Freya Newman, a librarian at the Whitehouse institute, who leaked the details about Tony Abbott's daughter being awarded a $60k scholarship that was not being offered to the public, is facing criminal charges and up to two years in jail for the leak.

"NSW police acted on a complaint by the Whitehouse Institute’s and Newman was charged under section 308H of the NSW Crimes Act, an offence carrying a maximum of two years in jail."

In the last year we have seen many calls for people like Edward Snowden to be charged with treason, Chelsea Manning being sentenced to 35 years for the military documents leak to Wikileaks and now this.

This shows how quickly it has gone from chasing down people who leak information with international political consequences to chasing down those who make life for our leaders politically inconvenient.

We aren't at the top of a slippery slope, we're already flying down it head first.

This is a call for the Australian Government to not only stop the pursuit of Freya Newman, but also to enshrine the freedom of the press in the Australian constitution.

This isn't about protecting or supporting hate speech as 18c could be viewed, unfortunately if we wish to have freedom of speech, we have to take the good with the bad and educate ourselves those around us to be able to discern one from the other. Stopping people from saying bad things about others isn't the right choice to make because those bad things have to be defined by human beings, it's far too subjective and ultimately far too prone to abuse.