HUNTING IN PACKS 2007

It's the time of the month to do my Hunting in Packs column for the local rag the South Sydney Herald so here goes. It's supposed to be in by midday - an hour's time.

HUNTING IN PACKS MAY 2007
In case you missed the news I'll repeat it here: Australia has been ranked 35th and 39th in the world in terms of press freedom by two international journalist organisations, Reporters Without Borders and Freedom House respectively. That puts us down there with El Salvador and Bosnia.
Australians love to pride themselves on being open-minded and tolerant. Our academics spout endlessly about "diversity" and "multiplicity" while cheerfully condemning the media. The truth is another country.
Australia is little better than a communist country with a capitalist gloss. Any independent minded reporter is confronted with a bewildering variety of restrictions on what they can and cannot cover.
If you don't believe me, try a few politically incorrect experiments.
Try and find out how many acts of vandalism have been perpetrated against christian churches in 2007. You won't get very far. Try and find out what the travel budgets are for the country's most senior judicial figures. The travel budgets of the Supreme Court or the Family Court are reputed to be an open scandal. But just try and get a breakdown of their travel budgets. Or to quote an example which has been making the news, try and get a breakdown of the hundreds of thousands of dollars of your money being spent on the Prime Minister's wine cellar. You won't get anywhere.
Under our now frequently abused Freedom of Information laws police have refused to release a list of the pubs with the highest numbers of alcohol-related incidents, including assault and robbery. Think you have the right to know which schools in this state have the most violent incidents - perhaps so you can avoid sending your child into a dangerous schoolyard? Forget it. A major newspaper has spent more than $40,000 on legal fees so far in an attempt to get a report from the NSW Department of Education on violent incidents, but after repeated attempts still can't get the full report.
The extent to which this secrecy in our public life has developed simply defies belief. A newspaper has even been denied a list of the names of NSW restaurants fined by councils for breaching health food regulations.
One simple but effective tool government's have used to rort FOI laws has been to make them too expensive for the average citizen. Don't believe me? Try and get your own health, tax or police records; try and find out what information the government has on you personally, and you'll be immediately hit with extensive delays and massive costs. Recently a major newspaper was refused an auditor'[s report on suspected rorts of Commonwealth MPs' travel expenses. The paper appealed to a tribunal and won, but then the government tried to charge $1 million in fees to hand over the report. The paper could not afford it.
Under much duress the Federal Government has finally agreed to release its 18-month-old polls into what the public think of the WorkChoices legislation - but not until after the forthcoming election. Funny about that.
A newspaper recently lost its High Court appeal to get the government to release figures on how much extra tax workers have to pay when they get a pay rise. The case cost the paper half a million dollars.
Also recently, the Federal Government claimed it was "not in the public interest" to release information on the first home owners scheme, including the number of wealthy people fraudulently claiming the $7,000 grants under the scheme. A newspaper took the case to the High Court and lost.
Australian laws now contain more than 500 separate prohibitions and restrictions on what the public is allowed to know. Some vary from state to state, creating huge barriers to accurate and full reporting. Courts are routinely suppressing information, often on spurious grounds. A decade ago, there were fewer than 100 court suppression orders on the media. Now there are more than 1,000 at any one time.
Federal prosecutors have a policy of tracking down and prosecuting any public servant found to have leaked official information, even when it is demonstrably and dramatically in the public interest that the information be in the public domain.
One of the most disgusting sights in recent times has been the sight of a judge declaring that he was seriously considering a jail term for the whistle blower convicted for exposing the shocking state of security at our airports and revealing that a number of employees at Sydney airport had serious criminal histories or potential links to radical Islamic groups. This whistle blower's common decency in exposing the systemic flaws at our airport facilities led to a $22 million upgrade of security and the travelling public is now much safer as a result. He himself is likely to spend years sitting in a jail cell.
We are paying taxes so yet another arrogant and out of touch member of the legal caste can jail someone for following their conscience and doing the right thing by the country. Go figure.
We are all of us, from those in the media to your average punter, fools for having allowed this to happen. We are all complicit in our own oppression.
Both Labor and the Coalition are guilty of abusing Australian democracy by with-holding information that should be in the public domain. But there is no doubt the Howard government has been particularly evil in this regard.
It was Prime Minister John Howard, to quote just instance, who decided it was more important to play lapdog to the Americans and participate in the immoral disaster known as the Iraq War, in the face of extensive public opposition. Hundreds of millions of dollars are being poured into utterly dubious foreign adventures with virtually no public support; but just try and find out any information at all on what our troops are really up to. It as become almost impossible to get balanced reports from war zones, as it has been in the past. Our military will cooperate only with embedded journalists to ensure the official line is reported.
To combat the mantle of secrecy which has enveloped the operation of governments at all levels in this country Australia's largest media organisations, traditionally fierce competitors, have united to form a new coalition to run a public campaign Australia's Right To Know.
The group includes News Limited, Fairfax Media, the ABC, the commercial television industry body FreeTV, its radio equivalent Commercial Radio Australia, SBS, wire service AAP and broadcaster Sky News.
At a press conference in May the group outlined plans for a major reappraisal of laws and regulations t hat censor free speech and undermine the right of all Australians to get information that is relevant and important to their lives. The industry coalition will commission a national audit on the state of free speech in Australia. This report will form the basis of a campaign of public consultation and discussion with government and opposition parties and the judiciary.
A joint statement by the group urged all Australian governments to embrace urgent reform to redress the erosion of free speech.
The statement read in part: "We have joined together because we are deeply troubled by the state of free speech in Australia. Freedom of speech is one of the fundamental pillars of a free and open society. It is as important as parliamentary democracy and the rule of law in guaranteeing the freedom and rights of all Australians. Our freedom to express an opinion, honestly and openly, is under threat. Equally, our ability to report to Australians facts about how they are governed and how our courts are administering justice is being severely hampered. Australia now lags well behind most major democracies. Australians deserve to be trusted with information in the same way as citizens of other democracies."