Bad blood between media chiefs and the Morrison government deepened on Friday after Home Affairs Minister Peter Dutton rejected demands to drop police action against three high-profile journalists and implied the reporters committed a crime by receiving top-secret documents.
“I think it is up to the police to investigate, to do it independently and make a decision about whether or not they prosecute,” he told Nine’s Today program.
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“We are seeing a lot of backsliding around the world in democratic societies around basic protections, and a lot of it has been digital interference [with press freedoms],” he said, citing newly intrusive laws in France and Britain.
“Australia is following that line. But I think it’s also gone a lot further.”
“We are in a golden age of surveillance: all these digital tools of convenience [we use] have given governments enormous technological power to get access to everything we do and everything we say,” he said.
“There is this deeply unfortunate confluence of post-9/11 and the rise of the digital age that made it close to impossible to protect the privacy of [journalistic] work.
“People could care less about journalists. But they should care about the possibility in the future to have adequate and accurate information about what their governments are doing.”
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