The Australia Letter is a weekly newsletter from our Australia bureau. Sign up to get it by email. This week’s issue is written by Isabella Kwai, a reporter with the bureau.

Australia has a global reputation for being a sunny, relaxed democracy with a prosperous economy (and good coffee). But another facet of the country emerged this week after the federal police strode into the offices of the country’s public broadcaster with a broad search warrant for information related to a story about possible war crimes by Australian troops in Afghanistan.

The message to the world? This is also a country with a deep preference for government secrecy.

In fact, when you look at Australia’s laws and its range of investigations targeted at whistleblowers, there’s a strong case to be made that this is the world’s most secretive democracy — as Damien Cave wrote this week.

What’s interesting is that the government’s efforts have created both international outrage, and something that’s pretty rare in Australian media: a sense of unity.