Mark Dreyfus (Isaacs, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I rise in support of the Independent National Security Legislation Monitor Bill 2010. It is pleasing to hear from opposition speakers that this bill, in the form in which it is now before this chamber, has the support of the opposition. It is of course the case that we have had very substantial debate in this country since late 2001, when the first of a series of antiterror laws were introduced by the Howard government, and those antiterror laws are, of course, rightly regarded by all in this place as temporary measures. They are regarded as temporary measures because they make extreme changes in some respects to what has been traditionally understood to be the balance between the liberties that Australians enjoy—indeed, the liberties that Australians have fought wars for—and the need for our authorities to be armed with necessary powers in order to combat the threat of terrorism.

It is because of the extreme nature of these measures and because they are rightly regarded as temporary measures that, at the time that the antiterror laws were debated in late 2001 and in 2002 and the years following, a substantial part of the debate was devoted to considering what length of review was appropriate for them and what type of sunset provisions ought to be introduced so as to ensure that temporary measures of the nature of these antiterror laws did not remain part of Australian legislation for any longer than they needed to. I can say that—and I think there would be some agreement, with the benefit of the years since these laws were passed—the sunset provisions that we find in the legislation introduced by the Howard government were inadequate. In fact, only division 3 of part III of the ASIO Act has a clear sunset clause and it brings on a review in 2016. It was because of the absence of sunset provisions applying generally to the Howard government’s antiterror laws that there have been repeated calls for other reviewing mechanisms, and those calls have included suggestions that there ought to be an independent reviewer of the antiterror legislation who would conduct regular reviews and bring to the attention of the government and the parliament any suggestions that there was no longer a need for these antiterror laws to be continued.

It is unfortunate that two of the opposition speakers who preceded me, the member for Mitchell and the member for Stirling, have sought in a sense to rewrite history. They have sought to forget the attitude that the Howard government took to the Sheller review in 2005, and that attitude was to implement not one of the 20 recommendations of the Sheller review.

Debate interrupted.

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