Graham Perrett (Moreton, Australian Labor Party) | Hansard source

Member for Hinkler, I was over that side of the parliament today, but it was only to sit with the member for Grey on a diabetes motion. It has been suggested that it is reckless and undemocratic, but let's be realistic. If you are a party of government, you are not someone who will sit around and sing 'Kumbaya'. If military intervention is coming over the horizon, you are not going to send a strongly worded letter, as some parties would suggest. We need to be realistic about the world that we live in. As I said, the largest military buildup since World War II is occurring right now.

We thought the Parliamentary Joint Committee on Intelligence and Security model would be taken over to this new committee because there has been a long history of bipartisan support for it. I see the member for Canning is here. He formerly supported the establishment of the defence committee, saying, 'I think that would be a really important development for a lot of parliamentarians who care about our troops and want to see the best for them.' In fact, he wrote an opinion piece back in 2020 where he called for the committee, saying, 'Parliamentary scrutiny of Defence is broken and needs fixing.' The member for Canning also wrote: 'There is no independent joint defence committee where tough questions could be asked in a classified protected space. Parliamentary scrutiny these days is surface level. This is an area of urgent reform.'

On Friday I was in a meeting of the Foreign Affairs, Defence and Trade Committee. The Defence establishment were there saying, 'Well, we can't talk about that. I would love to talk about that but I can't talk about that because we are not in a secure facility.' So we do need that accountability and transparency.

I know that the committee will work well. It will include the ADF, the Department of Defence and the Department of Veterans' Affairs. The committee will have a broad range of functions that will be the standing terms of reference. It will provide greater oversight, greater transparency and accountability on significant areas of the Defence portfolio that are so needed. And it would have 13 members, with no more than seven from government and six non-government members from both houses of parliament. For those listening, that mirrors the Parliamentary Joint Committee on Intelligence and Security, as do all of the arrangements for information handling. All of the proceedings would be conducted in a secure and private setting.

I particularly commend the secretariats that work in those committees. I know it is incredibly difficult work, because things can change so quickly. I know that the Intelligence and Security Committee had—if you remember, Deputy Speaker Vamvakinou—that raft of security legislation that had to come through and be processed by the poor old secretariat. I think the member for Canning would agree that the poor old secretariat had to deal with incredible amounts of information in that process, and the secretariats that serve this parliament do an incredible job.

The culture of such a committee would be important. I think the starting culture must be bipartisan support. This is an opportunity for later speakers to indicate that. There is a saying from Trotsky: 'You may not be interested in war, but war will be interested in you.' For those that want to just say: 'We don't need any AUKUS. We don't need any defence. We can just sit around and sing kumbaya and send off a couple of petitions if we get in harm's way,' that's not a realistic understanding of the world we live in, in 2024. I urge all members of this parliament to support the legislation.

See this speech in context