AFP launches own inquiry into freedom
THE Australian Federal Police has ordered an internal review of how it handles press freedoms and whistleblowers with a former top cop appointed to write new protocols on conducting arrests, raids and investigations.
This will be the third review into press freedoms in the wake of raids on the home of News Corp journalist Annika Smethurst and the ABC headquarters in June over consecutive days and a planned but abandoned third day of raids believed to be on News Corp.
Newly appointed AFP commissioner Reece Kershaw has told a parliamentary committee hearing he had not seen the front page of any of Monday’s newspapers, all of which had blacked out front page news stories in protest to perceived erosion of press freedoms.
Labor’s deputy Senate leader Kristina Keneally then helpfully held up each redacted front page of News Corp, Seven West and Fairfax newspapers for him to see for which he thanked her before she launched into a series of questions related to press freedoms.
Mr Kershaw said he did not know what sparked the extraordinary nationwide media protest as he was “an evidencebased police officer and for me I haven’t turned my mind to that” and he had not spoken to any media editor. But he said he believed in democracy and press freedoms and that was why he had appointed retired deputy AFP commissioner and Australian Crime Commission chief executive John Lawler to review AFP’s handling of related issues and also speak personally with editors “when the time was right”.
He could not say whether this would be before two parliamentary inquiries into press freedoms or his own ordered internal review.
The review would look at all sensitive investigations including unauthorised disclosures, raids on the home of a News Corp journalist and ABC Sydney headquarters, espionage and foreign interference.
“The review will not be an audit into current matters at hand but rather a holistic approach to ensure we have in place investigative policy and guidelines that are fit for purpose,” he told the Senate legal and constitutional affairs committee.
Mr Lawler, a veteran crime fighter, was 29 years with the AFO and led operations to foil a terrorist attack in Australia in 2005, tackled organise crime and as head of the then Crime Commission revealed the bombshell findings on drugs and corruption in sport, including match fixing.