Finally, the appeal is set against a disheartening background, a slide towards secrecy. Collaery is not the only whistleblower on trial – David McBride, the war crimes whistleblower, and Richard Boyle, the tax office whistleblower, currently face the same fate. The Morrison government has found time in recent years to expand state surveillance capacity and increase secrecy offences, yet long-overdue reform to whistleblowing law – that the government has agreed to – remains out of sight. Our freedom of information system is failing, journalists are being raided, and yet the Attorney-General’s top priority is going to the High Court to keep secret a judgment that said no to secrecy.
The Collaery case is back in court on Tuesday, before the trial judge, David Mossop. Last week, Mossop was asked by the Attorney-General’s lawyers to allow them to submit new, super-secret evidence – that not even Collaery will be able to see – to overturn the Court of Appeal’s ruling that the trial should go ahead in open court. On every front, the Attorney-General is fighting to keep this case secret. Why?
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To successfully prosecute Bernard Collaery, the government knows it will have to admit in court, to a jury, that it spied on Timor-Leste. It refuses to tell the Australian public this; that, in our name, our intelligence services committed espionage against an impoverished friendly neighbour for Australia’s rapacious commercial gain.
That is the dangerous absurdity at the heart of this case. The Morrison government wants to use secrecy to conceal its deception in the prosecution of a brave man whose only crime, allegedly, was telling the truth.
Kieran Pender is a senior lawyer with the Human Rights Law Centre.
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With truth on trial, the Attorney-General’s High Court bid for secrecy is dangerous
Source: Philippines Alive
