George Brandis (Queensland, Liberal Party, Attorney-General) Share this | Hansard source

Senator Leyonhjelm, I think you have some amendments in relation to this. The government is of the view that this limitation on the ordinary scope of the legislation should be confined to journalists working in the professional capacity of a journalist. That is a straightforward test currently used in division 119 of the Criminal Code. As we have the not unmixed pleasure of dealing with journalists ourselves in the course of our working day, we know there has been a debate about what are the metes and bounds of journalism, particularly in the era of so-called citizen journalism when there is a huge multiplicity of blogs written by people who would like to be protected by the privileges that protect journalists, but the decision the government has made has been to confine the definition of journalist to the narrow and traditional notion of a person engaged in the profession of journalism—or, to use a vernacular expression, a working journalist.

As my colleague the Minister for Communications, of course a former journalist himself, said in the other place when dealing with this issue, a journalist is a person who is engaged in the collection and dissemination to the public of material in the form of news, current affairs or a documentary, or in commentary or an analysis of such material—and the bill is drafted to reflect that traditional and orthodox understanding of what the profession of journalism consists of.