Moves to restrict just what journalists can report on defence and intelligence matters are underway – and journalists need to get up to speed fast.

Documents obtained by Declassified Australia show that following the June 2019 Federal Police raids on the ABC and News Corp, the Department of Home Affairs began secret efforts to revive a four-decade dead system to censor the Australian media.

William Evans

Declassified Australia can reveal that a plan to introduce the “D-Notice”, as the Defence Notice to media is known, is being developed in secret with help from Britain’s Defence media advisory body.

A D-Notice system had operated in Australia until the mid-1980s to prevent journalists voluntarily from publication of identities, techniques and operational details of intelligence and defence operations, particularly by ASIS. It was ignored by many journalists and fell into misuse.

The Australian Federal Police had raided the offices of the ABC and News Corp journalist Annika Smethurst on 4 and 5 June 2019, in response to their reporting on alleged war crimes and a proposed domestic spying plan.

Following the raids, Mike Pezzullo, then secretary of the Department of Home Affairs — a portfolio that included ASIO and the AFP — texted a close adviser to then Liberal prime minister Scott Morrison, Scott Briggs, with plans to censor the media. These texts had been brought to light in a 2023 report in The Age.

Just two weeks after the AFP’s raids on the media, on 18 June 2019, Pezzullo told Briggs that then minister for Home Affairs, Peter Dutton, “likes a D-Notice type” approach.

Briggs told Pezzullo that Morrison was very supportive of Pezzullo’s idea to reinstate the D-Notice system.

Pezzullo also messaged Briggs saying that Labor’s Mark Dreyfus, at the time shadow attorney-general who later went on to become Labor’s federal attorney-general, also “seemed interested”.

Pezzullo proposed a covert plan for Morrison to reintroduce a new D-Notice system, The Age reported.

His proposal was for Morrison to hold a parliamentary inquiry by the Parliamentary Joint Committee on Intelligence and Security which would “give us cover to stitch together a deal built around a modern version of the D Notice system”.

The Age concluded that, “Pezzullo’s D-Notice idea itself vanished as neither the committee nor the government showed interest in it, considering the inevitable backlash from the media".

However, Declassified Australia has obtained internal documents from the Departments of Home Affairs, and Foreign Affairs and Trade, that show that the D-Notice proposal did not vanish as reported.

The documents show that, following Pezzullo’s proposal, Home Affairs officials looked to Britain’s Defence and Security Media Advisory Committee for assistance in reinstating D-Notices in Australia.

Australia turns to Britain

The DSMA Committee in Britain is run by the UK’s Ministry of Defence’s Director General for Security Policy comprised of senior representatives of the security services, former military staff, high-ranking government officials, press association chiefs, senior editors and journalists, which meets every six months. Representatives of the BBC, ITV, Sky News, The Times, Daily Telegraph, The Register as well as Harper Collins UK, are all members.

Public documents from the UK show Australian Government, media officials and academics, have since met Britain’s DSMA Committee multiple times since 2019 with the most recent meeting in November 2024.

Minutes of the November 2019 DSMA Committee meeting report that, after the AFP raids on the media, Australia had reached out for help:

“The Australian Government requested advice on the modus operandi of the UK’s DSMA notice system with a view to reinvigorating its similar but now moribund Australian ‘D-notice system’.”

Meetings between the chairman of the DSMA Committee and officials from the Australian Government followed in late 2019. The DSMA Committee reported Australian officials had been provided with “redacted and unclassified examples of the UK system working in practice".

According to  minutes from the November 2021 DSMA Committee meeting, the Australian Government continued its interest in renewing the old Australian D-Notice system, stating that:

“The Australians felt that an amended [D-Notice] system might suit the current requirement.”

The Australian Government liked what it saw, and this was described in the minutes of the late 2021 DSMA Committee quarterly meeting as being “keen to seek the Committee’s support in future discussions and workshops in which they sought involvement from UK media, security, secretariat and Committee members”.

Britain was only too happy to assist:

“The Secretary would co-ordinate engagement with the emerging Australian Committee and inform members of the requirement when it became clearer.”

Minutes of the DSMA Committee’s meeting in May 2022, show that Australian media representatives were also now becoming involved in developing a new D-Notice system:

“Members from both the Australian media and government had expressed a wish to seek the Committee’s support in future discussions and workshops. They sought involvement from UK media, security, secretariat and Committee members.”

The DSMA Committee declined to answer questions for further details of these meetings and for a list of Australians involved, telling Declassified Australia:

“The strict code of confidentiality on which the DSMA system depends prevents disclosure of the identities of the Australian officials that visited UK and spoke with DSMA colleagues.”

However Declassified Australia has obtained Australian documents through Freedom of Information requests that give clarity on these meetings.

Canberra wants ’to stand up a similar role’

A June 2022 email from the First Secretary (National Security) working with the Department of Home Affairs at Australia’s High Commission to London states they will attend a DSMA meeting the following day at Admiralty House.

“Home Affairs has been engaging with the DSMA Committee, Brigadier Geoffrey Dodds, over the last year to inform work in Australia to stand up a similar role.”

The email, addressed to officials, including in the Department of Defence, reveals that First Assistant Secretary of the Attorney-General’s Department, Andrew Warnes, had travelled to the UK to meet the DSMA Committee’s Secretary in May 2022.

A subsequent document by the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade states that Marc Ablong, then Home Affairs’ deputy secretary, also met the DSMA Committee secretary “to learn more about the work of the DSMA Committee and its engagement with the media”. The document states:

“The discussion focused on the operation of the [DSMA] Committee, the role of the secretary, the use of D-notices and how the committee worked in partnership with [UK] media to provide advice on stories of defence and security importance.”

Ablong, a long term colleague and friend of Pezzullo, was later seconded to the Australian Strategic Policy Institute, a hawkish, military-industrial complex think-tank. ASPI has this year published in support of reinstating the D-Notice system in Australia.

Ablong did not respond to a request for comment sent to him by Declassified Australia.

Australian system gathering speed – enter Peter Greste

A new DSMA-style review process for Australian journalists has a strong advocate in Australian academic and former journalist, Professor Peter Greste.

He has established an alternative journalism  association that has been criticised by the national journalists’ union, the Media Entertainment and Arts Alliance. Most controversially he is lobbying for the registration of approved journalists and wants to introduce new legislation on media reporting.

Prof Greste travelled to Britain in 2024 and met the DSMA Committee in the Ministry of Defence building.

The minutes of the May 2024 DSMA meeting show Greste and his Macquarie University colleague, Dr Rebecca Ananian-Welsh are:

“… writing a paper intended to begin the process of reviving the Australian D-notice system which had fallen into disuse following the erosion of mutual trust between media and government officials”.

The minutes of the November 2024 DSMA meeting explain matters were discussed by Greste and Ananian-Welsh **“**with the DSMA secretary, a number of committee members, and senior members of the UK media”.

Declassified Australia interviewed Prof Greste to find out more about his plans for the introduction of a revised Australian D-Notice system.

He says that the UK’s current DSMA system goes beyond just issuing of media advisory notices, and sees it as distinct from the way the D-Notice system has been implemented historically, which he says is “discredited for a good reason".

He argues a DSMA-style committee established in Australia would allow reporters who report on sensitive intelligence, defence and security matters, to obtain advice before publishing in a way that doesn’t endanger “national security”.

“If you’re a journalist, simply having a document in your possession, even if you didn’t seek it out… suddenly you’re breaking the law, and you run the risk of going to prison for at least five years,” Greste told Declassified Australia.

“If you call the police, or call ASIO, call Defence, call the government for a comment, to get some sense of what it is, how do I interpret what is in here?

“Immediately, you are putting yourself at risk of investigation and prosecution. Even if you do nothing with that document.”

Given the raids on journalists and the prosecution of leakers and whistleblowers, journalists who work with classified security documents may not trust the system that Greste proposes.

“What the [DSMA] system does, is that system gives you the opportunity to talk with someone who has security classification. To help me understand this, help me work out what’s in here, and help me work out what is genuinely sensitive.

“You’re not obliged to take their advice. Under that system, the secretariat of the DSMA [Committee] isn’t allowed to take your query to the police or military. He can only do so if you agree to that.”

The minutes of the DSMA Committee from November 2024 put a slightly more pessimistic tone on Greste’s plans. The Committee Secretary, Brigadier Geoffrey Dodds, recorded his conclusion from his meeting with Greste:

“The current severity and complexity of Australian secrecy legislation created little space in which a voluntary system could operate effectively, particularly when set against the background of a breakdown in trust between the Australian government and a fiercely independent media.

“However, the fact that the conversation was being had at all, was a good sign. It had, after all, taken six years in a much less regulated environment for the British Committee to become established.”

A very British system 

Between 1952 and 1982, Australia’s intelligence services co-operated with Australia’s media to censor information which Australia’s intelligence services deemed harmful to national security.

Australia’s Defence, Press and Broadcasting Committee was chaired by Australia’s intelligence agencies and sent Defence Notices, known as D-Notices, to the media information it considered should not be disclosed to the public or be published.

D-Notices censored reporting on UK nuclear weapons tests in Australia, Australian troop movements in the Korean war, and Australia’s Secret Intelligence Service (whose existence was kept a secret until it was first ever acknowledged by the government in a D-Notice.)

The Defence, Press and Broadcasting Committee operated in secret until it was revealed to the public in 1967, and its list of members was kept secret. It ceased to operate in 1982.

Today, the system remains alive in Britain. Britain’s D-Notices (now officially called DSMA Notices) are issued by the DSMA Committee.

British D-Notices often seek to censor reporting on UK state crimes and other malfeasance.

Following the Guardian’s reporting on intelligence documents leaked to them by Edward Snowden in 2013, a “Defence Advisory Notice” was  sent to British media organisations requesting they seek advice before publishing information about British intelligence and military operations.

Then UK prime minister David Cameron issued a thinly disguised threat, saying “I don’t want to have to use injunctions or D-Notices… But if the Guardian does not demonstrate some social responsibility, it would be very difficult for government and stand back and not to act.”

Following this, the Guardian was subject to further government intimidation, eventually being  forced to destroy hard drives containing the leaked documents under the threat of the newspaper being closed by the government.

The Alan Rusbridger experience

Declassified Australia spoke to Alan Rusbridger, editor-in-chief of the Guardian during both the Julian Assange WikiLeaks exposures and the Edward Snowden leaks, about the heavy-handed government moves.

“They made it clear that if we didn’t co-operate with them [over the Snowden leaks], then they would try and stop us from publishing.

“It was never clear whether that meant policemen in hobnail boots would come into the buildings and try and seize the material, or arrest us, or whether they would go for an injunction to restrain us from publishing.”

The Guardian was able to continue publishing the Snowden leaks out of its US bureau.

“What preoccupied them was being able to destroy all the material as it was held in London. I’ve never understood that, because when we then took it off and initially at least, had it in the Guardian office in America.”

In another case of D-Notices being used to try to cover up reported malfeasance, the DSMA Committee requested British media outlet Declassified UK to remove the name of Lieutenant Colonel Sid Purser, a British senior military adviser supporting the Cameroonian dictatorship.

More recently, one day following the  revelation that SAS soldiers had been deployed to UK military bases in Cyprus and were on standby for operations in Gaza, the DSMA Committee sent an advisory  letter to editors at British media organisations, requesting that they not publish any information related to the SAS’s operations.

The DSMA ‘advisory’ letter seemed to go beyond just advice when it stated:

“May I take this opportunity to remind editors publication of such information contravenes the DSMA notice code. I therefore advise claims of such deployments should not be published nor broadcast without first seeking [DSMA] advice.”

These notices usually remain confidential, but this was  published in July 2025 by independent UK journalist Matt Kennard.

British reporters often submit their stories to the DSMA Committee before publishing, to ensure that they’re in compliance with D-Notices.  Minutes of an April 2024 DSMA Committee meeting state that between October 2023 and April 2024, 70 “requests for advice” were submitted to the DSMA committee.

Rusbridger described this as “better than nothing”.

“If you get a trove of documents like that, any editor would think ‘I have to behave responsibly here’. There were agents’ names, there was stuff in there that concerned the legitimate exercise of any intelligence agency.”

Rusbridger explained that in the case of the Snowden reporting, the Guardian was only concerned with disclosures surrounding mass surveillance, and that being advised by the D-Notice committee on what should and shouldn’t be made public was “the least worst option to have”.

However, Rusbridger said he much preferred the way American agencies dealt with these matters.

“In the US, it was relatively straightforward,” he said. “You would [go to] whichever agency it was, and [we’d] say we had such and such documents, we’re intending to publish something about it, what do you want to say?

“You’d sit down with a case officer, and they would go through and say, ‘you know, on page seven was the name of an agent or whatever it was, and we’d rather you didn’t publish that’. Sometimes we took that advice and sometimes we didn’t.

“In the UK, it’s more complicated because you have to go through [the D-Notice committee]. You don’t have to, but we did, we voluntarily decided that we’d get in touch with the D-Notice person… who’s generally a high-ranking military officer.

“You say the same thing: we’ve got a document and we’re intending to publish it. [The D-Notice person] won’t be the expert in this field. So you can’t have the direct conversation that we did in America.”

In the UK, the DSMA Committee that issues the advisory notices to the media insists that its advice is voluntary, it is not a government body, and it operates independently. However, it’s staffed mostly by current and former British military officials, and the committee is solely funded by the UK’s Ministry of Defence.

Whatever system Australia does or doesn’t adopt — whether it is a voluntary or compulsory system of vetting — it will take Australian journalists a lot to trust the system.

https://declassifiedaus.org/2025/10/31/revealed-secret-plans-media-censorship/

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