Julian Hill (Bruce, Australian Labor Party) | Hansard source

I'm delighted to speak on the Defence Amendment (Parliamentary Joint Committee on Defence) Bill 2024, which will transform for the better the relationship between the parliament and Australia's defence establishment, and I mean that very seriously and very genuinely. It will see the establishment of a standalone joint statutory committee on defence with real responsibilities and powers. As chair of the defence subcommittee, I crafted the report on armed conflict that recommended the establishment of the committee in this new form. It's been a long time coming. Various similar proposals were recommended under the former government. Ironically, one of those inquiries was led by Senator Reynolds when she was chair of the subcommittee, recommending a similar thing. Then, when she became Minister for Defence, she was not allowed to implement her own recommendations.

I want to touch on the need for the bill. Context is the starting point. As I said, this bill flows from an inquiry into how Australia decides to enter armed conflict situations. This included consideration of what role the parliament has in such decisions and, importantly, in oversighting conflicts and executive government once a decision is made. Our inquiry concluded that decisions regarding armed conflict or the gravest decision of going to war are and must remain the prerogative of executive government, and there is no greater responsibility that any government bears. But alongside that reality there is a clear and urgent need to significantly improve the transparency and accountability of governments for these decisions and the conduct of military operations, and to improve the role and the ability of the parliament to hold governments to account. This necessitates formal arrangements which should be put in place now, including via an appropriately empowered and resourced joint committee with the ability to handle classified national security material appropriately.

In making that recommendation, we also identified the need for broad responsibilities and a revamp of the entire relationship between parliament and the defence enterprise. I mean that in the broader sense: the Department of Defence, the Australian Defence Force, portfolios agencies and entities, defence industry, the Inspector-General of the ADF and so on.

This need flows particularly from the very challenging and complex strategic circumstances that Australia finds itself in. We've been saying around this parliament, under the former government and under this government, the vast majority of members of both houses, that our country faces the worst strategic circumstances we've faced since the Second World War. They're not words that can just roll off the tongue lightly. One of the things that we need to do in response to that—that the parliament urgently needs to do—is to devote more time, resources and firepower to scrutinising and working with Defence.

And it's not all about secret stuff, either. A more coherent and coordinated scrutiny of public issues and well-informed public discussion of defence and strategic policy matters is critical. Nothing in this bill would mean less transparency or accountability, but it would mean that the parliament can get into areas that we have never been able to get into before. It's also true that the vast bulk of critical topics and questions that must be explored and understood by parliament are currently off limits due to a lack of power or classification issues. This is unacceptable, and it's also harmful for defence and the ADF in this environment.

I've been a member of the Defence Subcommittee for five years and I've served as chair for the last two years. It is, frankly, ridiculous that elected members of parliament with a serious interest in strategic issues have little to no ability to engage meaningfully with the most fundamental issues that go to the security of our country and our responsibilities, like these: What's really behind white papers and defence strategies? What contingencies are we actually planning for as a country and are we prepared for them? What are our major gaps that require extra attention? They may require policy or legislative action, or new investments. What about long-term multidecade investments that outlast successive multiple changes of government?

We need to understand in a classified forum, a detailed forum, the rationale, the progress and the expenditure on key capabilities as well as sustainment activities. One-third of the Defence portfolio budget is largely off limits to scrutiny from the parliament because it involves sustainment. The minute you do that in public, you may trigger vulnerabilities to potential adversaries, highlighting where stuff's not fit for service. It's ridiculous. This stuff consumes hundreds of billions of dollars of taxpayer funds.

What is our planning for industry mobilisation in the event of contingencies? What about specific issues such as fuel security; the operations, resources and performance of the Inspector-General of the ADF; or matters relating to defence personnel and veterans? And I see the minister here at the table.

I spent two hours here last Friday afternoon in the subcommittee with senior ADF officers—three stars—and two deputy secretaries, reviewing matters relating to the Defence Strategic Review and the National Defence Strategy. It was a serious and thought-provoking discussion but also frustrating and at times farcical. Throughout the discussion, we constantly and repeatedly hit brick walls, where senior officials said with equal frustration, 'We wish we could brief you on that and explain what we're doing. We wish we could explain to you our thinking on the importance of that capability,' or this thing. 'We wish we could talk with you about that question because we're grappling with it also, and it's difficult.' There are things that are at the intersection of the professional military, senior public servants and the parliament, but we can't talk about them.

The current situation is patently ridiculous and it needs to change, and urgently so. Frankly, this bill should pass both houses this week so we can get on with work. It's not just about the parliament, to be clear; the new committee would be beneficial to defence and also the Australian public. Parliamentary scrutiny is important in ensuring the best decision-making and the most efficient and prudent use of taxpayer funds, along with a more informed parliament and by extension, therefore, the Australian public.

With respect to this committee and the Defence proposal, I draw a parallel with the Parliamentary Joint Committee on Intelligence and Security. It's a committee that I sit on, the shadow minister sits on and, Deputy Speaker, that you sat on and where we bonded. In the 1980s, the second Hope royal commission into Australia's intelligence agencies explicitly recommended against establishing a parliamentary committee on ASIO. Prime Minister Bob Hawke, in the 1980s, considered that recommendation and very wisely rejected it. The Parliamentary Joint Committee on ASIO went on over the coming decades to become today's Parliamentary Joint Committee on Intelligence and Security. It was a wise decision by Prime Minister Hawke, just as this is a wise decision by Prime Minister Albanese.

This committee will be good for scrutiny and oversight, just as the PJCIS was. It was good for fostering greater bipartisanship on national security matters and good for our entire system of government. The senior shadow ministers, like the shadow minister for defence there, are then already engaged and briefed when there is a change of government. They come into the portfolio knowing where they're at. It's good for intelligence agencies themselves. It's built greater knowledge, literacy and awareness amongst MPs of the work our security agencies do that can't be talked about in public. It has enabled them to be held to account for failings in an appropriate way, drawing on insights from the Inspector-General of Intelligence and Security, and we do that. I believe it has improved their social licence with the Australian people, who know that the agencies are subject to proper democratic oversight, even if it can't all be done in public.

This stuff is really difficult in a Liberal democracy. It's the inherent tension between the collective security of the Australian people and an individual's liberty. It's absolutely right that democratically elected parliamentarians are the arbiters of that tension. I am a member of the PJCIS this term. The committee is hardworking, diligent, robust when needed and operates in a collaborative spirit. The Parliamentary Joint Committee on Defence—if we can ever get this bill passed—will have the same benefits for democracy and defence as the PJCIS has had for the national intelligence community.

To support the establishment of the committee, the government has provided $17.5 million over the decade, in this budget. It's 1 July; the appropriation is there and ready to go. All we need to do is actually pass the bill. As I said, it's a long time coming. The inquiry I led was to deliver a commitment in the Labor Party's national platform when we came to government. Previous inquiries also recommended the establishment of a statutory committee on Defence, but when the former government responded in 2019 to a recommendation of their own government-controlled committee, they disagreed. They said:

There are already substantial Parliamentary oversight measures in place for the Department of Defence. Australia has enjoyed a long period of broad bipartisanship agreement on Defence policy, operations and force structure and additional measures to enhance bipartisanship are not necessary at this time.

Basically, that is complete waffle. It didn't address the issues in the report. It doesn't address the real issues in front of the parliament or the country and doesn't go to the reality of the issues that we face.

I'll make some gentle remarks about the opposition's current position. It's a little peculiar. More than that, I'd say it's bizarre, disappointing, irresponsible and, frankly, embarrassing for them. Senior members of the opposition—literally every single opposition member I've spoken to over many months and a couple of years, really—acknowledge the need for this to happen. They've been publicly calling for it. Indeed, they've written to us, asking for this bill to be accelerated. There have been wise words from the shadow minister, who's been on the record publicly calling for this since 2020. He said:

… parliamentary scrutiny of Defence is broken and needs fixing.

He went on to say, and I agree:

There is no independent Joint Defence Committee where tough questions can be asked in a classified, protected space. Parliamentary scrutiny these days is surface level … This is an area of urgent reform. If we are serious about increased accountability and transparency, then we need proper parliamentary scrutiny of the Department of Defence and the Australian Defence Force. Without it, our parliament can't exercise proper civilian oversight of our military.

I agree. We should all agree. So it beggars belief that now the opposition say they won't support it unless we fiddle the membership rules to lock out their political enemies.

The government's position on this has been clear from the beginning. The committee's report, which everyone signed up to, recommended that it be modelled on the Parliamentary Joint Committee on Intelligence and Security, which has long enjoyed bipartisan support. Actually, if you look at the bill we're debating and the PJCIS legislation, they are the same. It's cut and paste. This was a unanimous recommendation of the committee—save for the Greens political party's dissenting report. But now it seems, despite the manifest urgency and the benefits to be gained from this for the country, for the parliament, for the Australian people and for Defence itself, we're at a crossroads. The Liberal Party is trying to blackmail the government into agreeing to an undemocratic amendment that would stop parliament ever appointing members of the crossbench to the committee. And the Greens political party say in their dissenting report that they'd support the committee only if members of the crossbench were appointed.

The government is committed to having this bill passed. In realpolitik though—let's just call it out in plain English—the impasse is bizarre. The Liberal Party is incentivising the government to do a deal with the crossbench which they claim to oppose; the crossbench are doing the reverse. Both fringes of politics are acting in self-interest not the national interest. I really encourage all of my colleagues to stop the silly game of parliamentary chicken, grow up and pass the bill as it's drafted, modelled exactly on the longstanding PJCIS legislation.

I'll just make one final point. I'm not speculating, in the months, hopefully, or years or decades to come, what this Prime Minister or future prime ministers would do with that important power to appoint members to this committee, which is exactly the same as the Prime Minister of the day's power to appoint members to the Intelligence and Security Joint Committee.

But I do make the point, as uncomfortable as it is for many of us, the reality is, right now, that about a quarter of Australians are not voting for either major party. I think that's a problem. I do not believe in the cult of the independent—this narcissistic individualism. Governments are collective endeavours. It's great to sit and howl at the moon in the Senate, as the Greens political party do, but governments are collective endeavours, and you change the country for better through government—I believe through Labor governments. Others have a different view, fair enough.

But, given disinformation, foreign interference and misinformation, just imagine the circumstance where our country was faced with a military threat and where the government of the day, whoever they were, had to exercise that grave responsibility and put our troops in harm's way. There may be a time when it would be downright sensible, if not necessary, to have one of the more sensible members of the crossbench in the tent, being briefed and able to talk to that significant proportion of the Australian population who might trust them, not them, not us or not mainstream parties. I don't agree, to be very clear, but I do think it's fundamentally undemocratic to write in legislation a provision that prevents the parliament appointing any member of parliament to a committee.

I'll conclude with the previous comments on the need for this committee, in March this year, again by the shadow minister—you can have the last word again, shadow minister. I've read your stuff, and I agree with you on this: 'I think that it would be a really important development for a lot of parliamentarians who care about our troops and want to see the best for them'—well put. Pass the bill.

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