 Karen Percy is the head of Australia's principal journalist union, the MEAA, but she's also an outspoken critic of the creep of the state into our basic freedoms and in particular freedom of speech and the erosion of journalism, the foundations of journalism through that creep, that state creep in Australia. Please welcome Karen Percy. Good evening everybody, it's great to be here on Gadigal Land. I pay tribute to the custodians of this land who have been long, long time storytellers for tens of thousands of years. Julian Assange has been a member of the media entertainment and arts alliance since 2007. We are so saddened that this case just drags on. This week I was among a group of 25 or so media leaders who met with federal attorney general Mark Dreyfus for the press freedom roundtable that Kerry referenced. The first issue I raised with the AG was Julian's case. I urged the minister to talk to his cabinet colleagues and his parliamentary colleagues about resolving the case so that Julian can be reunited with his family. MEAA sees his case as fundamentally an issue of press freedom. MEAA has advocated for many years like so many of you have as well, petitions, letters, behind the scenes chats, in front of scenes chats. We have written to successive Australian government seeking action. We are as frustrated as anybody that Australian authorities seem to have made little progress in this case. It's symptomatic of a failure to fully appreciate the erosion of press freedom more broadly in Australia and around the world. We like to think of ourselves as progressive and world leaders when it comes to democracy. But over the years, little by little, law by law, regulation by regulation, amendment by amendment, journalists and media outlets, and more importantly the public's right to know have been squeezed in the name of national security. Our defamation laws favour the rich and are designed to muzzle brave reporting. We made this clear as industry leaders this week in Canberra that things need to change. We urged the attorney general to examine the chilling effect these laws are having on telling stories that need to be told. So far from being a far off threat to press freedom, we have it here right now. There are hundreds of provisions in our laws that can put a journalist in jail. Most journalists don't know them or even understand them. We don't know what we don't know because we can't know. There is little, if any, visibility for example when governments seek journalist information warrants to get access to notes, documents, information that journalists collect in their work. There's no ability to contest these requests. It's unclear whether there really is a justification for these requests and who on earth knows if they actually achieve what the agencies are trying to achieve. We just don't know. Receiving classified documents can land a journalist in jail. They don't have to read them, talk about them, never mind publish or broadcast them. The rights of journalists are routinely being trodden on. Our FOI processes are a joke. We get nonsense answers from governments, ministries and agencies. There are suppression orders particularly in the state of Victoria where I come from that just come thick and fast. The latest example is the federal court changing, without notice or consultation, the rules for journalists accessing documents. The court claims it's an administrative change but the effect will be that some cases that are very much in the public interest might never see the light of day. These are the stories of dodgy employers, consumer rip-offs, corporate wrongdoing. It's little wonder that Australia has been sliding down the global press freedom rankings in recent years. We're seeing direct attacks on journalists as well as the fake news brigade continue to harass and harangue. It's happening in person, it's happening online and it's especially vile against women, people of color, those with disability and of course our LGBTQI colleagues. Journalists also face physical dangers on the fire field, the flooding river, the crime scene outside the court. Ever dwindling media workforces mean fewer reporters are being assigned to difficult stories and so they're exposed to greater potential trauma loads than ever before. The fast-paced digital age adds to stress and strain. Employers need to pay more than lip service to the well-being and those RUOK days. There has to be a true commitment to ensuring workers are safe, physically and psychologically. We do risk assessments for physical dangers, we need to ensure the same for potential psychological harm. Anything, anything that stops a journalist from doing her work is a threat to press freedom. A genuine commitment to press freedom, dear governments of Australia, entails embracing many things you might not like because it might make you look bad. This week's press freedom meeting in Canberra was encouraging. The government says it wants import from media on legislative changes, particularly to those national security laws and possible changes to the Privacy Act, even better protections for whistleblowers. We welcome the chance to take part and to shape the conversation, but there is a long, long list of change that needs to happen and that's where you, dear audience, comes in. Tonight our press freedom focus is rightly about one man, but to achieve press freedom here and elsewhere in the world, it's got to be a bigger conversation. It's certainly an imperative that Julian be allowed to be with his family and that this awful ordeal come to an end. But as citizens, we need to demand more from our leaders, in the media, in government, in civil society, to ensure that our right to know is not impeded and that Australia is once again a country to look up to when it comes to a free and fearless media. Thank you.