"In attacking the ABC for doing its job on the Indonesian phone-tapping story, our critics have employed a series of arguments, each one weaker than the last."
"The first argument was that there was no story. Everyone spies, and so it is no surprise that Australia spies on Indonesia.
The problem with that argument is that this was never a story about whether all nations spy. It was a story about where the line in such activities is drawn..."
"The second argument was that the ABC simply published everything that Edward Snowden released without any consideration of the balance between the public interest and the interests of national security.
As the ABC's managing director made clear at Senate Estimates last week, that simply isn't true. We did not publish everything we had access to. We took advice from Australia's intelligence authorities on the matter, and redacted sensitive operational information..."
"So now, at last, the story has become a legitimate one, but apparently not for the ABC.
This is the strangest argument of all. The ABC's reputation as a trusted, independent source of news and information is one of the reasons the ABC was awarded the Australia Network contract to begin with...."
"The ABC projects Australian democracy to the world not by acting as a mouthpiece for government, but by reporting the news as it is with rigour and independence."
