Chaired by Greens senator Sarah Hanson-Young, the inquiry was sparked by the Australian federal police raid in 2019 of the home of a News Corp reporter seeking information about the publication of classified material, shortly followed by a raid on the ABC headquarters over reporting of alleged war crimes in Afghanistan.
Last year the AFP ruled out pursuing charges against the journalist, Annika Smethurst, or anyone else for her story revealing plans to extend the Australian Signals Directorate’s spying powers.
National and international outrage followed the raids, which were seen as an attack on press freedom, and resulted in assurances journalists will not be prosecuted without the attorney general’s consent.
New Zealand website Stuff first reported the breach, which occurred on a flight on Friday morning.
The man went from Rarotonga to Auckland yesterday. Restriction-free travel is permitted between the Cook Islands and New Zealand, but a person must stay for at least 14 days before transiting to Australia.
Instead, the man caught a flight to Perth hours after arriving in New Zealand. The breach was reported shortly after the flight departed.
The Cook Islands has not recorded a single case of Covid-19 during the pandemic.
Air New Zealand said in a statement to Stuff:
We have been made aware of a passenger on board NZ175 Auckland–Perth today who is ineligible for quarantine-free travel to Australia.
The paper, authored by Ananian-Welsh, finds the laws create significant barriers for whistleblowers wanting to make their concerns public.
To be shielded by law, whistleblowers must almost always raise the issue internally first, and allow time for it to be investigated.
Only if the internal investigation is inadequate can they go public and, even then, it must be not against the public interest to do so.
The information the whistleblower discloses must be “disclosable conduct” – for example, illegal conduct, corruption, maladministration, or the abuse of public trust – and they must only say the bare minimum when talking publicly. No protection is offered for those blowing the whistle on intelligence matters externally.
Event description
Join two constitutional law experts to discuss Benbrika, in which the High Court upheld preventive detention for terrorism offences About this Event
In Minister for Home Affairs v Benbrika [2021] HCA 4, a majority of the High Court upheld the constitutional validity of a Commonwealth law that allows a State court to detain a person after the expiry of their sentence if they present an unacceptable risk of committing a terrorist offence. In powerful dissents, Gageler and Gordon JJ drew out the liberty interests at stake.
The ruling opens the door for preventive detention at the Commonwealth level and raises all kinds of questions like: What does the principle in Chu Kheng Lim mean now? What is the difference between the Kable doctrine and Ch III of the Constitution, if anything?