Lachlan Murdoch hits out at new anti-terror laws saying they threaten press freedom

Updated

News Corp co-chairman Lachlan Murdoch used a presentation in honour of his war correspondent grandfather Sir Keith Murdoch in Melbourne last night to hit out at new anti-terror laws.

The laws passed this month mean anyone who discloses information about a "special intelligence operation" could face up to 10 years in jail.

However, what constitutes a "special intelligence operation" is not yet clear.

Mr Murdoch said the new legislation put press freedoms under attack.

"Censorship should be resisted in all of its insidious forms," he said.

"We should be vigilant of the gradual erosion of our freedom to know, to be informed, and to make reasoned decisions in our society and our democracy and like Sir Keith have the courage to act when our freedoms are threatened."

Sir Keith was pivotal in ending the slaughter at Gallipoli, bypassing official censorship to warn the Australian prime minister about mounting casualties.

In 1915, then-prime minister Andrew Fisher had no idea his troops had been sent into Gallipoli.

Mr Fisher asked his friend Sir Keith, then working for London's United Cable Service, to find out what was really going on.

Correspondents there were being censored, and Sir Keith was arrested trying to sneak an unsanitised report from journalist Ellis Ashmead-Bartlett to the British prime minister, but eventually got a letter to Mr Fisher.

"In his younger years he wrote an important letter to a prime minister that changed history and that saved Australian lives," Mr Murdoch said.

But Mr Murdoch said he wondered whether "one of the greatest censorship scandals of the century" would be illegal under the Abbott Government's new counter-terrorism laws.

"Would the Gallipoli campaign have been a special operation? Would Sir Keith have been arrested with Ashmead-Bartlett's letter to spend the next 10 years in jail?

"'Trust us, we're from the government' seems to be a common theme when attempting to censor the media.

"Our freedom of speech and freedom of the press are not things we should trust blindly to anyone," he added.

Trust us, we're from the government seems to be a common theme when attempting to censor the media. Lachlan Murdoch

Interestingly, News Corp's newspaper The Australian supported the new laws, but the man most likely to take over his father's media empire disagrees.

Mr Murdoch said Australia was severely lagging behind his second home, the United States, when it came to press protection.

"Australia has no equivalent constitutional protections of freedom of speech or freedom of the press," he said.

"Already we have literally hundreds of separate laws and regulations that currently govern the working press, we certainly do not need further laws to jail journalists who responsibly learn and accurately tell."

He said press freedom was under increasing attack, citing the former government's attempt to appoint a media watchdog "the most draconian attack on the freedom of the press this country has ever seen in peace time".

Mr Murdoch said 20 years ago, Australia ranked ninth in an index of media freedom.

"It might surprise you that today Australia ranks 33rd, just behind Belize," Mr Murdoch said.

Topics: media, defence-and-national-security, community-and-society, australia

First posted