Top lawyer in warning on secrecy

A PROMINENT Gold Coast criminal lawyer has thrown his support behind the Gold Coast Bulletin’s Right to Know campaign in a scathing 1000-word post.

Nyst Legal managing director Chris Nyst made the blog post yesterday afternoon, detailing historical examples of censorship.

Mr Nyst, who represented the “Postcard Bandit” Brendan Abbott for decades and wrote the movie Getting Square, referenced Nazis burning books and torturing prisoners in World War II before turning to the events following September 11. The legal eagle noted it took almost seven years for the public to be made aware that authorisation had been given to torture prisoners held for terrorism.

“So now the Good Guys were torturing prisoners too, while the people of the Promised Land peered numbly through a window at a truth they were never meant to know,” he wrote.

Mr Nyst, one of the country’s most well-known lawyers, pointed out it was only last year that Australian Federal Police raided the home of News Corp journalist Annika Smethurst and the ABC headquarters.

“When an outraged press decried what it saw as a rise in cultural secrecy and intimidation of whistleblowers and journalists, demanding a Right to Know, the government defended the raids as the independent actions of an agency doing its job to protect national security,” Mr Nyst wrote.

“National security? Wow, that sounds serious, right? But what actually qualifies as ‘national security’?”

Mr Nyst pointed out it was a matter of perspective what was necessary to secure a nation.