Stuart Robert (Fadden, Liberal Party, Assistant Minister for Defence) Share this | Hansard source

We have dealt with this extensively in the public and we have dealt with this extensively in the parliament. But let me just give an example so that the Australian people understand what we are talking about in 35P.

The offence will not, and is not designed to, criminalise legitimate reporting. We have seen that. We have had 10 years of embedded journalists in military operations, with no issues. We dealt with this in response to the member for Melbourne's question. But in terms of gazetted or legitimised special operations as preapproved by the Attorney-General, we are talking about operations as sensitive. As an example: an ASIO agent covertly infiltrates a terrorist organisation, something that could take years, endangering his or her life and those of many others of their compatriots and their families, and a journalist, knowing this—being aware of this, and knowing full well the ramifications of it—then reports it anyway.

I think that any decent Australian would look at that scenario and say, 'No. Australian journalists just wouldn't do that.' And I agree; frankly, they would not. We have seen that right across the board for the last decade as journalists have been eminently responsible. The law here is designed to stop the one-in-a-million journalist who perhaps is not quite across the ramifications. This will ensure that they are.

Is it appropriate? Yes. If you endanger the lives of our people knowingly and endanger the lives of their families knowingly, there is a consequence. It is just like if you were a journalists embedded with our military overseas; if you endanger our troops then there damn well is a consequence. They know it, I know it and the Australian public deserves it. And they demand it. It is no different here—absolutely no different here.

This is not about stopping good, sound journalism; it is about saying to that one-in-a-million, who seeks knowingly—for whatever reason—to harm Australia, its interests its people and their families, that there are consequences.

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