Arch Bevis (Brisbane, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

We live in times when, in a democracy, the security of a nation such as ours requires laws which are not customarily considered appropriate in our society but which nonetheless are necessary to ensure the safety of the population. Since 11 September 2001, that has become a dramatic reality for far too many people around the world and certainly for Australian citizens. The Independent National Security Legislation Monitor Bill 2010 does have bipartisan support and it should enjoy that bipartisan support. It is sound legislation which enhances the oversight of the antiterrorism laws that are necessary in our land.

I was a bit taken aback by some of the contributions of the shadow minister, the member for Stirling, when he spoke just then and, in particular, his reference—in part accurate—to the private member’s bill moved by the member for Kooyong. I was not going to make reference to that, but I think it is worth pointing out, given the contribution we have just heard from the shadow minister, that as with so many other things that we now deal with those opposite had control of this parliament and, indeed, control of both chambers of this parliament to put through any legislation their party room wished without the need to negotiate with minor parties in the Senate. For part of that time, they had an absolute majority. At any time during the last eight or nine years of their office, they could have introduced legislation of the kind that was referred to in the private member’s bill.

Frankly, most commentators and, I think, most people in this parliament saw that manoeuvre for what it was. It was a political manoeuvre. It was a political stunt. In saying that, I do not for one minute say that those who spoke to it, supported it or moved it did not believe in it. Indeed, I think the member for Kooyong does believe in it. He would have been in a very small minority in the Howard government in seeking to pursue that. The Howard government had no desire at the time it had the opportunity to enact this sort of legislation. So to try and make some cheap political point, as the shadow minister did just then, is I think twisting the history a little bit too much. This bill is a good bill. We do not need to play the sorts of games that the shadow minister just sought to play in his contribution.

Let us look at the importance of this legislation. Reference has been made to the work of the Parliamentary Joint Committee on Intelligence and Security in the course of the previous parliament and deservedly so. A good deal of the issues dealt with in this legislation arise from it and the committee has a very well deserved name and respect in this parliament for the quality of the work it does and the bipartisan way in which it goes about looking at matters of this kind. It is a bit alarming to look at the attitude, though, which was adopted back in 2006 when the committee took evidence in its review of the legislation.

During the committee’s hearings in August 2006, officers of the Attorney-General’s Department indicated to the committee’s inquiry that reviews of all of the terrorism legislation were not being planned. No doubt that was the instruction from the government of the day. However, that clearly was not a view that the committee in 2006 regarded as acceptable. As a result, the committee proposed the appointment of an independent reviewer of terrorism laws, based on much the same model as the reviewer in the United Kingdom. In its report in December 2006, the committee said:

To date, post enactment review has been sporadic and fragmented with a focus on specific pieces of legislation rather than the terrorism law regime as a whole. This has limited the opportunity for comprehensive evaluation and highlights the need for an integrated approach to ensure ongoing monitoring and refinement of the law, where necessary.

That stands in stark contrast to the actual policy of the former Howard government, but I am delighted that, in opposition, they have changed their position on this and I am delighted that this bill is before the parliament with bipartisan support.

The independent National Security Legislation Monitor will have an important function in advising government and, through government, the people of Australia about the suitability of our antiterrorism laws. That will enable somebody with a different perspective—a well-qualified but different perspective—to provide advice which can be considered. Ultimately, it is a matter for the parliament whether the legislation should be changed and whether the parliament believes it has got the settings right. However, in matters of this kind, when legislation is being considered which impinges upon civil liberties and rights of individuals and which in the past would not have been agreed to by parliament, in those sorts of areas it is important that we have available to us as legislators a wide range of good quality advice. Having an independent office such as this will for the first time provide that advice for our consideration and, importantly, it will for the first time provide a new set of eyes not just, as the committee in 2006 noted, looking at parts of bills that may be before the chamber but looking at the totality of the various pieces of legislation that together make up our national security legislative framework.

The independent National Security Legislation Monitor will have the function to review on his or her own initiative the operation, effectiveness and implications of Australia’s counter-terrorism and national security laws and any other law of the Commonwealth to the extent that it relates to Australia’s counter-terrorism and national security legislation. As the current Chair of the Parliamentary Joint Committee on Intelligence and Security, I welcome this development. I think it will enhance the collective knowledge and ensure as best we can that we do have effective legislation which provides for the safety of Australian citizens with the safeguards we expect to be in place to protect our civil liberties.

I am also pleased that the bill makes provision for the Parliamentary Joint Committee on Intelligence and Security to refer matters to the independent legislation monitor. I think that is a very useful addition to the processes of oversight in this parliament. Of course, the work of the monitor, as important as it is, is still different to the work that we, as members of the parliament, are engaged in. It will still be an important function of the Parliamentary Joint Committee on Intelligence and Security to itself review the legislation, both bills before the parliament at any point in time and the existing legislation dealing with counter-terrorism related matters. The committee, as it has in the past, will continue to look at those bills and the legislation and, where it thinks it appropriate, will make recommendations to government, the parliament or both about changes that the committee thinks are warranted.

I am also pleased to see the principle of bipartisanship embodied in the appointment of this office. As with the Inspector-General of Intelligence and Security, the Governor-General will make an appointment of the person to fill the role of the Independent National Security Legislation Monitor, but first the Prime Minister is required under the bill before us to consult with the Leader of the Opposition in the House of Representatives. That is a thoroughly appropriate mechanism. Many people who are listening to or interested in this debate may well think that has always been the case; it has not. It is a result of reviews conducted by previous Labor governments and royal commissions. It reminds me that this bipartisan consultation about the appointment of these officers is fundamental to the public confidence in the work of these intelligence agencies and, in particular, the work of those who supervise the intelligence agencies.

In days not that far past, when this bipartisan consultation did not occur, we also did not have effective oversight by parliamentary committees. In the days before the inspector-general we had situations in which intelligence agencies were responsible to nobody other than the ministers of the Crown to whom they reported. If you have a look at those decades in which that was the case, there was a situation where the agencies, left to their own devices, not surprisingly got up to all sorts of things secretly that the Australian public, and I suspect even the parliament of the day, would not have sanctioned. We know this because there were royal commissions. Some of those earlier royal commissions have now been made public after the 30-year rule, and they do not paint a very flattering picture of the activities of some of those organisations. Not only were they incompetent in many respects in the discharge of their core responsibilities but they clearly strayed from their core work and were engaged in a raft of other activities that were unsuitable.

Thankfully, following a couple of royal commissions about a decade or so apart and the actions of this parliament in establishing oversight bodies, such as the inspector-general, the parliamentary committee and now this independent legislation monitor, we have a greater degree—I think a very high degree—of confidence in the community about the work of these agencies. I have made the comment to some of those involved in the agencies that, whilst this review process is no doubt a bit of a pain in the neck for our intelligence community from time to time, it is a heck of a lot better than letting them have free rein for 10 years and then ending up having a royal commission that publicly dismembers them limb by limb and rebuilds them from the ground up. If you go back over a 25- to 30-year period through the sixties, seventies and eighties, you actually find that was pretty much the way things happened. That is not good for anybody. It is not good for the security of Australia, because the work these agencies do is very important. It is certainly not good for governments of the day, because security of the people is one of the most important responsibilities that any government, irrespective of politics, has before it.

It is important that governments are confident that the work they need to have done is being done effectively and within the remit that has been given to them. We have seen examples in the past where government has introduced legislation, ostensibly as a result of the threat of terrorism, which has not been well received in the community, has not been well supported by all of the state and territory governments and indeed has not been supported by the Senate. My mind goes back to the legislation introduced not long after 9-11 in 2001. The legislation that was introduced during that period was extremely controversial. I doubt that many people would recall the provisions of the actual bills that were introduced by the government at the time, but they were referred to the Parliamentary Committee on Intelligence and Security, then chaired by David Jull, a person for whom I have a great deal of respect. That committee did an outstanding job in reviewing that legislation and made a number of recommendations for substantial change to the bills that were introduced by the government of the day. Amazingly, even though many of those recommendations were not immediately endorsed by the then Attorney-General or then Prime Minister, subsequent to their passage through the parliament both the Attorney-General and the Prime Minister were on the record in speeches inside or outside of this parliament acknowledging the improvements that had been made by that parliamentary review process.

As I said earlier, that parliamentary review process is important and the Parliamentary Joint Committee on Intelligence and Security will continue to undertake that function. I warmly welcome the creation of this independent monitor. I think it is a significant improvement in the way in which we calibrate our counter-terrorism laws to make sure that they are as a whole taken together, that they are effective in protecting Australian people and that they impinge upon the basic principles of liberty upon which our democracy is founded only to the extent that is necessary. I commend the bill to the House.

Debate interrupted.

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