From the Editor | Hawkesbury Gazette
Before the public can demand better laws or vote for people willing to enforce them, it needs to know what is happening. That is why a High Court ruling about hidden cameras in a goat abattoir matters well beyond the gates of that business.
On 11 November, the High Court set aside a Full Federal Court order that would have allowed The Game Meats Company to acquire copyright in footage secretly recorded at its abattoir by animal welfare group Farm Transparency International. The activists had trespassed to install and retrieve the cameras. The High Court restrained Farm Transparency from publishing the footage and ordered it to permanently delete or destroy its copies. The copyright order, however, would have given the company a way to pursue third parties that published the material. The Gazette welcomes the decision to set that order aside.
The Human Rights Law Centre and the Alliance for Journalists’ Freedom, which appeared as friends of the court, warned that handing copyright to the subject of a recording could have consequences for journalists and whistleblowers. A broadcaster reporting in the public interest could face a copyright claim from the very organisation whose conduct the footage might help the public assess. The High Court’s decision kept the remedy directed at the party that trespassed.
Businesses are under pressure to maximise profit. Laws and regulators set limits on what they can do in pursuit of it, and public opinion helps determine where lawmakers draw those limits and how vigorously regulators enforce them. If the public never learns how a business operates behind closed doors, it has little chance to judge whether the rules are working. A report can give customers grounds to ask questions, regulators a reason to look closer and lawmakers evidence that a rule needs changing.
The same principle applies to government. In the Hawkesbury, residents should be able to find out how their rates are spent, why a contract was awarded and whether a conflict of interest was declared. Reporting can expose corruption. It can also show where a decision was poorly explained, where safeguards failed or where the records support the official account. All of that helps voters decide which representatives they trust to act.
Good journalism means checking the evidence, putting questions to the people involved and giving readers enough information to reach their own conclusions. That work is especially important when the people who hold the records also have the most to lose from their release. The public’s ability to hold power to account starts with being able to see what power is doing.
