Australia only digging deeper hole by pursuing East Timor spying case

The Age was right to call not only for an open trial of Bernard Collaery in the East Timor bugging case, but for the Commonwealth to abandon its prosecution altogether in its editorial earlier this week.

• Gareth Evans
• The Sydney Morning Herald

As a former attorney-general and foreign affairs minister—responsible in my time for both ASIO and ASIS – I well understand the argument that absolute institutional discipline must be maintained in relation to our intelligence agencies.

But every case is context-dependent, which is why prosecutorial discretion always exists in criminal cases, and there multiple grounds for its exercise here.

They include the evident motivation of Collaery – like his client, the…

• Australia only digging…