Aaron Violi (Casey, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

Before I start, I want to commend the member for Braddon, who spoke earlier and shared his experience in the Signals Directorate, for the words he spoke in thanking those men and women who do the service that they do and for the lives and safety that they provide for the Australian public. I want to echo his words and also thank him for sharing a bit of an insight into their work because, by its very nature, many Australians—myself included—don't know or understand the work they do. As with many great agencies, we don't know what they do and we hear about them only when things go wrong, so I want to echo the words of the member for Braddon.

When it comes to the intelligence and security of our nation, it is vital that our legislation remains modern so that our security and intelligence agencies can continue to operate with our nation's best interests in mind. It is crucial that the Australian public have trust in our security and intelligence agencies. The work of the Australian Security Intelligence Organisation, the Australian Signals Directorate, the Australian Geospatial-Intelligence Organisation, the Australian Secret Intelligence Service, the Office of National Intelligence and the Defence Intelligence Organisation is often carried out in secret, and for good reason. But this means that many of the usual forms of democratic accountability—whether it be questioning in parliament, in the media or in reporting—are often not appropriate. That's where our dedicated intelligence oversight body, the Inspector-General of Intelligence and Security, comes in.

Oversight mechanisms such as the Inspector-General exist to strike the right balance between national security and individual rights. It's a balance that can be hard to strike but it's important that we get that balance right. Our role as parliamentarians is to ensure that the Inspector-General of Intelligence and Security is empowered to carry out its oversight functions, and the way we do that is through ensuring that our legislation is up to date. And just as the powers of intelligence and security agencies need to be updated as new challenges arise, particularly with the rapid rise of digital technology, we must ensure that the powers of the Inspector-General of Intelligence and Security are also updated to allow it to respond to new threats. The Inspector-General of Intelligence and Security has significant investigative powers similar to those of a royal commission, including powers to summon witnesses, question under oath, enter intelligence agencies and access all relevant information and documents. This bill seeks to modernise the legislative framework to allow the Inspector-General of Intelligence and Security to continue its important and great work.

The bill implements two recommendations of the Richardson review, the Comprehensive Review of the Legal Framework of the National Intelligence Community. The first of these recommendations will prevent the head or deputy head of an agency within the jurisdiction of the Inspector-General of Intelligence and Security from being appointed as the Inspector-General of Intelligence and Security immediately after serving in that position. We are of the view that it would not be appropriate to appoint a person to the Inspector-General of Intelligence and Security who was previously the head of one of the agencies that it oversees. And it is necessary that there is a distance between the head of the oversight body and the agencies within the remit. That was the position taken by the Richardson review and it's the position of the coalition. It's a sensible change to remove any perception of conflict of interest. This bill implements that change, and we welcome it.

The second recommendation from the Richardson review that this bill implements is to allow the Inspector-General of Intelligence and Security to consider employment-related grievances for staff of the Office of National Intelligence. This will resolve an oversight gap to ensure that staff employed under the Office of National Intelligence Act 2018 can access an independent review for employment grievances. As it stands, there is no pathway of redress for these workers. This bill will change that by filling the gap and ensuring that all workers have grievance mechanisms available to them. This is important work.

This bill will also allow the Inspector-General of Intelligence and Security to manage jurisdictional double-ups. There are a number of other integrity bodies that also have jurisdiction over some agencies within the remit of the Inspector-General of Intelligence and Security. The Richardson review noted, for example, that the Commonwealth Ombudsman and Inspector-General had oversight of the same agencies. This creates the potential for duplication of oversight. The bill will reduce this duplication by allowing the Inspector-General of Intelligence and Security to streamline information sharing between the bodies.

In short, many of the measures proposed by this bill are sensible changes that were previously considered by the Parliamentary Joint Committee on Intelligence and Security. Many of these measures were also previously contained in the coalition's Intelligence Oversight and Other Legislation Amendment (Integrity Measures) Bill 2020. However, this bill is not the same as our bill. Labor's version does not bring AUSTRAC or the Australian Criminal Intelligence Commission within the remit of the Inspector-General of Intelligence and Security, and we believe that it must.

This bill also admits the significant oversight function of inquiring into a decision in relation to an Australian government security clearance of the highest level. The bill confers jurisdiction to inquire into acts and practices that may be inconsistent with or contrary to a human right. The coalition had previously proposed a similar function, with a key difference: that a referral from the Australian Human Rights Commission would be required. That filter is not applied by this bill. The operational impact of these changes and the implication for Australia's national security architecture have not been scrutinised. Australia's national security architecture is too important to simply change without carefully considering the consequences. The risk of unintended consequences is too high. On 7 February, at the urging of the opposition, the government referred this bill to the Joint Committee on Intelligence and Security for inquiry and report, and the report of the committee was tabled on 20 March.

The PJCIS report made five recommendations, two of which are relevant to the bill: recommendation 2, which suggests amending the provisions around the abrogation of privilege so that they align with provisions for other integrity agencies, and recommendation 4, which suggests excluding people employed in any intelligence agency for an appropriate period of time. The government is not acting to amend on the basis of these recommendations but have indicated that they will consider recommendation 4 in the next stage of the IGIS legislation. We support this legislation. We also note other matters raised by the PJCIS, particularly the need for greater information sharing between the IGIS and the PJCIS and the need for expanded oversight of the PJCIS and the IGIS to cover the entirety of the national intelligence community. The government should give these matters serious consideration to strengthen the important framework that ensures that the Australian public has trust in its intelligence and security agencies.

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