A significant portion of the funding was being wasted, with at least one of the senior ATSIC officials spending millions – yes, millions – of dollars a year on gambling in casinos. Loading This was federal money, a federal organisation, and therefore potentially federal offences. Enter the federal police. When the stories began, many federal police were astounded that their colleagues responsible for overseeing ATSIC and associated bodies were not acting. They were severely embarrassed and the response of several of them was to leak very damaging documents and reports so that more pressure was brought to bear to prosecute offenders and put a stop to the rorts. But the responsible federal police were too timid – too frightened to take on the ATSIC organisation – and little was done.

I delivered huge files to them backing up stories I had published, which showed beyond any reasonable doubt that criminal offences were being committed. Still they sat on their hands – for up to three years in some instances. Public servants and politicians got into the act and also began leaking relevant documents and reports, but still no police action. Loading Eventually, the weight of evidence revealed was so great that ATSIC was abolished, and Indigenous people were again the ones who suffered, while the criminals – indigenous and non-indigenous – who ran the scams and pocketed their ill-gotten gains were let off scot-free. This convinced me and many around me that the federal police were police in name only, and did not have the motivation or ability to do the job they were given. Cut lunch commandos. But back to the recent raids. They were reportedly looking – years after the event – for evidence about who leaked information damaging to the current government. It is an incredibly big leap to claim the information revealed by the respective journalists was “a threat to national security’’. What rubbish.

Any senior journalist with a genuine history of handling big stories – and a history of receiving leaked information – can unerringly point to the leaker. Those journalists see a story, ask who would be the beneficiary of the information being published, who would be hurt by it, what function it serves … and it does not take Einstein to come to a conclusion that is close to the mark. Run that past any of the genuine top-line journalists of current and recent times – Laurie Oakes, Mark Willacy, Louise Milligan, Richard Baker, Wendy Bacon, Bob Bottom, Nick McKenzie, Adele Ferguson, Michael McKenna, Ross Coulthart and Kate McClymont – and they will point the finger quickly at where the leak came from. But they would never reveal that opinion to any authority figure. Journalists I have spoken to over the past week or so hold the opinion that the federal police, in these latest raids, were doing the bidding of their political masters. What they “discovered’’ by looking through underwear drawers and refuse bins will amount to nothing. But they have waved the big stick and appeared to be intimidatory. Bully-boy stuff that is really all bluff. How much were they emboldened by the Coalition's election win. It is reasonable to conclude that they were second-guessing their political masters, and acted in a way that they considered would be pleasing to them. How else could anybody explain why it took two to three years, and an election, for them to suddenly decide it was necessary to raid the home of a journalist and the ABC headquarters?

The federal police are, in my view, more shadow than substance. I believe their raid on the ABC, in particular, was a demonstration to their political masters that they were doing what they knew would meet with approval, and that they – the federal police – were actually relevant. Acting AFP Commissioner Neil Gaughan addresses the media over the raids. Credit:Alex Ellinghausen The lukewarm response to the public outcry about the raids from Prime Minister Scott Morrison and Home Affairs Minister Peter Dutton – and their defence of federal police upholding the law, and even the "tradition" of punishing journalists for publishing classified material rights – reinforces that belief. It is all so convenient to further muddy the waters with the ABC and prime the Australian public to accept further neutering of that organisation. Forces in this government would love to find a way to get rid of the ABC altogether, but that is a dream that will never see reality. It was disgraceful and unnecessary to conduct either of the raids. There is much more to this than meets the eye, and one has only to ask who would be the greatest beneficiary if the ABC was abolished altogether?