WEBVTT 1 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:03.400 Let's get underway. My name's Paul Hamra from the Independent Weekly Newspaper. 2 00:00:04.920 --> 00:00:10.640 We're actually, it's great to see such a big crowd here this morning to listen to Marion 3 00:00:10.640 --> 00:00:16.140 about freedom of the press. It's an issue that's close to my heart and obviously close to yours as 4 00:00:16.140 --> 00:00:29.580 well. Marion, welcome to Adelaide. A little bit about Marion. Marion was brought up in Brisbane 5 00:00:29.580 --> 00:00:34.760 and graduated at Queensland University. She helped set up Brisbane's first alternative FM 6 00:00:34.760 --> 00:00:42.960 radio station, 4ZZZ, and helped run its first newsroom. Marion was hired by the National Times 7 00:00:42.960 --> 00:00:48.660 in Sydney covering politics and organised crime before becoming the paper's Washington 8 00:00:48.660 --> 00:00:55.880 correspondent. On her return to Australia, she joined ABC Television's Four Corners program 9 00:00:55.880 --> 00:00:59.380 as a reporter and later became the program's executive producer. 10 00:00:59.580 --> 00:01:05.720 Since then, Marion has worked at The Australian, The Sydney Morning Herald in reporting and editing 11 00:01:05.720 --> 00:01:11.080 roles. In 2002, she was appointed Washington correspondent for The Sydney Morning Herald 12 00:01:11.080 --> 00:01:18.860 and The Melbourne Age and reported the 2004 presidential campaign. She returns to The 13 00:01:19.940 --> 00:01:24.320 Sydney Morning Herald as a senior reporter covering national security, the coal inquiry 14 00:01:26.040 --> 00:01:28.220 into oil for food scandal. 15 00:01:28.720 --> 00:01:29.560 And she's also a senior reporter for the National Security and the Coal Inquiry into oil for food 16 00:01:29.560 --> 00:01:33.220 scandal. She is author of several books on Australian politics, including The Fixer, 17 00:01:33.260 --> 00:01:40.140 the unauthorised biography of Graham Richardson, and Dark Victory with David Marr. Welcome, Marion. 18 00:01:44.680 --> 00:01:55.280 Thanks, Paul. And can I say congratulations on your media revolution here in Adelaide by 19 00:01:55.280 --> 00:01:58.700 challenging the advertiser as the paper's... 20 00:02:04.640 --> 00:02:13.880 My talk today is called Gagging on Freedom, a rather provocative title. And maybe I was feeling a 21 00:02:13.880 --> 00:02:21.160 bit under the gun when I gave this title to the organisers of the festival. But there's some 22 00:02:21.160 --> 00:02:28.200 thoughts that I have been ruminating on, I think, since covering the lead up to the Iraq war in the 23 00:02:28.200 --> 00:02:38.400 United States and since my return from Washington. Last year, a young Arabic woman, a young Arabic 24 00:02:38.400 --> 00:02:48.640 widow wrote an impassioned plea on a blog site called Don't Bomb Us. It began, somewhere in a 25 00:02:48.640 --> 00:02:55.120 dusty drawer in the deserted bedroom that used to belong to me and my husband Tariq before his killing 26 00:02:55.120 --> 00:02:57.900 lies the statement issued by the American 27 00:02:57.900 --> 00:03:05.560 army apologising for what it described as the accident of bombing the Al Jazeera office in Baghdad, 28 00:03:06.340 --> 00:03:13.200 which resulted in the killing of my 33 year old husband, Tariq Ayub, who was reporting from Baghdad 29 00:03:13.200 --> 00:03:21.260 during the war. The widow, Dima, was trying fruitlessly to sue the US military over the death of 30 00:03:21.260 --> 00:03:27.880 her husband during the invasion of Iraq in April 2003. In the lead up to the war, the 31 00:03:27.900 --> 00:03:35.160 Al Jazeera had helpfully provided the coordinates of its Baghdad office to the Pentagon, hoping to 32 00:03:35.160 --> 00:03:42.740 avoid such an accident. Despite this precaution, Dima was told by every lawyer who looked at her 33 00:03:42.740 --> 00:03:49.440 case, it wouldn't be impossible to prove her husband was not just a tragic accident of war, 34 00:03:49.700 --> 00:03:56.880 and as an experienced reporter, he would have known the risks. But the widow's quest for justice 35 00:03:57.900 --> 00:04:07.040 begin to begin to begin to begin to begin to begin to begin to begin to begin to begin to begin to begin to 36 00:04:10.000 --> 00:04:18.960 begin 37 00:04:24.380 --> 00:04:28.280 to Bush. The conversation took place about a year 38 00:04:28.280 --> 00:04:31.960 after Tariq's death in Baghdad. It allegedly 39 00:04:31.960 --> 00:04:36.160 revealed Bush floating the idea about the possibility 40 00:04:36.160 --> 00:04:40.120 of bombing Al Jazeera's global headquarters in Qatar. 41 00:04:41.120 --> 00:04:44.080 At the time, the two leaders were discussing the 42 00:04:44.080 --> 00:04:48.060 US siege of Fallujah, one of the bloodiest episodes in 43 00:04:48.060 --> 00:04:52.260 post-war Iraq. At this time, 44 00:04:52.260 --> 00:04:55.460 another Al Jazeera journalist, Ahmed Mansour, 45 00:04:55.700 --> 00:04:59.640 was broadcasting horrific images from Fallujah of civilian 46 00:04:59.640 --> 00:05:04.000 casualties inside the city. US commanders in the White 47 00:05:04.000 --> 00:05:07.120 House were infuriated by Al Jazeera's reporting. 48 00:05:08.860 --> 00:05:11.760 The Mirra story, when it broke, was quickly dismissed 49 00:05:11.760 --> 00:05:15.640 by White House spokesmen as outlandish, and Blair 50 00:05:15.640 --> 00:05:20.020 labelled it a conspiracy theory. But almost immediately 51 00:05:20.020 --> 00:05:21.960 strenuous efforts were made to 52 00:05:21.960 --> 00:05:22.240 support the Al Jazeera story. 53 00:05:22.260 --> 00:05:32.980 The British Attorney General, Lord Goldsmith, threatened all British media outlets with the Official Secrets Act, if anyone dared to publish it. 54 00:05:33.340 --> 00:05:43.840 The civil servant who leaked the memo, David Keogh, was put on trial with his friend, Leo O'Connor, who was the labour staffer who had received the document from him. 55 00:05:44.420 --> 00:05:50.400 From the beginning of their trial, the judge frequently closed the court to the media to keep the memo secret. 56 00:05:50.760 --> 00:05:52.140 A freedom of information, 57 00:05:52.260 --> 00:05:57.020 a permission request by Al Jazeera for a copy of the memo, was denied by Downing Street. 58 00:05:58.400 --> 00:06:02.360 In May this year, the two leakers were found guilty of making 59 00:06:02.360 --> 00:06:06.840 a damaging disclosure in violation of the British Official Secrets Act. 60 00:06:07.760 --> 00:06:10.020 To date, the most telling description 61 00:06:10.020 --> 00:06:14.220 of the controversial memo has come from Keogh's lawyer during the trial. 62 00:06:15.280 --> 00:06:18.340 He told the court the civil servant found the material 63 00:06:18.340 --> 00:06:22.240 in the memo utterly wrong, and he risked losing it. 64 00:06:22.260 --> 00:06:22.480 He said he was not willing to expose the memo, 65 00:06:22.480 --> 00:06:26.840 because he was not willing to expose the person who was using his job, his pension, and even his liberty to expose it. 66 00:06:27.680 --> 00:06:31.620 But while the leakers were convicted, the memo stayed secret. 67 00:06:32.140 --> 00:06:35.740 Today, we still don't know if the Mirror's account is true, 68 00:06:35.900 --> 00:06:43.360 or if, as many suspected, Bush was simply joking about the bombing of Al Jazeera's media headquarters. 69 00:06:44.540 --> 00:06:49.440 Whatever the truth, the British journalists who covered the trial were effectively gagged. 70 00:06:49.460 --> 00:06:52.240 The serious allegation of President Bush's 71 00:06:52.260 --> 00:06:54.620 discussion of a crime was brushed aside. 72 00:06:55.160 --> 00:06:59.800 And tragically, the widow of Al Jazeera's Baghdad correspondent 73 00:06:59.800 --> 00:07:04.760 is left convinced that her husband was targeted by the American military 74 00:07:04.760 --> 00:07:10.460 out to get the Arab news organisation simply because it cannot be controlled. 75 00:07:12.260 --> 00:07:15.820 The outcome of this case for me is a pitiful result for democracy. 76 00:07:16.340 --> 00:07:20.100 It feeds the belief that our leaders are unaccountable. 77 00:07:20.260 --> 00:07:22.240 It feeds conspiracy theories 78 00:07:22.260 --> 00:07:28.940 in the Middle East that America is capable of assassinating any Arab journalist who challenges them. 79 00:07:29.660 --> 00:07:34.080 Most importantly, it sends a message that the Western media, 80 00:07:34.360 --> 00:07:38.220 so crucial in upholding press freedom around the world, 81 00:07:38.440 --> 00:07:45.780 is increasingly incapable of penetrating the secrecy and spin that now protects their elected leaders. 82 00:07:46.900 --> 00:07:51.580 Since September 11, this secrecy and spin around national security 83 00:07:51.580 --> 00:07:55.120 has inflicted enormous damage on the Western media. 84 00:07:55.520 --> 00:07:59.160 This damage, of course, climaxed during the Iraq war. 85 00:07:59.760 --> 00:08:02.480 In the US, Britain and here in Australia, 86 00:08:02.520 --> 00:08:10.400 it will take many years for us in the media to recover from the mistakes made during the campaign to prosecute that war. 87 00:08:11.120 --> 00:08:16.180 Just as Blair, Bush and Howard's credibility on national security 88 00:08:16.180 --> 00:08:19.300 was shredded in the aftermath of the invasion, 89 00:08:19.300 --> 00:08:23.760 so too was the credibility of many prominent journalists and editors. 90 00:08:24.500 --> 00:08:29.920 As the former US National Security Advisor Zbigniew Brzezinski put it recently, 91 00:08:30.700 --> 00:08:36.740 if we go to anyone today and we say we have proof there are 20 atomic bombs in Iran, 92 00:08:37.100 --> 00:08:39.380 who is going to believe us? 93 00:08:40.600 --> 00:08:45.500 Today I want to talk about how the media here in Australia is struggling to hold its own 94 00:08:45.500 --> 00:08:48.160 as our politicians become increasingly expert 95 00:08:48.160 --> 00:08:52.440 in their strategies to control what information gets to the public. 96 00:08:52.940 --> 00:08:56.640 These strategies, once employed under the cloak of national security, 97 00:08:57.120 --> 00:09:01.360 are now routinely used to control information across a range of issues, 98 00:09:01.640 --> 00:09:06.120 whether it's climate change, defence spending or industrial relations. 99 00:09:06.980 --> 00:09:11.400 Central to this is raising the penalties for any public official 100 00:09:11.400 --> 00:09:16.560 who dares disclose information to journalists that governments want to suppress. 101 00:09:16.560 --> 00:09:22.160 It is about creating an atmosphere of fear amongst these public servants, 102 00:09:22.440 --> 00:09:26.960 military officers and police officers who risk losing their careers, 103 00:09:27.260 --> 00:09:32.060 pensions and possibly their liberty if they speak to journalists out of conscience. 104 00:09:32.660 --> 00:09:38.640 The current head of Prime Minister and Cabinet spelt this policy out a few years ago. 105 00:09:39.240 --> 00:09:44.540 Defending his decision to call in police whenever any document leaks from the government, 106 00:09:44.880 --> 00:09:46.540 Peter Shergold described the situation as, 107 00:09:46.560 --> 00:09:50.500 he described leaking to the media as democratic sabotage. 108 00:09:51.560 --> 00:09:56.500 Leaking, he said, blows apart the Westminster tradition of confidentiality 109 00:09:56.500 --> 00:10:00.820 upon which the provision of frank and fearless advice depends. 110 00:10:02.100 --> 00:10:07.660 This, frankly, is bunkum in today's war over information that is raging 111 00:10:07.660 --> 00:10:09.700 between the government and the media. 112 00:10:10.420 --> 00:10:14.820 The reality right now is that few of our senior bureaucrats 113 00:10:14.820 --> 00:10:16.540 give unfettered frankness. 114 00:10:16.560 --> 00:10:17.480 The government is the only one that can give frank and fearless advice. 115 00:10:19.560 --> 00:10:23.760 Or, as the head of the Department of Foreign Affairs, Michael Lestrange, 116 00:10:23.920 --> 00:10:24.540 put it recently, 117 00:10:25.560 --> 00:10:28.220 I think it's quite appropriate for frank and fearless advice 118 00:10:28.220 --> 00:10:33.220 from public servants to government to take what he called appropriate account 119 00:10:33.220 --> 00:10:35.920 of the government's objectives and priorities. 120 00:10:37.560 --> 00:10:41.920 From the Prime Minister down, ministers employ legions of public affairs specialists, 121 00:10:42.500 --> 00:10:45.460 press secretaries and communications advisers, 122 00:10:45.460 --> 00:10:47.880 along with their top bureaucrats, 123 00:10:47.980 --> 00:10:53.660 to spin the media in order to get the message out that they want the public to hear. 124 00:10:54.020 --> 00:10:58.780 At the same time, these officials sit on information damaging the government 125 00:10:58.780 --> 00:11:00.900 or try to limit its impact. 126 00:11:01.780 --> 00:11:06.620 Recently, my colleague Peter Harcher interviewed the former head of the Prime Minister's office, 127 00:11:06.940 --> 00:11:08.440 Arthur Sinodinos. 128 00:11:08.820 --> 00:11:14.920 The once powerful adviser described a key function of Howard's office on a day-to-day basis, 129 00:11:14.920 --> 00:11:18.660 as the Prime Minister's preoccupation with, quote, 130 00:11:18.700 --> 00:11:23.100 filling the vacuum to dominate the media and the political airspace. 131 00:11:24.020 --> 00:11:28.040 Sinodinos described an office where the Prime Minister and his senior staff 132 00:11:28.040 --> 00:11:33.740 would spend the vast bulk of their time on a typical parliamentary sitting day, 133 00:11:33.900 --> 00:11:37.300 monitoring the media, anticipating the media, 134 00:11:37.560 --> 00:11:39.420 crafting lines for the media, 135 00:11:39.560 --> 00:11:42.900 and preparing for dealing with the Labor Party in question time. 136 00:11:43.840 --> 00:11:44.900 As Sinodinos said, 137 00:11:44.900 --> 00:11:49.160 if you leave a vacuum, it will be filled by others. 138 00:11:49.800 --> 00:11:55.460 In this atmosphere, it is almost impossible to expect a serious debate on any policy, 139 00:11:55.780 --> 00:11:58.520 whether it is on Iraq or industrial relations. 140 00:11:59.160 --> 00:12:03.320 Instead, debate rapidly descends into a political blood sport, 141 00:12:03.540 --> 00:12:07.560 with barricades from the media lining up on either side of the fence. 142 00:12:08.580 --> 00:12:11.820 What we in the media and the public increasingly understand 143 00:12:11.820 --> 00:12:14.880 is there are, on almost a daily basis, 144 00:12:14.880 --> 00:12:19.500 official leaks to favoured media to push the government's case. 145 00:12:20.700 --> 00:12:24.100 One clear example, in June 2003, 146 00:12:24.620 --> 00:12:30.040 the Herald Sun's chief political columnist, Andrew Bolt, 147 00:12:30.240 --> 00:12:32.920 an ardent supporter of Howard's Iraq policy, 148 00:12:33.240 --> 00:12:37.460 carried an exclusive story on a classified intelligence report 149 00:12:37.460 --> 00:12:42.300 produced by the Office of National Assessments in the lead-up to the Iraq war. 150 00:12:42.940 --> 00:12:44.860 ONA is the official official 151 00:12:44.880 --> 00:12:48.040 of the Prime Minister's principal intelligence advisory body. 152 00:12:48.440 --> 00:12:51.260 The author of this report was a government critic, 153 00:12:51.560 --> 00:12:55.380 Andrew Wilkie, who had resigned over the decision to go to war. 154 00:12:56.280 --> 00:12:59.540 Bolt reported in the Herald Sun that Wilkie had given 155 00:12:59.540 --> 00:13:02.720 what he called alarmist assessments of what could go wrong 156 00:13:02.720 --> 00:13:05.200 in the aftermath of an invasion of Iraq, 157 00:13:05.520 --> 00:13:07.900 based on information from NGOs. 158 00:13:09.120 --> 00:13:13.260 This included that the invasion would lead to widespread killing, 159 00:13:13.340 --> 00:13:14.860 and up to 1.5 million people killed. 160 00:13:14.880 --> 00:13:16.060 This included that the invasion would lead to up to 1.4 million refugees. 161 00:13:17.420 --> 00:13:23.300 In his column, Bolt savaged Wilkie's confidential intelligence assessments. 162 00:13:23.840 --> 00:13:25.900 So let's sum it up, Bolt wrote. 163 00:13:26.200 --> 00:13:28.900 Wilkie, in his one written assessment of Iraq, 164 00:13:29.060 --> 00:13:30.700 in his real area of expertise, 165 00:13:31.140 --> 00:13:33.860 issued warnings that turned out, with hindsight, 166 00:13:34.140 --> 00:13:35.560 to be very alarmist. 167 00:13:35.880 --> 00:13:37.720 The war happened, all right, 168 00:13:37.780 --> 00:13:41.040 but there were no refugees, no huge casualties. 169 00:13:41.820 --> 00:13:44.400 There was no flooding, no toxic gases, 170 00:13:44.400 --> 00:13:47.780 no humanitarian disaster of any kind. 171 00:13:48.960 --> 00:13:51.120 Like many in the media, of course, 172 00:13:51.280 --> 00:13:55.220 Bolt's analysis about the war was based on the 24-hour news cycle. 173 00:13:55.500 --> 00:13:59.180 It was written in the heady days after President Bush 174 00:13:59.180 --> 00:14:02.900 had delivered his now infamous mission accomplished speech 175 00:14:02.900 --> 00:14:06.160 on the aircraft carrier USS Abraham Lincoln. 176 00:14:07.020 --> 00:14:08.720 A few years down the track, 177 00:14:08.920 --> 00:14:13.440 Wilkie's analysis is closer to the mark than either Bolt's or Bush's. 178 00:14:14.400 --> 00:14:17.100 But Andrew Wilkie ended up paying a terrible personal 179 00:14:17.100 --> 00:14:19.020 and professional price for his courage. 180 00:14:19.240 --> 00:14:22.820 His reputation was trashed by, amongst others, 181 00:14:22.860 --> 00:14:24.400 someone in the Prime Minister's office 182 00:14:24.400 --> 00:14:27.100 who spread the rumour that he was mentally unstable. 183 00:14:27.820 --> 00:14:31.340 But the point of this tale is the Federal Police investigation 184 00:14:31.340 --> 00:14:34.320 that followed Bolt's pro-government leak. 185 00:14:35.260 --> 00:14:37.020 Bluntly, it didn't get very far. 186 00:14:37.380 --> 00:14:41.440 This was despite one senior police officer telling the Canberra Times 187 00:14:41.440 --> 00:14:42.440 that, quote, 188 00:14:42.500 --> 00:14:44.380 anyone who could not solve this problem 189 00:14:44.400 --> 00:14:44.640 or solve this crime 190 00:14:45.400 --> 00:14:47.640 would not be able to find his bum with both hands. 191 00:14:48.480 --> 00:14:51.820 I recently spoke to the alleged source of this leak, 192 00:14:53.080 --> 00:14:56.380 the person who allegedly leaked to Bolt, 193 00:14:56.520 --> 00:15:00.200 a former staffer in Foreign Minister Alexander Downer's office. 194 00:15:00.440 --> 00:15:03.340 He declined to discuss his interview with the police. 195 00:15:03.880 --> 00:15:06.020 My aim was not to expose him 196 00:15:06.020 --> 00:15:08.860 or indeed to encourage the pursuit of leakers, 197 00:15:08.980 --> 00:15:11.400 but to extract at least an acknowledgement 198 00:15:11.400 --> 00:15:13.500 that governments have always leaked 199 00:15:13.500 --> 00:15:14.380 when it helps their interests. 200 00:15:14.400 --> 00:15:16.160 The only thing that really matters now 201 00:15:16.160 --> 00:15:18.820 is the extraordinary efforts to shut up anyone 202 00:15:19.400 --> 00:15:22.040 who leaks information that counters the government spin. 203 00:15:23.420 --> 00:15:27.020 Unofficial media leaks usually come from more junior officers 204 00:15:27.020 --> 00:15:29.180 troubled by what they see 205 00:15:29.180 --> 00:15:32.600 and what the government chooses to ignore or suppress. 206 00:15:33.060 --> 00:15:35.960 It's these officials who speak off the record 207 00:15:35.960 --> 00:15:37.680 to reporters to counter the spin 208 00:15:37.680 --> 00:15:40.080 who find themselves battling investigations, 209 00:15:40.800 --> 00:15:42.360 denigration in the media 210 00:15:42.360 --> 00:15:44.380 or simply having their careers shut. 211 00:15:44.380 --> 00:15:51.540 cut short. And today I want to briefly touch on a few instances where secrecy and spin by the 212 00:15:51.540 --> 00:15:58.040 Howard government has led to disastrous policy outcomes. The small number of reporters and 213 00:15:58.040 --> 00:16:03.220 officials who attempted to break down the spin were unsurprisingly pilloried for their efforts. 214 00:16:04.060 --> 00:16:09.540 Let's look specifically at national security, those words that are used to invoke, that are 215 00:16:09.540 --> 00:16:15.040 invoked to justify the suppression of information on a regular basis. And I want to examine briefly 216 00:16:15.040 --> 00:16:22.980 the case of Alan Kessing. Kessing, you probably know, was a public servant who worked in the 217 00:16:22.980 --> 00:16:30.460 Customs Border Security team in Sydney. And I must say here that he is denied ever leaking to the 218 00:16:30.460 --> 00:16:37.560 media. However, he was accused of this. A few years ago, the Howard government, of course, was pouring 219 00:16:37.560 --> 00:16:38.900 billions of dollars 220 00:16:39.540 --> 00:16:46.740 into national security in the aftermath of September 11, as we were all deeply worried about a terrorist 221 00:16:46.740 --> 00:16:54.880 attack in this country. Kessing and his boss at the time wrote two damning reports about security at 222 00:16:54.880 --> 00:17:01.240 Sydney Airport. The reports detailed security breaches, illegal activity, and most disturbingly, 223 00:17:01.240 --> 00:17:08.480 the finding that 39 out of 500 security screeners at the airport themselves had serious criminal 224 00:17:08.480 --> 00:17:09.120 convictions. 225 00:17:11.080 --> 00:17:20.440 Kessing's reports went up the line to his superiors, who were apparently unimpressed. The reports sat there for two years, until the 226 00:17:20.440 --> 00:17:24.440 Chappelle Corby case turned an unwelcome spotlight on Sydney Airport. 227 00:17:26.620 --> 00:17:34.880 Against this backdrop, Alan Kessing's damning reports hit the media. They were two years old, but they finally jolted the 228 00:17:34.880 --> 00:17:39.520 government into action. Under attack from all quarters, the minister announced his 229 00:17:39.540 --> 00:17:43.880 return to Sydney Airport. The report was a 230 00:17:42.740 --> 00:17:43.540 ! 231 00:18:09.540 --> 00:18:16.060 Kessing was released. Federal police charged him under the Crimes Act with leaking the report that triggered the inquiry. 232 00:18:17.000 --> 00:18:24.680 Last month, he received a nine-month suspended sentence for breaching the Crimes Act over the unlawful leaking of 233 00:18:24.680 --> 00:18:33.360 information to the Australian newspaper. While Kessing waited to stand trial, his old customs department was 234 00:18:33.360 --> 00:18:39.520 cooperating in a public relations offensive, a Channel 9 production that would soon become a 235 00:18:39.540 --> 00:18:43.260 national TV program. 236 00:18:43.920 --> 00:18:53.380 Border security, Australia's front line. Officials from customs, along with immigration and quarantine, were instructed to give the show's cameras 237 00:18:53.380 --> 00:19:03.780 full access to all areas of national security, allowing the cameras to be in the thick of the action, covering all the suspense, drama and emotion of life on the front line. 238 00:19:04.560 --> 00:19:09.060 But they certainly didn't want to know about Alan Kessing's role on the front line. 239 00:19:09.060 --> 00:19:23.320 And he was not wanted on the border security program. In the government's eyes, he was a threat, like any other government official suspected of giving media the information that undermines the spin coming from their political masters. 240 00:19:25.120 --> 00:19:39.040 Yet I would argue whoever leaked those reports provided a valuable service. And a couple of years ago, a similar leak might have averted a cover-up of the greatest bribery scandal in Australia's history that happened right after the 241 00:19:39.040 --> 00:19:56.780 beginnance of beginnance of beginnance of beginnance of beginnance of beginnance of beginnance . 242 00:19:56.780 --> 00:19:57.100 . 243 00:19:57.100 --> 00:19:58.020 . 244 00:19:58.020 --> 00:19:58.340 . 245 00:19:58.340 --> 00:19:58.400 . 246 00:19:58.400 --> 00:19:58.500 . 247 00:19:58.500 --> 00:19:58.560 . 248 00:19:58.560 --> 00:19:58.740 . 249 00:20:09.040 --> 00:20:10.960 $300 million to the regime. 250 00:20:13.060 --> 00:20:18.720 A year before, a damning UN report castigated AWB 251 00:20:18.720 --> 00:20:22.260 over the kickback's allegations about the wheat exporter 252 00:20:22.260 --> 00:20:24.200 were pouring into Canberra, 253 00:20:24.240 --> 00:20:27.500 including evidence from the US military 254 00:20:27.500 --> 00:20:33.260 and an Australian colonel working for the occupation government. 255 00:20:36.920 --> 00:20:41.080 Yet no one in foreign affairs, trade, 256 00:20:41.240 --> 00:20:45.620 or the Office of Prime Minister and Cabinet, 257 00:20:45.760 --> 00:20:49.320 or the Defence Department, had the gumption to make this public. 258 00:20:50.180 --> 00:20:53.840 It was left to the head of the UN investigation, Paul Volcker, 259 00:20:54.000 --> 00:20:57.220 to put pressure on the Australian government behind the scenes. 260 00:20:59.520 --> 00:21:02.360 In the end, of course, 261 00:21:02.360 --> 00:21:03.240 no amount of information was available to the Australian government. 262 00:21:03.240 --> 00:21:06.260 No amount of secrecy and spin could cover up the AWB scandal. 263 00:21:06.700 --> 00:21:09.680 But the government's efforts to protect AWB 264 00:21:09.680 --> 00:21:12.540 have trashed Australia's global reputation 265 00:21:12.540 --> 00:21:15.900 on upholding the international laws against bribery. 266 00:21:16.220 --> 00:21:21.020 Now our finger-waving at others is viewed with deep cynicism 267 00:21:21.020 --> 00:21:23.940 from the Solomon Islands to Papua New Guinea. 268 00:21:25.160 --> 00:21:29.080 The Iraq war, of course, was the mother of all spin strategies 269 00:21:29.080 --> 00:21:32.240 and demonstrated all too clearly what happens 270 00:21:32.240 --> 00:21:35.700 when the media is swamped by government spin, 271 00:21:35.820 --> 00:21:39.340 in this case, in a campaign that was globally managed. 272 00:21:39.920 --> 00:21:42.060 I was in Washington at the time, 273 00:21:42.080 --> 00:21:44.380 and the stage-managed release of information, 274 00:21:44.380 --> 00:21:47.860 both in the lead-up to the war and the early months of fighting, 275 00:21:48.180 --> 00:21:51.160 was, I think, one of the worst propaganda exercises 276 00:21:51.160 --> 00:21:54.280 I have seen in 30 years of reporting. 277 00:21:55.980 --> 00:22:00.860 It was extremely crude to observe up close, 278 00:22:00.960 --> 00:22:02.220 and in the lead-up to the war, 279 00:22:02.220 --> 00:22:03.720 and for the first few months, 280 00:22:04.500 --> 00:22:07.040 the spin lines that were worked out of Washington 281 00:22:07.040 --> 00:22:10.080 were passed on, of course, to Canberra. 282 00:22:10.340 --> 00:22:12.980 The White House and Pentagon press secretaries 283 00:22:12.980 --> 00:22:15.660 would brief their Australian and British counterparts 284 00:22:15.660 --> 00:22:17.240 on the line for the day. 285 00:22:17.780 --> 00:22:21.120 The Brits, at least, had a fair bit of spin of their own to offer, 286 00:22:21.220 --> 00:22:24.980 as the infamous Alastair Campbell, Blair's former media sphingali, 287 00:22:25.100 --> 00:22:25.960 was on the link-up. 288 00:22:26.120 --> 00:22:28.460 Our own man, who I knew well, 289 00:22:28.520 --> 00:22:31.080 was a rather modest middle-level foreign affairs PR, 290 00:22:32.220 --> 00:22:32.320 and I was a little surprised to see 291 00:22:32.320 --> 00:22:33.240 that the only job due to the time difference 292 00:22:33.240 --> 00:22:34.920 between Washington and Canberra 293 00:22:34.920 --> 00:22:38.220 was simply to listen and relay the spin for the day. 294 00:22:39.340 --> 00:22:42.060 Looking back now, I wonder how any official 295 00:22:42.060 --> 00:22:44.000 who worked in Prime Minister and Cabinet 296 00:22:44.000 --> 00:22:46.920 or in Foreign Affairs during the lead-up to the war 297 00:22:46.920 --> 00:22:49.780 can look back and accept that what happened 298 00:22:49.780 --> 00:22:52.060 was anything but deeply flawed. 299 00:22:55.860 --> 00:22:59.680 I think that what happened in the Iraq War 300 00:23:00.540 --> 00:23:02.200 effectively demonstrated to me that, 301 00:23:02.200 --> 00:23:02.740 in the first place, 302 00:23:02.840 --> 00:23:02.920 the 303 00:23:31.680 --> 00:23:32.180 ! 304 00:23:30.440 --> 00:23:31.440 the 305 00:23:32.180 --> 00:23:32.280 ! 306 00:23:32.920 --> 00:23:33.120 . 307 00:23:34.680 --> 00:23:34.880 . 308 00:23:35.340 --> 00:23:35.540 . 309 00:23:38.160 --> 00:23:38.360 . 310 00:23:38.360 --> 00:23:38.500 . 311 00:23:38.500 --> 00:23:38.520 . 312 00:23:38.520 --> 00:23:38.540 . 313 00:23:39.840 --> 00:23:40.040 . 314 00:23:40.040 --> 00:23:40.060 . 315 00:23:43.580 --> 00:23:43.780 . 316 00:23:43.780 --> 00:23:43.840 . 317 00:23:46.460 --> 00:23:46.660 . 318 00:23:46.660 --> 00:23:46.780 . 319 00:23:46.780 --> 00:23:46.840 . 320 00:23:46.840 --> 00:23:46.860 . 321 00:23:46.860 --> 00:23:46.900 . 322 00:23:46.900 --> 00:23:46.980 . 323 00:23:48.780 --> 00:23:48.980 . 324 00:23:48.980 --> 00:23:49.020 . 325 00:23:49.020 --> 00:23:49.100 . 326 00:23:49.100 --> 00:23:49.120 . 327 00:23:49.120 --> 00:23:49.220 . 328 00:23:49.220 --> 00:23:49.300 . 329 00:23:49.520 --> 00:23:49.720 . 330 00:23:50.000 --> 00:23:50.200 . 331 00:23:50.200 --> 00:23:50.260 . 332 00:23:50.260 --> 00:23:50.500 . 333 00:23:54.940 --> 00:23:55.140 . 334 00:24:02.600 --> 00:24:06.100 and that's not even current information. 335 00:24:07.180 --> 00:24:09.500 When the 21st century dawned, 336 00:24:09.500 --> 00:24:11.400 we all rode on the wave of optimism 337 00:24:11.400 --> 00:24:13.360 about the spreading power of democracy 338 00:24:13.360 --> 00:24:15.020 and with it a free media. 339 00:24:15.480 --> 00:24:18.600 The end of the Cold War and the rise of the internet 340 00:24:18.600 --> 00:24:20.680 heralded a new media age 341 00:24:20.680 --> 00:24:23.420 when information could cross political, economic 342 00:24:23.420 --> 00:24:24.940 and cultural boundaries. 343 00:24:26.020 --> 00:24:29.300 But since September, a plethora of new counter-terrorism laws, 344 00:24:29.300 --> 00:24:32.640 an unquenchable desire by governments to control information 345 00:24:32.640 --> 00:24:35.940 and the demands of the 24-hour news cycle 346 00:24:35.940 --> 00:24:39.560 are all squeezing quality media in democracies. 347 00:24:40.180 --> 00:24:43.940 This, combined with an increasing concentration of the media 348 00:24:43.940 --> 00:24:47.640 and a managerial culture ruled by the bottom line, 349 00:24:47.820 --> 00:24:50.080 is frankly making it more and more difficult 350 00:24:50.080 --> 00:24:51.320 for journalists and editors 351 00:24:51.320 --> 00:24:54.480 to hold our governments accountable for their actions. 352 00:24:55.400 --> 00:24:57.960 The Australian Press Freedom Report 353 00:24:57.960 --> 00:24:59.280 summed up the situation 354 00:24:59.280 --> 00:25:01.880 and their findings this year with a stark warning. 355 00:25:03.340 --> 00:25:04.020 Quote, 356 00:25:04.100 --> 00:25:06.380 An anti-disclosure culture prevails 357 00:25:06.380 --> 00:25:10.200 and is enforced by government and corporate attacks on the press. 358 00:25:10.500 --> 00:25:14.380 The media are increasingly managed and marginalised 359 00:25:14.380 --> 00:25:15.820 by public affairs personnel 360 00:25:15.820 --> 00:25:18.920 and their requests for information are refused 361 00:25:18.920 --> 00:25:22.580 and their professional obligations criminalised. 362 00:25:23.160 --> 00:25:26.140 Of course, compared to our colleagues around the world, 363 00:25:26.180 --> 00:25:29.060 from Baghdad to Moscow, from Tehran to Hanoi, 364 00:25:29.280 --> 00:25:31.880 we in the Western media have it easy. 365 00:25:32.600 --> 00:25:36.060 But we are also the beacon for the rest of the world's media. 366 00:25:36.260 --> 00:25:39.700 If our reporting cannot cut through the secrecy 367 00:25:39.700 --> 00:25:41.180 and spin of government propaganda, 368 00:25:41.620 --> 00:25:44.040 our colleagues elsewhere have little hope. 369 00:25:45.100 --> 00:25:47.940 This is, I believe, a really crucial point 370 00:25:47.940 --> 00:25:49.960 and for me it is why the killing 371 00:25:49.960 --> 00:25:53.800 of our Al Jazeera colleague in Baghdad keeps gnawing at me. 372 00:25:54.120 --> 00:25:55.780 More than 30 years ago, 373 00:25:55.820 --> 00:25:59.160 when I got my first reporting job on student radio in Brisbane, 374 00:25:59.280 --> 00:26:02.680 I covered the killing of the five Australian newsmen 375 00:26:02.680 --> 00:26:05.100 in East Timor who gave their lives to report 376 00:26:05.100 --> 00:26:06.260 on the Indonesian invasion. 377 00:26:07.780 --> 00:26:11.140 At the time, the true story of their deaths was hidden by secrecy 378 00:26:11.140 --> 00:26:13.380 and spin both from Canberra and Jakarta, 379 00:26:13.600 --> 00:26:16.060 all justified by national security. 380 00:26:17.060 --> 00:26:21.480 This year, three decades later, an independent inquest 381 00:26:21.480 --> 00:26:24.000 into their deaths with the power to demand documents 382 00:26:24.000 --> 00:26:28.500 and compel witnesses to appear began to unravel the true story. 383 00:26:29.280 --> 00:26:32.880 The inquest this year has heard evidence never before revealed 384 00:26:32.880 --> 00:26:36.380 that Canberra was aware of the deaths the day they happened, 385 00:26:36.600 --> 00:26:38.860 the 16th of October, 1975. 386 00:26:40.000 --> 00:26:42.560 An ex-Navy linguist, Robin Dix, 387 00:26:42.680 --> 00:26:45.060 who worked at the top secret communications base 388 00:26:45.060 --> 00:26:47.500 at Shoal Bay, told the inquest 389 00:26:47.500 --> 00:26:52.940 that the Indonesians had been intercepted using the word dibunu, 390 00:26:53.760 --> 00:26:56.240 meaning to kill with deliberate intent. 391 00:26:57.240 --> 00:26:59.260 I will never forget it, he told the inquest. 392 00:26:59.260 --> 00:27:01.740 I will remember it word for word. 393 00:27:02.820 --> 00:27:05.660 The intercept was sent to the highest levels in Canberra. 394 00:27:05.720 --> 00:27:08.540 About one hour after it was sent 395 00:27:08.540 --> 00:27:11.440 to the Defence Signals Division headquarters in Melbourne, 396 00:27:11.620 --> 00:27:14.060 the phone rang at the Shoal Bay base. 397 00:27:14.420 --> 00:27:17.480 Robin Dix said the caller was from the Prime Minister's Department 398 00:27:18.260 --> 00:27:20.300 and asked, is this report true? 399 00:27:20.700 --> 00:27:24.320 Dix replied, you are on an unsecured line. 400 00:27:24.480 --> 00:27:26.520 Goodbye. And he hung up. 401 00:27:27.220 --> 00:27:28.160