‘Witness K and Bernard Collaery are heroes’: how Australia made two men pay for its dirty secrets

Bernard Collaery called the government’s announcement it will end the case against him ‘a good decision for the administration of justice in Australia’. Photograph: Lukas Coch/AAP

Whenever young law clerk Chloe Preston was under pressure, her boss, Bernard Collaery, had some sage words of advice.

“He would say to me, ‘Chloe, only stress if you’re being shot at’,” Preston recalls.