Plots and Prayers
Malcolm Turnbull (Image: AAP/Dean Lewins)

Former prime minister Malcolm Turnbull and publishers have criticised a bizarre decision by the Australian Federal Police to close its investigation of the illegal distribution of hundreds, and possibly thousands, of copies of Turnbull’s book A Bigger Picture by Scott Morrison’s staff, other Coalition figures and journalists in 2021.

In a letter to Hardie Grant Publishing’s lawyers this week, the AFP’s deputy commissioner investigations said the AFP had “finalised” the matter, meaning no action would be taken despite the clear breach of the Copyright Act by a number of individuals. The AFP’s justification for declining to take further action was that:

  • the initial leak of the book occurred on an overseas server
  • the ebook was “distributed to a relatively small number of people” and the individuals who distributed it were not acting in concert
  • Hardie Grant’s lawyers had already obtained damages from a number of individuals
  • the cumulative harm from the distribution was assessed as “low”.

After discovering the ebook has been leaked, Hardie Grant and its lawyers rapidly compiled evidence of distribution of the book within Coalition and right-wing circles, including by Morrison staffer Nico Louw, with a “family tree” showing hundreds of copies of the book being emailed. Hardie Grant secured damages from a number of distributors, including Louw. A number of Coalition recipients, including senior ministers, had deleted the emailed book without forwarding it.

The AFP has taken more than 18 months to decide that it will do nothing.

Turnbull believes the AFP’s refusal to go any further reflects a view that digital theft should be treated with less seriousness than physical theft. Speaking to Crikey, Turnbull said, “No doubt if you walked into Dymocks and took hundreds of copies of books out in a wheelbarrow, you’d be charged. But the important point is that this involved the Prime Minister’s Office — it was the deliberate theft and distribution of hundreds of copies by people who worked in the heart of government, for the prime minister. The object was to inflict commercial harm.”

The distribution of several hundred copies — the final total remains unknown and could be much larger — led to News Corp running extracts from the book without authorisation from Turnbull or the publisher.

“When you think how seriously content industries have had to fight to defend intellectual property, and Parliament has responded to make it clearer that it is theft,” said Turnbull, “the next person to do something like this will be able to point to this decision and ask why they should be prosecuted when the Prime Minister’s Office wasn’t.”

Hardie Grant’s Sandy Grant was similarly unhappy with the decision. “If the PMO breaching copyright won’t attract police attention, what will? This undermines a law that is so important to publishers. Digital theft is not trivial — look at News Corp’s recent results — 25% of its revenue was from digital. The AFP isn’t even sure how many copies were stolen.”

CEO of the Australian Publishers Association Michael Gordon-Smith told Crikey “the treatment of Mr Turnbull’s book by Mr Morrison’s office was shameful. It would have been wrong for anyone to treat an author’s and a publisher’s property with such disrespect. For the Prime Minister’s Office to do so was reprehensible. It seemed that they had allowed a chance to express their personal animus to overcome their basic responsibilities.”

Gordon-Smith and APA president Lee Walker wrote to Morrison in April last year. “We wanted to know whether he took the matter seriously because it risked undermining his government’s formal statements about support for intellectual property. He did not reply.”

The AFP seems to share Morrison’s failure to take it seriously.