WeRise · Policy platform
Press Freedom and Truth
The human story
Why Press Freedom and Truth matters
Australia’s democratic system depends on adversarial scrutiny. Elections matter, parliaments matter and courts matter, but none of them can work properly if the public cannot see what institutions and power-holders are doing. Journalists, editors, local publishers, whistleblowers and public broadcasters are part of that accountability chain. When they are weakened, secrecy grows, corruption becomes easier to hide and public debate becomes easier to manipulate. That is why press freedom is not a niche media issue. It is democratic infrastructure.
Australia still has important strengths. Freedom House rates the country “Free,” and the University of Canberra’s 2026 Digital News Report shows Australians continue to value news, with heavy news consumption rising to 56 percent and trust in “my news” at 54 percent.
But demand alone cannot sustain press freedom if supply is being hollowed out. RSF ranks Australia 33rd of 180 countries in 2026 and identifies hyperconcentration, legal pressure and secrecy as systemic problems.
WeRise should therefore argue for a press-freedom package built on five pillars: plural media ownership, strong public broadcasters, source and whistleblower protection, access to information reform and digital-platform transparency. This is how a democracy protects truth without appointing itself the owner of truth.
The practical case
Press Freedom and Truth: the findings to notice
People and everyday life
Who Press Freedom and Truth affects
The public loses first when journalism is weak, even if journalists are the ones under direct pressure.
The clearest beneficiaries of press-freedom reform are not media companies in the abstract but the public: voters, local communities, workers, whistleblowers, victims of institutional abuse, minority groups, regional residents and anyone who depends on accurate reporting to understand decisions made by the powerful. When journalism is strong, misconduct is harder to hide and public decisions are easier to scrutinise. When journalism is weak, those with the fewest alternative pathways to power lose the most.
Case study
A regional council begins outsourcing public services and awarding opaque contracts, but the local paper no longer has a dedicated reporter after repeated cuts. Residents still feel the consequences through rates, service quality and local jobs, yet there is no sustained scrutiny until a scandal is advanced enough to attract metropolitan attention. Press-freedom reform matters here not as an abstract liberty but as the practical presence of someone whose job is to watch.
Whistleblowers and confidential sources are another directly affected group. Without realistic legal protection, many will stay silent even when they witness corruption, maladministration or abuse. Journalists then lose the information pathways that make accountability reporting possible, and the public loses visibility into institutional wrongdoing.
The direction of change
What better Press Freedom and Truth could look like
In Australia, Press Freedom & Truth should be designed as a democratic-systems package rather than a single media law. The Commonwealth would carry most of the legislative burden because secrecy law, national security, corporations law, telecommunications and broadcasting regulation are primarily federal domains. States and territories would still matter, especially on defamation interaction, shield laws, police powers, whistleblower frameworks and freedom-of-information administration.
The first reform stream is legal protection. Australia needs stronger source confidentiality protections, a clearer public-interest defence environment, anti-SLAPP measures against intimidation litigation, robust whistleblower protection and continued secrecy-law simplification beyond the April 2026 proposal to repeal or decriminalise more than 300 provisions. This should include a statutory press-freedom review mechanism to test new national-security or surveillance laws for chilling effects before they are enacted.
The second stream is media plurality and journalism capacity. The Commonwealth should require fuller media-ownership transparency, empower competition scrutiny where concentration threatens democratic plurality, and provide durable public-interest funding for regional, local, investigative and public-service journalism. ABC and SBS should be treated as core democratic institutions, with multi-year funding stability tied to public-interest mandates rather than annual political bargaining.
The third stream is information access. Freedom-of-information law and practice need modernisation through tighter response times, fewer exemptions, better proactive disclosure and stronger publication-by-default requirements. Public information delayed until it is politically harmless is not meaningful transparency.
Costs and choices
The trade-offs behind Press Freedom and Truth
The cost of press-freedom reform is modest beside the democratic cost of secrecy, capture and disinformation.
Press-freedom reform includes both low-cost legal changes and higher-cost institutional measures. The least expensive elements are legal: source protection, whistleblower reform, freedom-of-information improvements, anti-SLAPP safeguards and stronger ownership transparency. These are primarily legislative and administrative reforms rather than major spending commitments. The larger fiscal questions arise around direct public-interest journalism support, regional and local-news funding, expanded ABC and SBS resourcing, research-access schemes and digital-regulator capacity.
Read the complete costs and trade-offsFollow the evidence
Read further on Press Freedom and Truth
- RSF Australia country profile. Profile gives 2025 rank 29 and 2026 rank 33. Dynamic page; preserve year and access date.
- University of Canberra, 16 June 2026 release. Do not conflate trust in own news with all news. Other draft figures 21%,19%,43% still need full report mapping.
- Attorney-General, 2 April 2026 introduction announcement. Announcement supports introduced proposal, not enacted repeal. Check current bill/Act before publication and fix any draft wording implying completed reform.
Press Freedom & Truth sits within a wider set of WeRise policies.
- Democracy & Rights: more WeRise policies in this pillar
- WeRise: all 29 policies across seven pillars
Key findings
- 33rd out of 180Australia fell to 33rd place in the 2026 World Press Freedom Index, showing that a wealthy democracy can still slide on media freedom when concentration and legal pressure go unaddressed. Source: Reporters Without Borders · Australia Country Profile / World Press Freedom Index · 2026
- 54% vs 21%Australians trust “my news” more than twice as much as news on social media, showing there is still strong demand for credible journalism. Source: University of Canberra · Digital News Report: Australia 2026 · 2026
- 43%Nearly half of Australian news consumers get news from creators and influencers, which raises the stakes for media literacy, platform transparency and source credibility. Source: University of Canberra · Digital News Report: Australia 2026 · 2026
- 300+ secrecy provisions targeted for repeal or decriminalisationThe Commonwealth itself now acknowledges that Australia’s secrecy-law framework has become overgrown and needs significant reform. Source: Attorney-General of Australia · Modernising Australia’s secrecy laws · 2026
Part 01
The Case for Change
Why Press Freedom & Truth matters
Democracy Needs Independent Witnesses
A free press is how the public sees power clearly, not how the media protects itself.
Australia’s democratic system depends on adversarial scrutiny. Elections matter, parliaments matter and courts matter, but none of them can work properly if the public cannot see what institutions and power-holders are doing. Journalists, editors, local publishers, whistleblowers and public broadcasters are part of that accountability chain. When they are weakened, secrecy grows, corruption becomes easier to hide and public debate becomes easier to manipulate. That is why press freedom is not a niche media issue. It is democratic infrastructure.
Australia still has important strengths. Freedom House rates the country “Free,” and the University of Canberra’s 2026 Digital News Report shows Australians continue to value news, with heavy news consumption rising to 56 percent and trust in “my news” at 54 percent.
But demand alone cannot sustain press freedom if supply is being hollowed out. RSF ranks Australia 33rd of 180 countries in 2026 and identifies hyperconcentration, legal pressure and secrecy as systemic problems.
A public that cannot see power clearly cannot govern itself clearly.
The concentration problem is not abstract. RSF reports that three private groups dominate privately owned media while public broadcasters carry a disproportionate burden of trust and scrutiny. In such a market, proprietor preferences can shape editorial agendas, regional reporting becomes more precarious and political leaders may face less diverse institutional scrutiny. WeRise should therefore treat media plurality as a democratic good in itself. Ownership transparency, competition review, local-news support and stronger public-interest obligations all belong inside a serious press-freedom agenda.
The digital environment adds another layer. The University of Canberra found that 43 percent of Australian news consumers get news from creators and influencers, while only 21 percent trust news on social media and 19 percent trust AI chatbots. This is the central modern challenge: reliable reporting now circulates in the same feeds as manipulation, synthetic content and algorithmically amplified outrage.
That does create a legitimate policy problem, but not one that should be solved by letting governments quietly police contested truth. Parliamentary and regulatory work increasingly points instead to transparency-based approaches: data access for researchers, algorithmic accountability, advertising disclosure, complaints systems and risk-based oversight. This is the right direction because it preserves the distinction between regulating systems and censoring viewpoints.
The legal environment also remains too hostile to public-interest reporting. Even with the Commonwealth’s proposed repeal or decriminalisation of more than 300 secrecy provisions, Australia still lacks a clean, comprehensive framework that strongly protects confidential sources, whistleblowers and good-faith publication of public-interest material.
WeRise should therefore argue for a press-freedom package built on five pillars: plural media ownership, strong public broadcasters, source and whistleblower protection, access to information reform and digital-platform transparency. This is how a democracy protects truth without appointing itself the owner of truth.
Part 02
Evidence and Experience
Press Freedom & Truth: what other countries show
Democracies Protect Truth Best When They Protect Journalism
Norway · Canada · European Union · United Kingdom
International evidence does not suggest a single perfect model for press freedom. What it does show is that democratic systems perform better when they combine structural support for independent journalism with clear legal safeguards and transparent platform regulation. The strongest lessons come from systems that protect editorial independence, support public-interest media, and regulate digital gatekeepers through transparency rather than broad censorship powers. For Australia, the practical takeaway is to pair media-plurality reform and source protection with modern platform-accountability rules that do not hand governments open-ended power over speech.
Norway · Ongoing comparative system
Strong public-service broadcasting, press subsidies and a policy framework that supports media diversity and local journalism. National system; Norway ranked 1st in the 2026 World Press Freedom Index.
- Norway ranked 1st in the 2026 World Press Freedom Index.
- Nordic systems are consistently cited internationally for strong public-service media and plural news ecologies.
- The model shows that market economies can still sustain independent journalism through policy support rather than owner concentration.
Australia does not need to copy another country’s institutions exactly, but it can learn from systems that treat independent journalism as democratic infrastructure. Strong public broadcasters and media-diversity supports are compatible with a free-market economy.
Canada · 2023–present
Online News Act framework requiring bargaining between major digital platforms and eligible news businesses. National bargaining framework covering digital platforms and news organisations.
- Canada pursued a platform-payment framework to address the bargaining imbalance between digital platforms and news publishers.
- The policy highlights both the necessity and difficulty of making platforms contribute to journalism ecosystems.
- International debates show platform compensation alone is not sufficient without wider media-plurality and local-news strategy.
Australia already moved early on platform bargaining, but Press Freedom & Truth should go beyond revenue transfer. The real task is to rebuild journalism capacity, diversity and independence rather than rely on any one commercial mechanism.
European Union · 2022–present
Risk-based regulation for large digital platforms, including transparency, risk assessment and mitigation obligations under EU digital regulation. Applies to major platforms across the EU single market.
- Parliamentary and research analysis increasingly points to transparency and risk-based regulation as the preferred democratic response to misinformation harms.
- The model focuses on systemic risk, data access and accountability rather than direct state adjudication of every piece of content.
- This approach is repeatedly referenced in Australian parliamentary analysis as a useful comparator.
This is the strongest international guide for digital-truth policy. Australia should regulate the systems that amplify manipulation, not hand ministers broad discretionary power to decide truth.
United Kingdom · 2021–2026
Online safety and digital regulation debates combining platform duties, parliamentary scrutiny and ongoing free-expression safeguards. National platform-regulation framework with broad public and parliamentary attention.
- Comparative debates in the UK show how digital-safety law can create free-expression concerns if ministerial or executive powers are too broad.
- Australian commentary on the proposed Digital Duty of Care Bill explicitly references similar overseas duty-of-care models.
- The lesson is not to reject regulation but to separate independent regulation from direct executive control over speech decisions.
Australia should learn from both the strengths and the controversies of overseas digital-safety models. Any truth or platform-integrity agenda must preserve institutional distance between ministers and content-governance decisions.
Part 03
Costs and Trade-offs
The cost of Press Freedom & Truth
Truth Is Cheaper Than Corruption
The cost of press-freedom reform is modest beside the democratic cost of secrecy, capture and disinformation.
Press-freedom reform includes both low-cost legal changes and higher-cost institutional measures. The least expensive elements are legal: source protection, whistleblower reform, freedom-of-information improvements, anti-SLAPP safeguards and stronger ownership transparency. These are primarily legislative and administrative reforms rather than major spending commitments. The larger fiscal questions arise around direct public-interest journalism support, regional and local-news funding, expanded ABC and SBS resourcing, research-access schemes and digital-regulator capacity.
Australia should not invent a fake “net cost” for democracy. Some benefits of press freedom are measurable only indirectly: better accountability, less corruption risk, stronger public trust and better-informed elections. The strongest policy-grade framing is therefore to separate gross program cost from wider democratic benefit, and to treat support for journalism as a capability investment rather than a narrow media subsidy. Where budget figures are not yet publicly specified, they should remain explicitly modelled rather than stated as facts.
| Item | Amount | Note |
|---|---|---|
| Press Freedom Law Reform Package | Low direct fiscal cost; primarily legislative | Source protection, whistleblower reform, anti-SLAPP safeguards and secrecy-law clean-up are mainly legal and administrative changes rather than large spending items. |
| ABC and SBS public-interest journalism uplift | To be costed | Would fund investigative, regional and multilingual reporting capacity, but requires a formal budget commitment. |
| Local and regional journalism support fund | To be costed | Competitive public-interest grants for underserved communities, local reporting deserts and civic-news projects. |
| Platform transparency and data-access regulator capacity | To be costed | ACMA or a dedicated regulator would require specialist staffing, auditing and research-access infrastructure. |
| FOI modernisation and proactive disclosure systems | Moderate administrative cost | Better records systems, timeliness and publication standards may create upfront costs but improve accountability and efficiency. |
| Democratic benefit from improved accountability | Not reliably monetisable | Reduced corruption risk, better scrutiny and stronger public trust are real benefits but should not be converted into speculative savings without robust modelling. |
| Net cost estimate row | Not policy-grade costable until design is finalised | A Parliamentary Budget Office costing should follow once legal package, broadcaster funding and journalism-support mechanisms are specified. |
The strongest objections to Press Freedom & Truth
The strongest objection to a Press Freedom & Truth agenda is that it can easily collapse into contradiction.
A government may claim to defend truth while giving itself new powers over speech, platform content or public communication. That concern is legitimate. The policy space is littered with examples of well-intentioned attempts to combat misinformation that create broad discretionary powers, poor definitions or political opportunities for viewpoint-based enforcement. The answer is not regulatory abstinence; it is institutional design. Transparency, independent regulation, judicial review, narrow statutory tests and explicit free-expression safeguards are essential.
A second objection is that support for journalism can become industry protectionism.
Critics may reasonably ask why taxpayers should subsidise media businesses, especially when some outlets are partisan, low-quality or commercially opportunistic. This challenge should not be brushed aside. Public support should therefore be targeted to public-interest outcomes: local reporting, investigative capacity, underserved communities, multilingual access and editorial independence safeguards. The goal is not to protect incumbents from competition, but to preserve the democratic function of journalism where markets alone are not doing so.
A third objection is that ownership concentration, though undesirable, may be partly a function of audience behaviour and digital economics rather than a simple policy failure.
That is true. No government can legislate people back into buying newspapers or prevent global technology shifts. But policy can shape the terms on which journalism survives: competition rules, broadcaster funding, tax settings, bargaining frameworks, local-news support and platform accountability all influence whether concentration becomes entrenched or contested.
A fourth objection is that national-security and secrecy laws are sometimes genuinely necessary.
Governments must protect intelligence, personal data, ongoing operations and some confidential deliberation. A serious press-freedom policy cannot pretend otherwise. The test is proportionality: whether secrecy provisions are tightly confined, independently reviewable and unable to criminalise ordinary public-interest reporting by default. The Commonwealth’s own 2026 proposal to repeal or decriminalise more than 300 secrecy provisions suggests that the current framework exceeded that standard.
A fifth objection is cultural rather than legal: many people distrust the media and assume “press freedom” means powerful journalists asking for immunity from criticism.
That sentiment has social roots and cannot simply be argued away. The best response is to frame the issue correctly. Press freedom does not mean freedom from scrutiny, market competition or standards. It means the public retains independent witnesses capable of investigating power, correcting falsehoods and surfacing facts that those in authority would prefer to hide. That function remains necessary even when individual media institutions are imperfect.
Part 04
The Australian Design
How Press Freedom & Truth would work in Australia
Protect Journalism, Open Information, Regulate the Gatekeepers
An Australian model that strengthens truth without creating a censorship state.
In Australia, Press Freedom & Truth should be designed as a democratic-systems package rather than a single media law. The Commonwealth would carry most of the legislative burden because secrecy law, national security, corporations law, telecommunications and broadcasting regulation are primarily federal domains. States and territories would still matter, especially on defamation interaction, shield laws, police powers, whistleblower frameworks and freedom-of-information administration.
The first reform stream is legal protection. Australia needs stronger source confidentiality protections, a clearer public-interest defence environment, anti-SLAPP measures against intimidation litigation, robust whistleblower protection and continued secrecy-law simplification beyond the April 2026 proposal to repeal or decriminalise more than 300 provisions. This should include a statutory press-freedom review mechanism to test new national-security or surveillance laws for chilling effects before they are enacted.
The second stream is media plurality and journalism capacity. The Commonwealth should require fuller media-ownership transparency, empower competition scrutiny where concentration threatens democratic plurality, and provide durable public-interest funding for regional, local, investigative and public-service journalism. ABC and SBS should be treated as core democratic institutions, with multi-year funding stability tied to public-interest mandates rather than annual political bargaining.
The third stream is information access. Freedom-of-information law and practice need modernisation through tighter response times, fewer exemptions, better proactive disclosure and stronger publication-by-default requirements. Public information delayed until it is politically harmless is not meaningful transparency.
The fourth stream is platform accountability. Australia should move away from trying to solve information disorder through broad content-policing mandates and instead require transparency on algorithms, political advertising, recommender systems, complaint handling, high-risk amplification and researcher data access. That approach aligns with the stronger parliamentary evidence and preserves distance between ministers and speech governance.
A realistic implementation timeline is one term of government. Year 1 would establish legal reform bills, an independent review mechanism and a public-interest journalism support framework. Years 2 and 3 would implement platform-transparency rules, broadcaster funding settings and FOI modernisation. By the end of the term, the goal should be measurable gains in plurality, access and legal protection rather than a symbolic declaration of press freedom alone.
Part 05
People and Transition
Who Press Freedom & Truth affects
Everyone Who Needs the Truth
The public loses first when journalism is weak, even if journalists are the ones under direct pressure.
The clearest beneficiaries of press-freedom reform are not media companies in the abstract but the public: voters, local communities, workers, whistleblowers, victims of institutional abuse, minority groups, regional residents and anyone who depends on accurate reporting to understand decisions made by the powerful. When journalism is strong, misconduct is harder to hide and public decisions are easier to scrutinise. When journalism is weak, those with the fewest alternative pathways to power lose the most.
Regional and local communities are especially exposed. Market contraction and newsroom cuts have reduced local reporting capacity, even while Australians continue to seek trustworthy news.
Case study
A regional council begins outsourcing public services and awarding opaque contracts, but the local paper no longer has a dedicated reporter after repeated cuts. Residents still feel the consequences through rates, service quality and local jobs, yet there is no sustained scrutiny until a scandal is advanced enough to attract metropolitan attention. Press-freedom reform matters here not as an abstract liberty but as the practical presence of someone whose job is to watch.
Whistleblowers and confidential sources are another directly affected group. Without realistic legal protection, many will stay silent even when they witness corruption, maladministration or abuse. Journalists then lose the information pathways that make accountability reporting possible, and the public loses visibility into institutional wrongdoing.
Case study
A worker inside a contracted detention, care or procurement system sees evidence of wrongdoing but fears losing employment, facing prosecution or being exposed through weak source protection. If source protections are narrow and the publication outlet is already legally vulnerable, the story may never reach the public. The damage is then borne by those directly harmed inside the system and by the wider public that remains uninformed.
Those most likely to resist reform include security agencies wary of disclosure, governments unwilling to lose information control, some major proprietors resistant to plurality measures and some platform firms opposed to meaningful transparency obligations. These objections must be answered seriously, but they are precisely why press freedom cannot rely on goodwill alone.
Part 06
Related policies
Press Freedom & Truth sits within a wider set of WeRise policies.
- Democracy & Rights: more WeRise policies in this pillar
- WeRise: all 29 policies across seven pillars
Notes
Sources and Supporting Documents
- RSF Australia country profile. Profile gives 2025 rank 29 and 2026 rank 33. Dynamic page; preserve year and access date.
- University of Canberra, 16 June 2026 release. Do not conflate trust in own news with all news. Other draft figures 21%,19%,43% still need full report mapping.
- Attorney-General, 2 April 2026 introduction announcement. Announcement supports introduced proposal, not enacted repeal. Check current bill/Act before publication and fix any draft wording implying completed reform.
The April secrecy-law announcement records a proposal at introduction, not proof of completed enactment. Current legislative status, remaining news-survey measures and international comparisons are being checked for the full research document.
Record
Revision History
26 October 2026: Fred approved publication of the initial discussion draft. Primary links added and the secrecy reform described as an April proposal. Complete citation mapping and legal-status review remain in progress; implementation proposals are not adopted or fully costed.
Specific proposals
Making Press Freedom and Truth practical
The direction set out in this policy is the starting point. This is where individual measures can be developed so people can examine what would change, who would benefit and how it could work.
As each measure develops, its evidence, delivery arrangements, costs and open questions will be set out alongside it. The areas below come from the existing policy; they are starting points for detailed proposals, not final costed commitments.
In Australia, Press Freedom & Truth should be designed as a democratic-systems package rather than a single media law. The Commonwealth would carry most of the legislative burden because secrecy law, national security, corporations law, telecommunications and broadcasting regulation are primarily federal domains. States and territories would still matter, especially on defamation interaction, shield laws, police powers, whistleblower frameworks and freedom-of-information administration.
The first reform stream is legal protection. Australia needs stronger source confidentiality protections, a clearer public-interest defence environment, anti-SLAPP measures against intimidation litigation, robust whistleblower protection and continued secrecy-law simplification beyond the April 2026 proposal to repeal or decriminalise more than 300 provisions. This should include a statutory press-freedom review mechanism to test new national-security or surveillance laws for chilling effects before they are enacted.
The second stream is media plurality and journalism capacity. The Commonwealth should require fuller media-ownership transparency, empower competition scrutiny where concentration threatens democratic plurality, and provide durable public-interest funding for regional, local, investigative and public-service journalism. ABC and SBS should be treated as core democratic institutions, with multi-year funding stability tied to public-interest mandates rather than annual political bargaining.