Sedition still on the agenda
The federal government has rejected an Australian Law Reform Commission recommendation that the term “sedition” be dropped from Australian law.

Attorney-General Philip Ruddock said in response to the suggestion: “I won’t be recommending we change our view.”

In its report Fighting Words – A Review Of Sedition Laws In Australia, the commission said that media commentators, satirists, artists and activists should be safe from controversial sedition laws – even if their ideas are unpopular and confronting – as long as they don’t urge the use of violence.

The Attorney-General has, however, agreed to consider some of the commission’s other recommendations that arose from their five-month inquiry into sedition legislation.

Aside from dropping the “sedition” tag, the commission also recommended that the law be amended to require the Crown to prove that a person urged others to use force or violence against community groups or the institutions of democratic government, and that the intention was that this violence would eventuate.

The commission also recommended: amending the offences of “assisting” the enemy to ensure that material assistance was specified; the repeal of the “unlawful associations” provisions of the Crimes Act which the commission felt were outdated and superseded by the laws dealing with terrorist organisations; and review of the offences of “treachery” and “sabotage”, which should either be repealed or modernised.

The Law Reform Commission also noted that state and territory law in this area was “mostly a good deal worse” than the federal version and urged the Standing Committee of Attorneys-General to immediately set about reforming these laws, too.

More reporters behind bars in China
Hong Kong-based journalist Ching Cheong was jailed for five years in August on spying charges. Originally detained in April 2005, Ching Cheong’s trial took place behind closed doors. The International Federation of Journalists has called for his immediate release.

Ching was the chief China correspondent for Singapore’s Straits Times newspaper. According to his wife, in April 2005 Ching went to China to meet a source who was to give him a manuscript about Zhao Ziyang, the former prime minister of China who spent 15 years under house arrest following his negotiations with demonstrators before the 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre.

On April 22, 2005 Ching was arrested in Guangzhou and placed under a form of detention called “residence under surveillance” in Beijing.

On August 5, 2006, 106 days after he was first detained, the Beijing State Security Bureau formally charged Ching with spying for Taiwan.

Ching was denied the rights granted to him under China’s Criminal Procedure Code: he was kept in isolation, denied all legal recourse, and refused access to family members and Straits Times colleagues.

This latest abuse of freedom of expression in China comes less than a week after New York Times researcher Zhao Yan was sentenced to three years in jail for fraud.

Zhao’s sentencing comes almost two years after he was first detained in connection with a New York Times article, which reported on a reshuffle in the upper levels of the Communist Party of China before it was officially announced.

The Beijing No. 2 Intermediate People’s Court reportedly dismissed the state secrets charge against Zhao, which held a penalty of up to 10 years in jail, but the court still found him guilty of the unrelated charge of fraud.

The three-year jail term reportedly takes Zhao’s detention into account, which places his release at September 2007. Ching and Zhao join more than 30 journalists currently in jail in China for their journalism.

ABC national strike
An estimated 2500 out of 4000 ABC staff participated in a 24-hour nationwide strike to protest at the ABC management’s offer of a below-inflation pay rise and loss of conditions.

Under the requirements of the Howard government’s industrial relations legislation, a ballot to authorise the strike had to be conducted by the Australian Electoral Commission. The postal ballot found that more than 91 per cent of ABC union members voted in favour of taking industrial action. The ballot is the first by any union to authorise a strike that covers people working in more than one centre.

The strike on September 21 saw all ABC Radio and ABC Television broadcasts seriously disrupted.

A by-product of management’s poorly received offer has been a 20 per cent jump in Alliance membership among ABC staff in the two weeks before the strike.

Public information champions
Two recent court decisions have seriously undermined the ability of the media to inform the public.

The case of Canberra-based Herald Sun journalists Michael Harvey and Gerard McManus continues, despite federal government assurances that the Standing Committee of Attorneys-General will approve legislation to allow journalists a degree of professional privilege when it comes to protecting sources. But the legislation, which probably won’t be enacted until early 2007, may be too late for Harvey and McManus.

The two journalists face contempt charges and even a jail term for refusing to reveal the source of an article they wrote revealing a federal government plan to reject a $500million boost to war veterans’ pensions.

Following publication, a senior public servant was charged with leaking a document that was the basis of the article. During the public servant’s preliminary hearing, the journalists refused to answer any questions relating to the identity of their source.

Charged with contempt, the pair’s case was subsequently referred to the Supreme Court in Victoria for judicial review. In August, Justice Elizabeth Hollingworth said the contempt charges should stand. She said the Alliance Code of Ethics had “no legal status and journalists have no right to refuse to name sources”.

In early September another court decision undermined the public’s right to know. The High Court, in a three to two decision, said that The Australian’s Freedom of Information editor Michael McKinnon was not entitled to access certain documents under the Freedom of Information Act 1992. The decision means the federal government can use numerous roadblocks to prevent journalists from accessing information that should be readily available to the public.

Celebrating photojournalism
It’s been another great year for Australian photojournalism, and the short list of nominees in the annual Nikon-Walkley Press Photo Awards has been announced.

Triple J’s Myf Warhurst revealed this year’s nominees at the Photographers’ Cocktail Party and Finalist Announcement on Monday, October 9.

The Cronulla riots, Timor, the Commonwealth Games, the death of media mogul Kerry Packer, the Israeli conflict in Lebanon and the ongoing war in the Middle East were just some of the stories that featured in this year’s list of nominees.

From more than 1000 images by 160 photographers, only 16 photographers will be considered for the Walkley Awards.

The awards are the most prestigious accolade in Australia for press photographers.

As we fly across the Java Sea into Solo, the crater of Mount Merapi looms through the clouds, a thin plume of ash warning of its volatility. Merapi's rumblings and the likely impact of an eruption was one of the stories some of us on the Journalism Centre’s 2006 fellowships had been covering from our desks in Australia a week ago. Now we were in the Ring of Fire.