There’s been minimal coverage (outside reports in the Canberra Times) of the government’s campaign of harassment and intimidation of Witness K and Bernard Collaery this year. And that’s exactly the way the government likes it.

It appears that Attorney-General Christian Porter is doing everything possible to slow the prosecution of K and Collaery down. With a slower prosecution there’s a greater chance the media and public will lose interest, and a larger toll for Collaery too; while he’s being prosecuted in the same courts he practiced law, it’s impossible for Collaery to fully resume his career. 

At this stage, hearings feature not just a barrister for the Commonwealth Director of Public Prosecutions — the Liberal Party’s hand-picked ex-trade union royal commission lawyer Sarah McNaughton — but a barrister for Porter himself. At the hearing in Canberra on February 28, Tim Begbie, for Porter, dominated proceedings. Why, in an era of an allegedly independent DPP, does Porter get to play a key role in a criminal trial? Because McNaughton brought him into it by claiming the brief of evidence against K and Collaery would disclose national security information. In response, Porter has issued non-disclosure certificates to prevent the alleged secret information being revealed on the basis it is likely to prejudice national security.

This tactic is central to the government’s desire to prosecute K and Collaery out of sight of the media and the public. It obscures the question of the culpability of John Howard, Alexander Downer, David Irvine and a range of security officials in the illegal bugging of the East Timorese cabinet — and the feckless removal of counter-terrorism resources from Indonesia at a time of terrorist attacks against Australian targets there to enable it. But it also affords considerable procedural opportunities for Porter’s lawyers to delay proceedings further.