Malcolm Turnbull
December 9, 2010
Malcolm Turnbull is shadow minister for communications and broadband.
Leaders could end up with a second helping of egg on their faces.
IN 1986, I represented former MI5 officer Peter Wright in his efforts to publish his memoirs Spycatcher. Margaret Thatcher was determined that no former MI5 officer should be able to write about his work, regardless of whether the information was still confidential, affected current operations or was otherwise of any real detriment to intelligence services.
While it is true that some of the best legal minds of the day had advised Wright's publishers he had no hope of success, we always thought that the old spook turned Tasmanian horse breeder would succeed.
That was because of a decision of the High Court of Australia in 1980, Commonwealth v Fairfax, in which Sir Anthony Mason had held that a government could restrain the publication of confidential information only if it could establish that the information was still secret and, most importantly, that publication would cause real detriment, not just embarrassment, public debate and controversy.
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Just as the vindictive pursuit of Peter Wright turned his book into an international bestseller, so the furious attacks on Assange are likely to be counterproductive. It is hard to know what to say about the Swedish sexual assault charges, other than to observe that the facts so far outlined by the prosecution would constitute an unlikely basis for a prosecution in Australia.
http://www.smh.com.au/opinion/politics/political-risk-in-making-a-martyr-of-assange-20101208-18ppy.html
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