Another said the government faced a $640 million repair bill for Telstra's old copper network. The AFP raid on a Labor staffer's house in Melbourne during the election. Credit:Nick Toscano Yet another revealed the NBN was trialling a Labor-style fibre-to-the-premises roll out, and it was surprisingly cheap and efficient. Clearly these stories were embarrassing to the government in general, and the Prime Minister in particular. He was the communications minister who came up with the dog's breakfast NBN that Australia is now building, at great expense. It's a model he trenchantly defends as Prime Minister.

So the Australian Federal Police, accompanied by an NBN staffer who was under warrant as a "special constable", raided political offices as the leadership of the country is being actively contested. Mr Burke said the NBN documents caused "immense" damage to Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull as a former communications minister. Credit:Andrew Meares But step back from the politics and look at the broader question of public interest. Our money is being spent to build the NBN. Billions of dollars of it. AFP raid on Labor staffer's house in Brunswick, Victoria on Thursday night. Credit:Nick Toscano

It's being spent on perhaps the most important piece of public infrastructure currently under construction in this country. The form and nature of that infrastructure, the extent to which it will future-proof our economy and society, are matters we should legitimately be told about. That's the case even if the government of the day - the NBN's only shareholder - is too embarrassed by its own policy to let us in on its dirty little secrets. The role of the media here has been crucial. Journalists receive leaks, pieces of information from public or private entities, which, if they are true and in the public interest, we publish.

That's the case if the leaks come - as they frequently do - from the offices of ministers or the Prime Minister, or from corporate whistleblowers, ordinary punters or the opposition. These leaks emerged from the NBN and, according to the police, it was the NBN that reported it as a potential crime. That in itself bears more scrutiny. This is a publicly-owned company, sure, but it's a company, governed by the Corporation's Act, and involved in commercial enterprise. Is it really the AFP's role to investigate leaks from it? If we or our alleged sources were to be raided by the AFP every time an embarrassing piece of information escaped the corporate or government world, the media might as well shut up shop.

Finally, how did the police know to go to those particular premises last night? If politicians', staffers', or journalists' metadata was searched to find the alleged route the information took from the NBN to the press, then this is precisely what we have all feared from this new legislation. It would constitute a misuse of national security laws to clamp down on a public discussion that had caused political embarrassment. And it would not be the first time. Asked whether the AFP had used journalists' metadata in its investigation, commissioner Andrew Colvin said: "I'm not going to answer what operational tactics or strategies we have employed". That sounds like a "yes".

His final line was ominous: "We receive leak investigations quite often from the Government, from other departments, from members of the community, from companies such as NBN Co ...". Whatever the intention of these raids, and whatever governed their timing, the effect will be to intimidate and deter those who want to release information in the public interest. Loading And that should concern us all. Got a tip? Contact us securely via JournoTips or SecureDrop

