The Next Peter Greste Will Be Tried In Canberra

Have you heard the story of Peter Greste?

He, along with several other Al Jazeera journalists, are currently sitting in an Egyptian jail cell for breaching Egyptian national security. According to the government they colluded with the Muslim Brotherhood, an internationally recognised terror group, and so were imprisoned.

The 'collusion' that the Egyptian State accuses them of is what we here in Australia (and around the world) call simply 'reporting'. Yes...reporting. It boggles the mind that any country, especially Egypt where a large percentage of the population supported the Muslim Brotherhood in the both the past election and during the protests. Some put the MB membership as high as 2 million and so it reasons that journalists would wish to discover more about this large swarths of Egyptians.

This was the job that Peter Greste was doing when he was arrested. The trial, to put it lightly, was a sham. Evidence which the prosecutors claim was proof that AJ sought to harm Egyptian national security was in fact filmed by other networks, during his summation the judge claimed that the journalists were 'in league with the devil' (who presumably could not be called as a defence witness) and even Egypt's President has come out regretting the international trial.

But to this day, several months since their sentencing, Peter Greste and his Al Jazeera compatriots are facing a seven year imprisonment for simply doing their jobs. Not even for spilling secrets or holding the Egyptian government to account for their (grave) human rights abuses. Their continued incarceration is a blight on society and we should never forget their names.

But what does this have to do with Australia?

Because in Australia if you want to hold the security agencies to account then you're going to find yourself in jail for the next decade.

See here in Australia we've recently begun to talk a lot about Islamic State. They've been getting quite a bit of press and because of that we've joined the coalition against them.

I've already made my feelings about this clear in my previous blog post about who should really be fighting ISIS but as I am not in charge of either the Australian or US armies I guess I just have to accept the decisions of the elected representatives.

However what I don't accept is the pretence of national security to bolster the surveillance state. This is what has recently happened with the passage of our new national security laws.

The laws essentially allows intelligence operations to be designated as 'SIO' or 'Special Intelligence Operations which, if revealed by the media, can land that journalist in jail for a minimum of ten years. So if ASIO was conducting one of these 'SIOs' and something went horribly wrong (not out of the scope of possibility...just google Dr Muhamed Haneef) then this colossal screw up could be branded an SIO and any mention of it would essentially be censored.

This is not how democracies should act.

Recently ASIO and the Australian Federal Police conducted sweeping raids against a number of targets across Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane. This was due to a terror threat against a random member of the Australian public. It has been claimed that IS terrorists overseas contacted a cell here in Australia and told them to snatch a random person off the street and to behead them.

That in itself is a frightening scenario. The beheadings of Western journalists and aid workers have shocked the world but to have it occur here in the streets of Australia would reverberate around the country. Fear would cripple society. Not just because of the gruesome act itself but because it was so entirely random. This is how terrorists work. They don't need to do a lot...they sometimes don't even have to do anything...they just need to evoke fear.

So the Police and security agencies swooped on the suspected terrorists and arrested them. A frightening image of a sword bundled into an evidence bag was splashed across the newspapers throughout the Commonwealth.

 'Terror in Australia' the headlines read. Unfortunately of the dozen or so who were arrested they've almost all been released without charge.

"But the sword" I hear you ask

Yeah...the sword was plastic.

This is one of the most disturbing aspects of these recent sweeping changes. The threat that Australia faces from terrorism pales compared to the response. Australia has simply gotten caught up in the idea that it is a ripe target for Islamic extremism and it is based more on conjecture than evidence.

This is not to say that Islamic extremism is not a threat. It is. I truly believe that it is a matter of when, rather than if, IS, IJ, JI, Hezbollah, Al Qaeda or any of the other myriad of extremist groups are able to effectively target us on our home soil.

But the fact of the matter remains we are not facing the same threat from terrorists that Iraq, America or Israel. There is very little radicalisation within our Islamic communities and if so the Islamic communities have, with some exceptions, come out firmly and publicly against radicalisation.

Rather than conjuring up a threat to Australians why don't we begin to focus on the very real problems of domestic violence? How about we use some of those over-arching powers to ensure that women within our communities are safe to walk the streets at night without the threat of rape? Perhaps we should have a couple of SIOs on the uncomfortably close relationship between corporations and politicians?

The next Peter Greste will be tried in Canberra. That's the reality of the situation with these new laws. If a journalist decides to expose an ASIO bungle or an immoral operation (it should be noted that the government was forced to backdown in immunity for ASIO officers in the case of torture) then they will have to have major financial backing before even thinking about printing the article. The reason is that they will be hauled before the courts and they will be forced to pay hundreds of thousands of dollars of legal fees JUST to be found innocent. That's enough to force any journalist to think twice before 'endangering national security'...or as they call it....'reporting'.

Realistically these laws should never have made it to parliament....and they should have at least been up for debate by our so called 'Opposition'. Only a year ago we were the envy of the developed world: a booming economy, a progressive government and legislation such as the ETS and NBN. Today we have is mocked overseas, feared at home and is only able to boost their poll numbers by whipping up the near invisible threat of Islamic extremism.

The same tired, old playbook.