Michael Keenan (Stirling, Liberal Party, Minister for Justice) Share this | Hansard source

The answer to the latter part of what the shadow Attorney-General is asking is: I am not familiar with the correspondence that he is talking about. If he is saying that he has just sent it today then I do not know whether there has been a response or not, but I can give him some general points about the issue that he is raising. We have heard a lot about his concerns regarding the Solicitor-General, and the facts about what he is alleging are very well known. As we know, the Attorney-General issued a direction that established a procedure that gives effect to paragraph 12(b) of the Law Officers Act 1964, which provides that a function of the Solicitor-General is:

… to furnish his or her opinion to the Attorney-General on questions of law referred to him or her by the Attorney-General …

The direction enables government bodies to request Solicitor-General opinions by seeking the consent of the Attorney-General. Very importantly, these arrangements do not limit the independence of the Solicitor-General, as the member for Isaacs appears to be alleging.

A lot of the sound and fury around this seems to be about the method of consultation that occurred between the Attorney-General and the Solicitor-General, but, again, the facts about this are very well known. A consultation occurred in the Attorney-General's office on 30 November 2015, at which the Attorney-General invited the Solicitor-General to provide further feedback in writing about the issue. The 30 November meeting was requested by the Solicitor-General to discuss the process for seeking and acting on Solicitor-General advice in significant matters. The Attorney-General considered the Solicitor-General's views before finalising the amendments to the direction and the guidance note that accompanies that direction. I think it is very important to note that, since that direction was made, the Attorney-General has considered 10 requests for the Solicitor-General to provide an opinion pursuant to paragraph 12(b) of the Law Officers Act, and all 10 requests have been approved. He has also made one direct referral to the Solicitor-General himself.

The member for Isaacs raised the Criminal Code Amendment (High Risk Terrorist Offenders) Bill 2016, which is amendments to the Criminal Code. This is a vitally important initiative of the government to secure community safety. He is right to say that this is quite an extraordinary power that we are requesting the parliament to approve, but of course we are living in an extraordinary time where we do need to give our agencies the powers that they need to do the job that we require of them. This bill provides for the continuing detention of high-risk terrorist offenders. Our decision to introduce a regime of post-detention for serious terrorist offenders is based on the fact that if they were to continue to present an unacceptable risk to community safety then we would continue to detain them. We have had a conversation with all of the states and territories. Every single jurisdiction in Australia endorses the Commonwealth's approach to this.

We are very confident that the bill as drafted is constitutionally valid. The Solicitor-General has provided advice on the draft bill. Amendments were made to the draft bill that take into account the views of the Solicitor-General, as well as feedback that we received from our partners in the states and territories. Consistent with the longstanding practice of this government and previous governments, including a government of which the member for Isaacs was a member, we are not going to comment on the content and nature of the government's legal advice.

There have been opportunities for the member for Isaacs to ask questions about this at the Parliamentary Joint Committee on Intelligence and Security. I urge him to continue in this parliament the very constructive approach that was taken in the last parliament. On questions of national security, between 2013 and 2016 we were able to work constructively with the opposition to ensure that we updated the powers that were available to our agencies. The terror threat that we are facing now is vastly different than that we faced previously and we do need to police it in a different way. That requires resourcing for our agencies. We have been providing that. It also requires powers to our agencies. We need to make sure that they can intervene early. If somebody continues to pose a risk to the Australian community, I think the expectation is that we will continue to detain them.

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