David McBride, 60, has been sentenced in a Canberra court to five years and eight months in prison after pleading guilty to three charges including theft and sharing classified documents with members of the media.

Justice David Mossop ordered that McBride serve at least 27 months in prison before being eligible for parole.

Human rights groups say McBride's conviction and sentence exposes the lack of whistleblower protections in Australia, with McBride himself saying outside court on Thursday he had acted in the public interest.

"I have never been more proud to be an Australian than I am today. I may have broken the law but I did not break my oath to the people of Australia and to the soldiers who keep us safe," McBride said.

McBride's barrister, Mark Davis, said his legal team would appeal a decision that prevented McBride from fully presenting his defence.

The documents McBride leaked formed the basis of a seven-part series by the Australian Broadcasting Corp in 2017 that alleged war crimes, including the unlawful killing of unarmed Afghan men and children by Australian Special Air Service soldiers in 2013.

Police raided the broadcaster's Sydney headquarters in 2019 seeking evidence of the leak, but decided not to charge the two reporters responsible for the investigation.

In sentencing on Thursday, the judge said he did not accept McBride's explanation that he believed a court would protect him because he was acting in the public interest.

The judge rejected McBride's claim that his suspicion senior figures in the Australian Defence Force were engaged in criminal conduct justified him leaking the classified material.

An Australian military report released in 2020 found evidence that Australian troops unlawfully killed 39 Afghan prisoners, farmers and civilians, and recommended 19 current and former soldiers be investigated for criminal offences.

Former soldier Oliver Schulz last year became the first of those veterans to be charged with a war crime, over the fatal shooting of an unarmed man in Uruzgan province in 2012.

Also last year, a civilian court found that Australia's most decorated living war veteran, Ben Roberts-Smith, may have unlawfully killed four Afghans, but it did not criminally charge him.

Human Rights Watch Australia director Elaine Pearson said McBride's sentence was evidence that Australia's whistleblower laws needed to be overhauled.

"It is a stain on Australia's reputation that while some of its soldiers have been accused of war crimes in Afghanistan, the first person to be convicted in relation to these crimes is a whistleblower, not the alleged perpetrators," Pearson said in a statement.

Some minor party MPs and independents have also condemned the conviction and called for the government to change the laws.

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