War on terror used to cut freedom: Greste
Journalist Peter Greste says governments are using the "war on terror" to justify attacks on rights and freedoms.
The Al Jazeera foreign correspondent spent 400 days in Tora prison in Cairo, before Egyptian authorities allowed him to walk free on February 1.
Greste and colleagues Mohamed Fahmy and Baher Mohamed - who face retrial - were arrested in December 2013 and charged with consorting with the banned group Muslim Brotherhood.
In June 2014 they were sentenced to seven years' jail.
Mr Greste told the National Press Club in Canberra on Thursday that freedom of speech was being threatened around the world.
"Since the war on terror, governments have used the T-word as an excuse for all sorts of attacks on human rights and press freedoms," he said.
Two-thirds of the estimated 220 journalists in jail were there because of anti-state charges such as terrorism or subversion, he said.
"That fact is troubling because it seems to confirm ... that the atrociously named war on terror is itself a part of the problem," Mr Greste said.
The war on terror was "indefinable, with no clear physical or ideological boundaries and a title that means everything and nothing", he said.
"What it has done is make the media the battleground."
Asked about the Abbott government's proposed metadata laws, he said there was potential to weaken freedom of the press.
"It is all too easy and too tempting for governments to use the war on terror as a convenient use to ... claim more power in interests of national security, trading off the media's oversight role in the process."
Attorney-General George Brandis said Mr Greste's comments about press freedom deserved the "greatest of respect" and the government was committed to the principle.
He said the metadata bill had many protections specific to journalists.
"As to throwing around the T-word, this government has not done that," Senator Brandis said, adding its responses to the national security crisis had been proportionate, considered and measured."
Mr Greste has launched a global campaign to draft a universal media freedom charter.
