The amendments announced on Thursday go someway to providing more "public interest" protections for journalists and whistleblowers, which are of course essential to enable freedom of the press in this country. However, a functioning civil society also relies on freedom for charities to advocate for all groups in society, and to expose human rights violations of governments around the world. Loading The Espionage and Foreign Interference Bill would effectively muzzle human rights advocates who discuss their cause with representatives of foreign governments or with the United Nations. Human rights advocates from Australia regularly appear in front of United Nations bodies in Geneva or New York to report on Australia’s progress in meeting international legal obligations or breaches of international law. Under this Bill, it may become a criminal offence to communicate with the UN in this way.

Yes, that’s right: just when Australia has taken up its long-fought-for UN Human Rights Council seat, it is set to pass laws dodging accountability at the council for its own human rights record by restricting advocates’ ability to speak the truth. We do not take much comfort from the broadly worded prosecution guidelines which the Attorney-General suggests should provide reassurance that prosecution for the work of civil social is unlikely to occur. If the government has no intention to prosecute civil society for these offences, then why have them included in the Bill at all? Claire O’Rourke, the director for External Affairs at Amnesty International Australia. In releasing the proposed amendments last week, what our politicians seemed to have overlooked is that at the very core of the work that organisations like Amnesty and many others do to expose human rights abuses is bringing to light things that are not already in the public domain. Politicians have been quick to downplay these concerns, dismissing them by saying that a "prior publication" defence is available to NGOs like Amnesty.

On a regular basis Amnesty researchers are in the field, documenting eyewitness accounts, which when correlated with other information is released to the public, exposing human rights abuses in countries. If Amnesty research is to continue to be ground-breaking and reliable, the defence of "prior publication" won’t be available to our research officers. The effect of this Bill will be to shroud our work with a cloud of legal uncertainty and the fear of prosecution will hang over our heads to the detriment of human rights protection around the world. This Bill flies in the face of several international human rights laws and instruments, such as the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, and unnecessarily restricts our implied right to freedom of political expression. The UN Special Rapporteur on the Right to Privacy was right to raise concerns that the Bill would have a negative effect on human rights and the public’s ability to access to information. The Espionage and Foreign Interference Bill appears to be a cynical exercise by both sides of politics to shield themselves from the scrutiny of Australian civil society, including the charity sector. The government and opposition must make further amendments to provide robust exemptions for civil society so we can continue to hold the government of the day accountable without fear of prosecution and imprisonment.