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

Again, just going two or three pages in, without the opportunity to digest these amendments, I think it becomes apparent that if you are a journalist who is getting information that might relate to a future Attorney-General or might relate to something else, and if ASIO wants to seek a warrant for you and what you are doing, it will never go to a court and all the public interest advocate gets to do is go and talk to the person who you may be investigating, wanting to write a story or wanting to follow up. If that is right, I wonder whether it is up to them as to whether they want to stand up. I wonder whether the Labor Party agrees with that or whether they have been sold a pup, because that is pretty significant and it is not in accordance with what I understood from previous submissions from the opposition side to be the level of protection accorded in these amendments. In the short time available to us, that is one question which we have been able to point to. Can the minister explain under what agency or under whose control the public advocate will be, within the government department. Can the minister also explain who they will report to and how much funding this public advocate will get.

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