With Barnyard doing so much of his thinking
aloud, it was only a matter of time before a Liberal started doing it. And
how delicious that the first seems to have been Petro Georgiou – and that a
member of this control-obsessed government has chosen to talk about the right to
know.

“The key role of the fourth estate – for
all of its imperfections and the discomfort it not infrequently causes
politicians – is that of holding governments accountable through open debate and
information,” he writes in The Sydney Morning Herald
today.

“The protection of sources is fundamental to
this. As the European Court of Human Rights has said: ‘Without such protection,
sources could be deterred from assisting the press in informing the public on
matters of public interest. As a result, the vital public watchdog role of the
press could be undermined.’ ”

Lovely, lovely! The contempt charges Herald Sun
journalists Gerard McManus and Michael Harvey are facing are making
international news.

Compare and contrast Georgiou’s comments
with this item that appeared in The Adelaide Advertiser
last week “Ministers had every right to leak information to
journalists but public servants did not, the Prime Minister John Howard told
The Advertiser yesterday.” Or
Finance Minister Nick Minchin’s remarks at the National Press Club
last week that “deliberate leaking of confidential government information
should not and cannot be tolerated” (unless you’re Andrew
Bolt).

“Of course, governments, like all institutions,
are entitled to demand levels of confidentiality from their employees,” Georgiou
says. “Indeed, where public servants are found to have breached conditions of
employment and revealed confidential material it is not unreasonable that they
should be subject to sanctions unless there are exceptional circumstances such
as those covered by whistleblower provisions.

“But it is wrong that journalists can be legally
coerced to breach their ethical code and reveal sources in an attempt to
prosecute a public servant for alleged unauthorised disclosures, in the absence
of an overriding public interest. In the absence of such an interest, the
intimidation of journalists to reveal sources under threat of jail makes
declarations about the value of a free and fearless press begin to ring
hollow.

“Many European countries and American states have
enacted ‘shield laws’ to create public interest frameworks to protect
journalists and their sources…

“The McManus-Harvey case highlights the
fact that Australia
does not provide the guarantees essential for the media to serve as an effective
watchdog.”

We had this to say in a much-quoted piece two
years ago:

“What’s been the greatest unsung triumph of the Howard Government?
Unity. Remember the paralysis that gripped both the Liberal Party and its
Coalition with the Nationals at various times during John Howard’s first term as
Liberal Leader in the 1980s? Remember the
way in which backbenchers crossed the floor from time to time during the Fraser
years to vote against government legislation?

“Nowadays, the time when Liberals prided
themselves on having the conscience vote that the tied caucus ballot denied
Labor MPs seems as long gone as Menzies himself. Most Liberals have probably forgotten that
crossing the floor was what once differentiated the Party from
Labor.

“The Howard Government’s unity has been helped by
the way it clamped down on alternate sources of information from government
instrumentalities… Secrecy has become its forte – but it’s learned from the
Kennett government and keeps the issue as far as possible from the media and
public eye.”

Not any
more.