication of opinions harmful to the Australian
government, representing a threat to the limited protections on freedom of
speech, according to legal advice produced for the activist group GetUp.
The advice comes after
deals between the Coalition and Labor on the espionage bill and the foreign
transparency register…..
Although the shadow
attorney general, Mark Dreyfus, has rejected GetUp’s claims that peaceful
protests could be criminalised, his view has been contradicted by both the
founder of Australian Lawyers for Human Rights, Kate Eastman SC, and the advice
for GetUp by Wentworth Selborne chambers.
The advice to GetUp said
that sabotage offences could cover “a wide range of protest activity” because
the “damage to public infrastructure” element includes merely limiting or
preventing access to it.
“For example, a person
who intentionally blockaded the entry to a coalmine ... with the ultimate
intention of ending the sale of coal by Australia to another country ... could
be charged with an offence of this kind,” it said.
The advice suggested the
significant penalties of up to 20 years prison “is likely to have a chilling
effect on protest activity” such as blockading a farm to stop the sale of live
animals to another country.
The advice to GetUp
suggests that espionage offences in the Coalition bill may breach the
implied freedom of political communication because of broad definitions in
offences that criminalise dealing with information that may harm national
security.
It warned that the
definition of harm to national security did not distinguish between harm to
Australia and to its government, meaning “espionage offences [appear] broad
enough to capture reputational damage and loss of confidence in an Australian
government.”
The bill could
criminalise publication of information, including opinions or reports of
conversations, to international organisations “which may pose little or no
threat to Australia’s national security or sovereignty,” it said.
That could include
information and opinions about food security, energy security, climate
security, economic conditions, migration and refugee policies because these may
affect Australia’s “political, military or economic relations with another
country”.
Eastman told Guardian
Australia those concepts “could cover almost anything” that embarrasses
Australia in the eyes of another country.
Eastman cited examples
of reporting that Australia spied on the Indonesian
president and his wife, spied on Timor L’Este, criticism of Australia’s human
rights record connected to its role on the United Nations Human Rights Council,
or its treatment of foreign investment and major projects such as the Adani
Carmichael coalmine.
Even dealing with the
“substance, effect or description” of certain information is banned, a further
bar to reporting.
