Gareth Evans has set us straight. It was the media reportage of the bugging of the Chinese Embassy that did all the damage to Australia’s international relations _ not the bugging itself. If only the media had not reported it, Australian Government agents could have happily continued to receive transmissions from the embassy and no-one would have been in the least bit embarrassed. International relations would not have been damaged. Evans is quite right, of course. Good international relations can be severely damaged by the truth. Evans has decided that the best way to stop a repeat performance is to make it a crime for the media and others to disclose security information _ whatever that is going to mean. The only defence would be that the security agents were acting illegally. There will be no over-riding public interest defence. The media should be grateful, though. In the three most notable recent cases of security disclosures the agents were probably acting illegally _ smashing into the Sheraton Hotel; mistreating ASIS employees; and bugging an embassy in contravention of the Diplomatic Privileges and Immunities Act which embraces into Australian law the Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations.
That convention binds the receiving state into not intruding upon the embassies of sending states and into ensuring free communications by the embassy. The Australian Government will have to convince Parliament to repeal parts of this law if it wants to continue bugging foreign embassies and retain the ability to prosecute those who dare disclose the fact. The spying game is such hypocrisy. If we goodies do it, it is “”in the national interest”. If those baddies do it, it is an outrage. Governments do not like disclosure of spying precisely because it exposes this hypocrisy. Bizarrely, Evans also wants to reinvigorate the co-operative voluntary D-notice system whereby the media agrees not to disclose certain security matters.
The media response is likely to be: you cannot have it both ways. If you have criminal sanctions that will exclusively define what can be published and what cannot. But Evans did not include yesterday any definitions of “”security information”, publication of which will be prohibited. My bet is that his proposal will be wide enough to cover the embarrassing as well as things the secrecy of which is genuinely in national interest. It will be up to the Opposition and minor parties in the Senate to ensure it does not.