Australia’s surprising disregard for free speech

FOR A GROWING number of Australians, it is like stumbling out of bed and not recognising, let alone liking, the face you see in the bathroom mirror. In early June federal police raided the Sydney headquarters of the state broadcaster, the ABC. It had aired allegations of appalling deeds by Australian special forces in Afghanistan, including the killing of unarmed men and children. You might think the ABC was doing the country a service by revealing such gross misconduct. The Australian Defence Force itself had become concerned about a “drift in values” among elite troops in Afghanistan. Yet the warrant against the ABC read as if it was straight out of an authoritarian rulebook. Among other things it allowed investigators to “add, copy, delete or alter” material in the broadcaster’s computers.

The eye-rubbing is not just over press freedom, but about Australia’s direction as a liberal democracy. The whistleblower over the Afghanistan allegations was formerly a lawyer with the defence department. David McBride had followed public-interest disclosure rules by raising his concerns with his department. Only when he concluded that they were being ignored did he take his material to journalists. Far from being protected as a whistleblower, he is charged with the disclosure of unauthorised documents and faces a life sentence. His allegations...