This article examines the actual and potential effects that Australian counter-terrorism laws have
on public discussion and access to information, exploring how democratic commitments to
media freedom might best be balanced against contemporary demands of national security. It
analyses how the laws affect the media’s ability to investigate and report on matters of public
interest. It explains how the research has been conducted; identifies some of the main elements
of the legal framework and the way that those elements may affect, and sometimes have affected,
the media; and offers some tentative conclusions about the ways that the media have been
affected which are not directly, causally attributable to the suite of counter-terrorism laws but
which are important to understanding the contemporary relationship between media freedom and
public discussion of matters of public interest where national security is concerned