A get-square?: Questions raised over timing of Australian police raids

Australia's federal police, top, enter the Australian Broadcasting Corporation, the national public broadcaster, during a raid on their offices in Sydney. Photo / AP

The Australian Government now has to contend with uproar over what appears to be a post-election get-square against informants of journalists who have annoyed security agencies.

And mixed into this will be questions as to how much the Government supports freedom of the press.

The spectacle of a squad of police spending seven hours yesterday violating the privacy of a Canberra-based journalist's home is a disturbing single episode.

The second act, an AFP search through the digital warrens of the ABC in Sydney the next day, is either rotten timing or the emergence of a pattern.

Either way, the timing is the critical element.

The journalists and their news organisations are not being accused of crimes — at least not so far. But there has been a delayed reaction hunt for their sources.

Annika Smethurst's home was turned over about 14 months after the story that upset those security agencies was published. That's a long time to decide it was necessary to hit a private residence.

The ABC report at the centre of that raid was first broadcast almost two years ago in July, 2017. Again, that's a long time to decide whether a search warrant should be used against the HQ of the national broadcaster.

The Government is not offering a solid response on the timing matters and the vacant territory is being filled by damaging theories.

There is now a real apprehension that the police action was postponed so as not to pollute the May 18 election campaign. The allegation will be that it was held back for political reasons, a question the Government must address.

The most extreme assessment will be that whoever ordered the raids didn't want to harm the Coalition's re-election chances, or after a Coalition victory felt more confident of conducting them than if Labor had won.

There is no evidence this is what happened, but the limited Government response to the intrusions on journalists will only encourage the wilder brand of speculation.

The federal police officers are not to be pilloried for these operations. They are under orders.

Home Affairs Minister Peter Dutton's office says it wasn't him. Which means new Defence Minister Linda Reynolds has to explain whether or not it was her mob.

Whoever sent in the police has not done the Government a service.

They have added to fears held by whistleblowers and the journalists who report their information for the public good.

The thought of an AFP boot kicking in your front door — even if just figuratively — could be enough to dissuade sources, reporters and editors from exposing what the government wants kept hidden.

However, freedom of the press is not something that can be stitched off when it causes discomfort to authorities, a point which this Government would do well to remind itself.