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Legislative Council - Fifty-Fifth Parliament, First Session (55-1)
2023-05-03 Daily Xml
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World Press Freedom Day

The Hon. F. PANGALLO (16:51): I move:

That this council—

1. Recognises that 3 May 2023 marks 30 years of World Press Freedom Day, celebrating the importance of freedom of the press and freedom of expression;

2. Notes that UNESCO has designated this year's theme is 'Shaping a Future of Rights: Freedom of Expression as a driver for all other human rights.';

3. Acknowledges that an independent press and a media-literate public is vital in tackling corruption, abuse of power, disinformation, hate speech, censorship of opinion, exposing human rights violations and poor transparency and accountability and advancing democracy;

4. Recognises that journalists across the world continue to face threats to their safety and liberty in order to silence their reporting;

5. Pays tribute to journalists killed in the line of their reporting duty;

6. Notes that a record number of journalists, including Australians Julian Assange and Cheng Lei, and Evan Gershkovich of the Wall Street Journal, are currently detained while dozens more are being held hostage;

7. Calls on Australians to unite to demand the UK government and the US government cease their persecution of Julian Assange and release him from Belmarsh Prison; and

8. Urges the Australian Prime Minister, the Hon. Anthony Albanese, and Foreign Minister, the Hon. Penny Wong, to work harder and request that Chinese President Xi Jinping intervenes to lift the detention of Cheng Lei.

Today marks the 30th anniversary of World Press Freedom Day and will be celebrated at a special anniversary event at the United Nations headquarters, where it was proclaimed by the UN General Assembly after a resolution by UNESCO known as Article 19.

It had its genesis two years earlier in Namibia where African journalists met with UNESCO to discuss press freedoms and human rights in Africa. Now, it is a global event, which casts a spotlight on abuses of free speech and a free press and is a reminder of the vital importance of independent media, free in democracies. As US President Thomas Jefferson said:

The only security of all is in a free press. The force of public opinion cannot be resisted when permitted freely to be expressed.

One cannot overstate the enormous worth to a democratic society in having an independent media, free of interference, which is able to expose corruption and malfeasance.

There have been many significant examples of that, like the Watergate bugging scandal in the 1970s by Washing Post reporters Carl Bernstein and Bob Woodward, which ended President Richard Nixon's corrupt tenure in the White House; the Panama Papers leak, which exposed hundreds of thousands of secret tax havens used by high-profile people, corrupt government officials and ambiguous entities from 200 nations; and, of course, the Wikileaks release of secret documents, which revealed abhorrent war crimes committed by the United States.

The eventual whistleblowers were journalists working for some of the largest and most prestigious media organisations in the world, yet the US is persecuting only one person: Julian Assange, the Australian journalist who received the volumes of classified information from US soldier, Chelsea Manning, in 2010.

Mr Assange continues to languish in Belmarsh prison in the UK, awaiting the outcome of an appeal against his extradition to the United States to be tried under an espionage act which should not even apply to Mr Assange. It is rather ironic and hypocritical that the US President, Joe Biden, and his ambassador to the UN, Linda Thomas-Greenfield, have condemned Russia for detaining Wall Street Journal reporter, Evan Gershkovich, on spying charges, with Thomas-Greenfield saying, 'Journalism isn't a crime.' There are glaring double standards here with what the US is wanting to do to Mr Assange. Shame on them and shame on our government, our Prime Minister and our foreign minister for their grovelling approach to the Americans on the issue.

Media reporting can and does cast a light on serious human rights abuses, corrupt practices in government and organised crime, particularly in authoritarian and oppressive regimes like Russia, Belarus, Myanmar, Turkey, North Korea, Saudi Arabia, Iraq, Syria and China. The covenant on civil and political rights has been ratified by 173 countries and covers the freedom of speech, and that includes the right of journalists to do their job. However, courageous journalists covering events in global flashpoints or carrying out investigations that uncover awful truths that can alter power balance and authority continue to run the high risk to their safety and their liberty.

Between 2014 and 2019, nearly 1,500 journalists were arrested and almost 400 kidnapped. The annual survey for 2022 of Reporter Without Borders (also known as RSF) showed a record number of journalists, 488, including 60 women, are detained worldwide, while another 65 are being held hostage. China, the world's biggest jailer of journalists for the fifth year running, is also the biggest jailer of female journalists, with 19 currently detained. They include Zhang Zhan, a 2021 RSF Press Freedom laureate, who is now critically ill, and Australian-Chinese TV anchor, Cheng Lei, who has been held for almost three years after being accused of providing state secrets to foreigners.

Australian diplomatic assistance for her has been frustrated at every step. Her court appearances have been held in secret and are in denial of her rights to procedural fairness and the justice a country like Australia affords Chinese nationals who may be accused of breaking our laws. This motion will call on our government to exert more pressure on the Chinese President, Xi Jinping, to intervene.

Last year, 57 journalists were killed—the highest number since 2018, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists. The figure is 50 per cent higher than in 2021 and due to hostilities in Ukraine and violence in Latin America, places like Mexico and lawless Haiti, Russia, Syria, the Philippines, Iraq, Colombia, Brazil, Algeria, and Somalia round out the most hazardous black spots for journalists. Eighty-four per cent of those killed were deliberately targeted.

Australian journalists have also been killed doing their job. The Balibo Five, a group of commercial television newsmen, were murdered by Indonesian troops on 16 October 1975, during an attack in the Timor Leste border town of Balibo. Justice still has not been served for Greg Shackleton, Tony Stewart, Gary Cunningham, Brian Peters and Malcolm Rennie, but for journalists in this country they will always remain in our hearts and in our minds.

Journalists are also under attack in countries and by countries you would least expect. Let's take Israel, for example. In May last year, Palestinian-American Shireen Abu Akleh, one of the most high-profile and distinguished reporters in the Middle East for her coverage of the bloody conflicts in Israeli-occupied Palestinian territories, was shot dead in the West Bank city of Jenin while working for Al Jazeera. It was no accident, nor was it a death from a random stray bullet. She was wearing a vest with 'Press' clearly marked on it.

Several separate, credible investigations concluded she was deliberately shot by Israeli forces. The Israelis, after denying any involvement, finally admitted the journalist was accidentally hit by army fire. This version was rejected by the London-based research group Forensic Architecture, which found Shireen had been deliberately targeted, and that sustained shooting where she fell indicated Shireen was actively and deliberately denied medical aid in the absence of any fighting in the area. It was an assassination.

In a disproportionate use of force, Israeli police officers then attacked pallbearers at her funeral with batons and stun grenades, and injured patients and staff at the Christian hospital in East Jerusalem as her coffin was being moved. Shamefully, Israel refuses to cooperate with any investigation. Israel arrogantly diffuses criticism as being an antisemite. Meanwhile, any justice for Shireen is denied.

In Australia, fearless investigative reporting has uncovered corrupt practices and abuse of power in government agencies like Centrelink, Medicare, the Australian Tax Office, and foreign affairs, as well as unethical and illegal conduct in the banking, insurance and aged care sectors. Australian Federal Police raided the home of News Corp journalist Annika Smethurst with an unlawful warrant to find the source of a leaked story on a spy agency's powers. It was thrown out of court, and she was never charged.

Meanwhile, Richard Boyle and David McBride are on trial and facing long prison terms for telling the truth and blowing the whistle to journalists in the public interest. Boyle's revelations were about the ATO's aggressive and ruthless debt collection practices, while McBride is being prosecuted for disclosing sensitive information about the Australian Defence Force. Both believe they were going to be protected under the Public Interest Disclosure Act. The Human Rights Law Centre argues the prosecutions are unjust and undemocratic and are demanding they be dropped and whistleblowing laws be reformed. It is not likely because the truth is that governments, politicians, and bureaucrats will resort to anything at their disposable to avoid embarrassing scrutiny or scandal in office.

We are also witnessing the rise of left-wing pressure groups imposing their ideology on media by 'cancelling' political cartoonists because they might be offended by what is drawn. Freedom of information has become freedom from information; suppression of speech if there are conflicting opinions.

Now let's take a look at the UK, a place you would think would uphold the fundamental rights of free speech and a free media. However, they are sleepwalking Britons towards authoritarianism with the new counterterrorism law that can criminalise protests and restrict personal freedoms, the basic human rights in a civilised democracy. An example of this was a recent arrest in London by police of the French national, Ernest Moret, an employee of a French publisher Editions La Fabrique, as he arrived on a train from Paris. Police interrogated him for six hours after he refused to disclose his passwords to his phone and computer.

According to the publication, Moret was asked disturbing questions about his views on President Emmanuel Macron, the row over the lifting of the pension age in France, as well as identifying any anti-government authors. Quinn McKew, the executive director of Article 19, said this case of over-reach by the police makes clear how it enables abuse of authority and undermines the rights to expression and opinion.

Last year, journalist Charlotte Lynch of LBC, was arrested while covering an environmental protest, and held for hours in a cell, an arrest later found by a police report to be unjustified. As a direct result of this, the Public Order Bill currently progressing through the UK legislative process has been amended to prevent a police officer from exercising a police power 'for the sole purpose of preventing a person from observing or reporting on a protest'. A British foreign office worker is suing her employer for unfair dismissal for giving an anonymous interview to the BBC about the UK government’s shambolic failures in the withdrawal from Afghanistan.

Over in the land of the free, the US Press Freedom Tracker documented 145 arrests or criminal charges involving journalists in 2020 at the height of the Black Lives Matter protests. Numbers dropped to 59 in 2021 and just 15 in 2022, but it says attacks on journalists, especially those covering protests or civil unrest, could be attributed to a desire by authorities to deter protestors more generally by making the arrests more prominent.

It has also become more common for authorities to attack the media verbally, leading to a social discourse suggesting that the 'mainstream media' is biased or unreliable. The consequence of this for the media is that it makes defending journalism from attacks more challenging. Elizabeth Morley, the Diversity and Inclusion Officer of the IBA Media Law Committee and a partner at Howard Kennedy in London, says the growth of social media and other forms of reporting, including citizen reporting, have made it tougher to be a journalist or categorise them.

Another disturbing development designed to derail or dissuade investigative reporting is what are known as SLAPPS—strategic lawsuits against public participation. Article 19 recently compiled a report for Columbia Global Freedom of Expression, which is studying judicial responses to SLAPPS around the globe. Article 19 says SLAPPS are a form of abusive and costly litigation to harass and intimidate journalists, media outlets, protestors or environmental and human rights defenders and are usually instigated by politicians, public officials, the rich and powerful and public figures aiming to stifle criticism, scrutiny and public debate.

For instance, India’s criminal defamation law has been attacked by free speech advocates because it is open to abuse by politicians. Opposition leader Rahul Gandhi was sentenced to two years' jail in a criminal defamation case after comments he made about Prime Minister Narendra Modi's surname. Other opposition MPs and critics of India's government have also faced legal threats for expressing their views.

Article 19 points out that some common law countries have adopted some anti-SLAPP legislation. Australia has limited protection against SLAPPS through the public participation act which came into being following costly litigation initiated by Tasmanian forestry company Gunns against environmentalists, including Greens Senator Bob Brown, to stop their logging protests. However, it argues the legislation still falls well short of protecting against abusive litigation designed to deep-pocket individuals or groups. Perhaps it is something for our Attorney-General to consider.

In closing, I would like to leave you with a quote from Jamal Khashoggi, a Saudi Arabian journalist who was brutally murdered in 2018:

What the Arab world needs most is free expression.

This sentiment is true not just for the Arab world but for the entire world. Let us continue to work towards a world where journalists can do their job without fear of reprisal and where free expression is valued and protected.

As a footnote, I will note that the only mention of this important observance of World Press Freedom Day that I noticed in the media here today was a brief mention in Marty Smith's The Last Word column. I would hope that our media would take this issue far more seriously. With that, I commend the motion to the chamber.

Debate adjourned on motion of Hon. I.K. Hunter.

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