Australian federal police yesterday dropped the investigation of a prominent journalist and government whistle-blower over leaked government secrets, ending a case that sparked wide-ranging debate over press freedom in the country.
The police said they would not seek any charges against Annika Smethurst, a political reporter for Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp, over a 2018 article alleging that the government planned to expand its powers to spy on Australians.
They also dropped their investigation into the whistle-blower suspected of providing Smethurst with the classified documents on which she based her report.
Photo: EPA-EFE
The decision came six weeks after Australia’s High Court invalidated a search warrant police used to raid Smethurst’s Canberra home in June last year as part of a hunt for the source of the leaks.
The court ruled that the police seizure of data from Smethurst’s cellphone and laptop was unlawful.
The raid sought to identify the person who gave Smethurst “top secret” documents from the Australian Signals Directorate intelligence agency and other officials.
Australian Federal Police Assistant Commissioner Ian McCartney said that the High Court ruling prompted a review of the Smethurst case, which “determined there is insufficient evidence to progress the investigation.”
“No one will be prosecuted in relation to this unauthorized disclosure,” he told a news conference in Canberra.
A day after the Smethurst search, federal police also raided the Sydney headquarters of Australian Broadcasting Corp (ABC), trying to track down another whistle-blower linked to ABC reporting on alleged war crimes by Australian troops in Afghanistan.
Two ABC journalists remain under investigation in that case and the broadcaster’s director of news, analysis and investigations, Gaven Morris, yesterday called for the police to also drop that probe.
However, McCartney said that the ABC reporters remained “under active investigation.”
The twin operations against Smethurst and the ABC sparked a storm of protest from media and civil liberties organizations, with News Corp warning of “a dangerous act of intimidation” that would “chill public interest reporting.”
Unlike many Western countries, Australia does not have a bill of rights or a constitutionally enshrined protection for freedom of speech, or laws to protect government whistle-blowers.
Following the raids, all of Australia’s major news organizations put aside their normally fierce rivalry to issue a joint call for legislation to protect public-interest journalism.
The police decision to drop the case against Smethurst came just a day after the release of a book, On Secrets, in which she recounted the chilling impact the police raid had on herself and on press freedoms.
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