House debates

Thursday, 30 October 2014

Bills

Counter-Terrorism Legislation Amendment (Foreign Fighters) Bill 2014; Consideration in Detail

12:51 pm

Photo of Mark DreyfusMark Dreyfus (Isaacs, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Attorney General) Share this | Hansard source

I want to make it clear that Labor will be voting against this amendment and also make it clear that the member for Melbourne has wholly misconceived the purpose of what will become section 119.7 of the Criminal Code. As the minister has said, the Crimes (Foreign Incursions and Recruitment) Act, which is being incorporated here in the Criminal Code, has contained a prohibition on publishing an advertisement to recruit people to fight in foreign conflicts since 1978. What this legislation does is to incorporate that prohibition on publishing an advertisement for the purpose of recruiting persons to serve in foreign conflicts or to take up arms in foreign conflicts. This legislation adds to it this provision, which is what the member for Melbourne's amendments are directed to, but adds to it something that is designed to capture something that was perhaps less common or non-existent in 1978: the well-known concept of an advertorial—something that appears in the media looking like a news item but which has in fact been paid for. That is all that this provision does. The member for Melbourne has represented it quite falsely as an extraordinary attack on press freedom. It is nothing of the kind. We need to see this amendment for what it is: it is masquerading in some way as a defence of press freedom, which it is not. The provision does not attack press freedom and amending it is not a defence of press freedom.

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