James Stevens (Sturt, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

I would like to thank the member for McPherson for bringing this motion to the House and, of course, I speak in favour of it. This is a fundamental issue to do with the structure of the national security of our nation, and a major change that the new government has, peculiarly, decided to put in place to dismantle the cooperation and coordination that we created in government through the creation of the Home Affairs department. Previous speakers have talked about the agencies that were brought together under that one single umbrella. In particular, to me, whilst many are reflecting on the past, I think the most important thing about the Home Affairs department is the future and the challenges that we will face as a nation into the future that are still developing and emerging as we speak.

As technology changes and other capabilities change we will see agencies needing to work together more than ever before. Different complex criminal capabilities around cyber et cetera and new ways and technologies that criminal enterprises will have access to will mean that our agencies that exist in law enforcement and border protection—intelligence gathering—will need to have an ability to collaborate together in an even more enhanced way into the future, and that's why it's so disappointing and regrettable that we're taking this backward step in separating apart these agencies from one common department.

Let's be clear, firstly, that these agencies are still standalone agencies. There is a Commissioner of the Federal Police, a Commissioner of Border Force and so on. The people who hold those roles are very distinguished people who are not, in my experience, at all susceptible to being bullied by a department head or being pushed around by anyone from the political class or from the departmental level. The independence of those agencies is one of the reasons that they are held in such high regard in this country and around the world. To suggest that by being in a department like Home Affairs the Federal Police Commissioner is in some way at risk of being subjugated by the head of that department and of not discharging their statutory responsibility is patently ridiculous. But what we are missing out on by dismantling this department is the natural opportunity for these agencies to have that enhanced level of collaboration in working together in a uniform structure within a single department.

I've certainly had experience with cross-agency matters, both at the Commonwealth level and the state level in South Australia. Of course, all of our agencies are exceptional, but in times of emergency, such as national security matters—but even in times of emergency management et cetera—there is a very high value in taking every opportunity to bring different agencies together to work as closely together as they can when major challenges face the nation. That might be from a national security point of view. That might be from an emergency management or disaster relief point of view. The point is that by having all these agencies together in one department we gave ourselves the best chance of them working as collaboratively together as possible. What this decision by the new government says to me is that that is not their priority. There are clearly internal tensions within the government and between cabinet ministers that have meant that someone has to be given some of these agencies in their department so that they can feel some sense of more significance in the role that they hold than they would have if they didn't have those agencies allocated to them, but that should not be the priority when it comes to matters of national security. We should not be making decisions for the vanity benefit of particular ministers.

Suggestions in this debate about super departments and the cabinet process are really a reflection of concerns that members opposite have about their own ministers. The suggestion that they couldn't trust a minister to hold a portfolio of Home Affairs and have all of those responsibilities under the one person, because apparently the culture in their government is that that person couldn't be trusted to operate within the confines of the Westminster system, couldn't be trusted to operate within the structures of cabinet government and couldn't be trusted to properly inform the Prime Minister and the National Security Committee of cabinet, is a reflection of the standards of the people that they've appointed to these positions in their government. But it's certainly regrettable that, because of that, the most important thing, which is the best national security interests of this nation, is being sat on the back seat to the challenges they've got in managing the personnel in their own cabinet. That suggests to me that the people in those positions should be reconsidered by the Prime Minister. He should reconstitute this department and he should prioritise the national security issues of this nation over any others.

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