Readers of this blog may be wondering why I continually refer to The Age newspaper and not to others. The reason is simple: It is the only major daily in Australia dedicated to fighting John Howard's trashing of the Westminster system of democracy by installing a dictatorship that will likely result in the country becoming a terrorist state with its own citizens as prey.

The editor of The Age, Andrew Jaspan, recently wrote this opinion piece, which is reprinted below. It's a kind of manifesto for a dying democracy. Jaspan has vowed to defend Australia's media from the Howard Government's attack on our basic freedoms.

What more could you ask from the editor of a newspaper?

The irony is that last year when Jaspan arrived from Scotland to take over The Age, we all screamed blue murder that an Aussie was not good enough for the job.

I don't know why Andrew Jaspan was given the job; it seemed an odd choice at the time. It certainly wasn't because someone in Fairfax thought he had the courage to stand up for a country that wasn't his.

Whatever the reason, it turns out that no journalist in Australia could possibly have had the will to do what Jaspan is doing.

Why? Anyone with the qualifications to run a newspaper has obviously been in the business for many years, with considerable assets that need a constant flow of income to maintain.

Governments such as John Howard wishes his to become, once the anti-dissent pro-terrorist laws are enshrined, routinely jail editors for their dissent, impound their assets and close down their newspapers.

An Australian editor would be a sitting duck.

That person would have to constantly think of his or her family and the families of staff members when running commentaries and editorials condemning Howard's regressive agenda. Self-censorship may not apply to me -- I live in a suburban chipboard house; ASIO can have it! --but it would apply to them in spades.

Jaspan's assets are in Scotland; ASIO can't touch them. If worse comes to worse, he can always get himself and his family out of the country under cover of darkness -- just like in the movies about people fleeing the Nazis.

Of course life in Australia will never come to the jailing of Andrew Jaspan. Or me. Or you.

As Frank Zappa once intoned, "It can't happen here!"

Anti-terrorism laws threaten media freedom
by Andrew JaspanFreedom of speech, freedom of expression, and freedom of communication have always been taken as a given in Western democratic society.

And yet it appears that unprecedented powers such as house arrest, the wearing of tracking devices, increased sedition offences, detention of juveniles and even shoot-to-kill provisions — plus further restrictions on the media — mean some of our basic rights are up for grabs.

As The Age said in its editorial last week, the Federal Government's draft anti-terrorism legislation "will override some of the essential rights, such as the prohibition on detention without charge, that distinguish this country from others with neither traditions nor safeguards".

According to the draft, people may not even speak about whether, why or how detainees suspected of terrorist offences are being held. The penalty? Five years' jail. Or if a journalist obtained confidential information that the federal police deemed to be in contravention of the bill, then we, too, could face five years' jail.

Anyone can be arrested, charged and held in custody until the Attorney-General makes up his mind on whether to give his consent to prosecute. If a member of my staff were

to report the whereabouts of a so-called terrorist, I could be jailed.

Various expressions now permitted in a mature democracy suddenly become criminal behaviour. An over-dramatisation? Perhaps, but the signs are ominous.

Under the first draft of the bill, the definition of seditious intent is vague and broad. It takes in matters of the kind that, in a free and open society, any newspaper should feel free to publish, whether by way of factual reporting or opinion.

For instance, it amounts to seditious publication to publish with an intent to bring the Sovereign (note there is a capital "S" in the bill) into "hatred or contempt". Nor may one "urge disaffection" (whatever that means) against the constitution, government or either house of Parliament. So a newspaper columnist's call to scrap the monarchy might lead once again to his/her head being chopped off.

As we said in our editorial, the manner in which these changes are being handled is more reminiscent of governments of repressive regimes. It seems particularly odd that the stripping away of such freedoms emanates from a party whose whole philosophy is an emphasis on individual rights and civil liberties. The Government says "trust us". We in the media, from our own many years of experience, are sceptical. The natural tendency of governments and the bureaucracies that serve them is to muzzle.

Nobel prize-winning author J. M. Coetzee, a South African now resident in Australia, said at the weekend: "I used to think that the people who created (South Africa's) laws that effectively suspended the rule of law were moral barbarians. Now I know they were just pioneers ahead of their time."

Is this the sort of Australia we want? How low do we have to sink? We must resist these attempts at every turn.

We've already got laws that permit ASIO to detain and interrogate journalists about information they may have in their possession, in the course of their reporting, regarding terrorists and terrorist activity.

At the very least there must be some safeguards built into the bill, including qualified privilege for journalists so that any legal authority would have to be satisfied that any warrant is essential to the collection of intelligence that is vital in a terrorism offence.

In this vacuum of lack of accountability or transparency, the role of the media becomes even more critical. Unlike other countries such as the United States, where freedom of the press is enshrined in the constitution, Australia does not have that luxury. Our press freedoms are open to qualification by law-makers and officials. There is also risk of abuse by law enforcement bodies.

In addition, we face over-zealous privacy laws, growing use of suppression orders, punitive and oppressive laws that hinder professional privilege, costly and unworkable FoI laws, restrictive defamation laws. The list goes on.

The machinery of government and the bureaucracy, in conjunction with the judiciary that often turns a blind eye to notions of open justice and free speech, is grinding the media down.

We won't tolerate attempts to muzzle our effectiveness and fulfil the important societal and public policy dimension expected of us: holding people and institutions accountable without fear or favour.

It is time for those who cherish freedom of speech — including many in the legal community — to defend responsible media organisations from unwarranted attacks and intrusions on the freedom to communicate.

Andrew Jaspan is editor-in-chief of The Age. This is part of a speech he gave ... to the Law Institute of Victoria.