I was wrongfully jailed in Egypt, but Australia’s culture of surveillance takes the cake

National

Press freedom

Opinion

Peter Greste Author, journalist and academic October 23, 2025 — 3.35pm

In what appears to be an increasingly dangerous world, all of us want to feel safe. That fear of the outside has given successive Australian governments the political space to pass an extraordinary suite of laws that together create a culture of surveillance and secrecy that now runs through every level of administration, whether federal, state or local.

As a foreign correspondent, I’ve worked in a whole host of regimes – some pretty horrible authoritarian ones – and I was wrongfully imprisoned in Egypt for 400 days. I’ve also worked in countries that we’d consider to be open liberal democracies. And I haven’t come across anywhere as reflexively secretive as Australia seems to b