The 15 recommendations in the recently released review of Commonwealth secrecy laws carried out by Independent National Security Legislation Monitor Jake Blight are as important as they are timely.
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That said, if past experience is anything to go on, it is highly unlikely this, or any, government would ever implement them in full.
That's because ever since the days of Gilgamesh any administration in a position of power has been obsessed with keeping its missteps, misdeeds and mistakes secret. God forbid the great unwashed should ever know how their taxes are being wasted and what the great and the good do in their name.
Machiavelli, who told princes never to let the right hand know what the left was doing, argued embarrassing disclosures could lead to unfortunate consequences.
"In general, men judge more with their eyes than with their hands, since everybody can see but few can perceive," he wrote. In other words "out of sight, out of mind".
Mr Blight's recommendations go to the heart of the public's right to know. This is the cornerstone of any liberal democracy. They are particularly timely given the recent return of Julian Assange to the shores after more than a decade in durance vile, the prosecution of Bernard Collaery and the imprisonment of "Afghan files" whistleblower David McBride.
They also echo many of the exit interview observations made by his predecessor Grant Donaldson SC late last year.
While Mr Blight has not gone so far as to recommend the addition of a "public interest" defence to laws that can be invoked against journalists who "deal" with secret material by either receiving it and not publishing it or, in fact, by publishing it, that was because this protection is already implicit.
"The current defence for disclosures in the course of reporting news and current affairs should be retained," he wrote. "For a journalist to invoke the defence, they must adduce or point to evidence that, taken at its most favourable, suggests a reasonable possibility that they 'reasonably believed that engaging in the conduct was in the public interest'. This is known as an 'evidential burden' and is not a high bar."
His final recommendation was that: "Consideration should be given to revising the prosecution policy of the Commonwealth to expressly include the public interest in a free and open press as one of the factors to be considered in any prosecution for a secrecy offence involving a journalist or news media organisation".
If this was adopted it could be a game changer for public interest journalism; scaling back the risk of a government initiating punitive prosecutions against journalists whose actions it disagreed with.
While the ABC's Dan Oakes, who broke the story on special forces war crimes in Afghanistan, was not charged, he lived with the threat of prosecution for the better part of a year.
Given the importance of what was disclosed, and the subsequent fall out from the Brereton inquiry which would not have occurred without this reporting, that is patently unjust.
Journalists should not have to risk of going to jail for doing their jobs in what is supposed to be a liberal democracy.
And let's not forget that the charge Julian Assange pleaded guilty to could have been brought against any Australian journalist involved in the publication of the Wikileaks material.
Too many of the laws currently in place are clearly intended to protect "official's secrets", not "official secrets". It is to be hoped Mr Blight's findings will drive reform.
