Tanya Plibersek (Sydney, Australian Labor Party, Deputy Leader of the Opposition) Share this | Hansard source

Of course, the opposition strongly supports this motion. Peter Greste, an experienced Australian journalist, was arrested in Egypt, along with his two colleagues, in December last year charged with spreading false news and supporting the Muslim Brotherhood. Today, Peter Greste's family, his journalistic colleagues in Australia and around the world and many Australians are waiting anxiously for the verdict, which is expected this evening Australian time.

We support Peter Greste because he was simply doing his job, and his job is a job that is vital in a free society and in a democracy. Journalism is one of the most basic foundations of our democracy, and it is especially important at a time of turmoil and transition, such as Egypt has experienced in recent years. We greatly admire the strong support Peter Greste has been given by his family. His two brothers, Andrew and Mike, will be in court today, and his parents, Juris and Lois, have been giving amazing support to Peter. Other family members have been engaged in campaigning to make sure that Peter's case is before the public, and his friends have been very active on his behalf. At times like this, times of adversity, we know how important family can be. I am sure that Peter is immensely proud of the role that his parents and his brothers have played in stepping up to the challenge and campaigning so tirelessly on his behalf.

We applaud the support that Mr Greste and his colleagues from around the world have received from, for example, US Secretary of State, John Kerry, who has raised the importance of press freedom with President al-Sisi. Journalist organisations have also been very vocal in their support, and the member for Ryan has spoken about the role that Amnesty International have played. We commend the government, too, for its advocacy with the Egyptian government. I note that the Prime Minister has spoken recently, in the last 24 hours, to the newly elected Egyptian President, Abdel Fattah al-Sisi, and that the foreign minister has spoken in recent days to her counterpart. Of course, the foreign minister has spoken in the past to the foreign minister as well. We are very pleased to see that the level of consular support provided to Mr Greste in jail has been consistent and of a very high quality, and I congratulate the staff of the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade who have been offering that consular support.

Peter Greste has been a journalist for 25 years. He says that he was inspired by Australian cameraman, Neil Davis, who died while reporting a coup in Thailand in 1985. Mr Greste said it was Davis biography that inspired him to become a foreign correspondent. I remember reading that biography as a young woman—a biography by Tim Bowden called One crowded hour. It took its title from a poem by Thomas Osbert Mordaunt. Davis loved that poem and he wrote it on the flyleaf of all of his work diaries: 'One crowded hour of glorious life is worth an age without a name.' Neil Davis displayed extraordinary courage during his life as a cameraman, and the biography goes with Davis through some of the war zones that he served in as a cameraman.

Davis—from memory—started his life in regional Tasmania, and Mr Greste began his career in regional Victoria before working in Adelaide and Darwin. His career as a foreign correspondent began in 1991. He has worked as a freelance reporter for Reuters TV, for CNN, for WTN and for the BBC. Peter Greste joined Al Jazeera English in 2005 to report on north Africa. He won a Peabody Award in 2011, as the member for Ryan said, for a documentary on Somalia, the focus of much of his work since he moved to Africa nine years ago. You get a strong sense of his commitment from the places that he has worked. As well as Africa, he has covered Afghanistan and Central Asia, the Balkans, Iraq and Latin America—certainly not the career choices you make if you are after an easy life.

Peter Greste is no stranger to danger. While working for the BBC in Somalia in 2005, he witnessed the death of his producer, Kate Peyton. Ms Peyton was shot in the back while they were both standing outside a hotel in Mogadishu. In an interview with the ABC, Mr Greste recalled the incident. He said:

… we both knew what we were getting into.

It was a risk we both judged to be worth taking, if only because so few reporters have been into Somalia in the past decade, and nobody can hope to make a considered judgment of either Africa or Islamic extremism without understanding why that country has remained so anarchic.

It was the same commitment to his job, to helping the world better understand important events, that took him to Egypt late last year. Ironically, Mr Greste thought that his assignment to Cairo had been quite routine. Again, that reminded me of Neil Davis's story. Neil Davis considered the coup that he went to cover in Thailand as quite a routine assignment. It was that assignment that saw him lose his life.

Peter Greste said in a blog he wrote from his prison cell that he had gone to Egypt to take the 'opportunity to get to know Egyptian politics a little better'. He wrote that his search for 'accuracy, fairness and balance' had led him to the banned Muslim Brotherhood. I quote him again:

How do you accurately and fairly report on Egypt's ongoing political struggle without talking to everyone involved?

He went on to say:

We had been doing exactly as any responsible, professional journalist would—recording and trying to make sense of the unfolding events with all the accuracy, fairness and balance that our imperfect trade demands.

The Peter Greste case is a reminder of the important role that journalists play in bringing news of conflict to the nation and to the world. And, sadly, it is also a reminder of the phenomenal risks that our foreign correspondents take in undertaking their work, just going about their day-to-day lives.

You can go back as far as Charles Bean, who was the official correspondent of World War I. He was the correspondent with the Australian Infantry Force troops. He beat Keith Murdoch to that job. He landed at Anzac Cove on 25 April 1915, a few hours after the first troops had landed. He stayed there for most of the campaign, and he lived in the same difficult conditions as our soldiers. You also do not have to go that far back in history to think of the Balibo five and Roger East, Australian-based journalists who died in East Timor in 1975, reporting on the Indonesian invasion.

Today we have correspondents in most of the most dangerous places on the world. Samantha Hawley has been covering the troubles in Bangkok recently. There is Terry Moran, in Kirkuk, and Matt Brown, a Middle East correspondent, who seems to fly into danger as other people fly out of it. There are so many examples of Australian journalists who have taken great risks for their craft, including Sally Sara in Iraq, Michael Weir and Paul McGeough. There is a group of Australian correspondents who risk their lives because they are chasing the story and because, I guess, journalism is in their blood, but much more importantly because they understand that for Australians to have a true sense of our place in the world, for us to truly understand both the risks and the opportunities that exist in the world, we have to have Australian voices with an Australian perspective of how we fit into the great events that are shaping history today. Peter Greste's work is in the same fine tradition.

We are fervently hoping for a good ending to this difficult chapter in Peter Greste's life and career. Our thoughts are with his family and friends, and his colleagues in Australia and around the world, who are today waiting with almost unbearable anticipation for the results of his legal proceedings. Our best wishes go to his parents and family.

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