Adam Bandt (Melbourne, Australian Greens) Share this | Hansard source

It occurs to me then that the situation is this: if ASIO—and there may be other security agencies; I just do not know, because I did not have time to read these amendments in detail—are wanting to seek a warrant for something that a journalist is doing, and it may be that the journalist is perhaps talking to someone in a government department who is raising concerns to them about potentially even the minister himself or herself as the case may be, that process does not get argued out in front of a judge. What will happen if a journalist is talking to someone and ASIO wants to know a bit more about it is that, in a closed process, ASIO would go to the minister, who may in a future government be the minister that the journalist is actually investigating, and it will never be argued in front of a judge. All that will happen is that this new public interest advocate will have the right to make a submission to the Attorney-General, but that otherwise it will never come in front of a judge. Is that correct? And is that the intention of this amendment?

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