Barnaby Joyce (New England, National Party) Share this | Hansard source

It's interesting that we have in this Chamber today two people who have both been the Deputy Chair of the National Security Committee. What is not astounding is why we find this issue so important.

Australia has found itself in circumstances unlike, I would suggest, anything since the Second World War or maybe similar to the Cold War. We have to understand exactly how there is a malevolent force that does not believe in the democratic principle and does not believe in the general rules of law of the international community. We have to understand that this process is not a secret; there have been 14 points delivered to Australia about how it must act, so this is not anything of any peculiarity. One only needs to read about the circumstances of history and how the world works. I might reflect deeply because this is something of the utmost importance to me, noting that this bill, the Australian Security Intelligence Organisation Amendment Bill (No. 1) 2025, is about compulsory questioning within the framework of ASIO.

There was a time around 260 BC when there was a formidable power called Carthage, which basically dominated the Western Mediterranean. The Carthaginians—which were really the Venetians, which, in today's parlance, were the Lebanese—occupied a whole section of Corsica. Within that remit of their power, they included the island of Sicily. Sicily was part of the dominion, as were sections of the Iberian Peninsula. What was happening at the same time was a rise of another power, on the Italian Peninsula; that was Rome—not Latinian but Rome. Rome were a bit unhappy about the Carthaginians being in Sicily, so they decided to push the matter; it took them a range of times to do it but they finally did it. On that circumstance—I don't want to dwell on it too much, except to say history repeats itself. After that we had the dominion of the Western Mediterranean speaking Latin and the whole culture change to Roman.

That's how society works; there's challenge in response, as the texts I studied at high school said. And we've got it again: China wants the Western Pacific, rather than the Western Mediterranean, to be part of, in its words, a Mandarin speaking culture. It says that democracy is not essential, that democracy is a secondary form of government to guided government. That is, to be quite frank, totalitarianism—the unitary power of a person that subordinates the right of the individual. We have seen that in splendid form in recent times, with the unilateral takeover of the South China Sea. I think you would see it in the more exceptional form of how China deals with the individuals or citizens of Hong Kong, with the incremental increase of Chinese power and Chinese ethos. Journalists have been just taken off the streets. Some of them are so brave that they went back and revisited their belief in that ubiquitous nature of what we are as humans—their desire for freedom, their desire to speak their mind and their belief in their responsibility to let other people know. All the facets and judgements that make up an open society—they were not allowed to have that.

We had tennis players—major ones, and one lady especially, who happened to make a statement against the government, never to be seen again except once when they paraded her out for the media. This is the world we are living in now—and they've been in this building. We know about the inference and the capacity not of the Chinese people but of the communist regime to have their agents, their quasi-agents or their sympathisers working in this building. This is not pretend; this is happening. We're in live time.

At the change of government, which I could see happening—we're not fools; we could see it happening—I said to senior Labor people in the corridor: 'If there's one thing you must be aware of, don't think the communist influence is coming; the communist influence is here. The communist actors are here. They are here right now.' What's so important about this is that, with this incremental attack on our democratic way of life, with this incremental attack on the sovereignty of our nation, with, unfortunately, the circumstances, prevarications and uncertainty in US policy that we've seen lately, we have to be so incredibly astute, aware and on our toes. We have to be en pointe. We have to understand that, if we don't make ourselves aware, understand the role of ASIO and understand the role of ASIS, we are putting our nation at risk.

I was concerned when the National Security Committee of Cabinet talked about removing ASIO. That is not the thing you want to do. You need to have, in that fridge-like chamber that, if you're lucky enough, one day you'll get to sit in, all the information before you for the decisions that you have to make, which at times have people's lives on the line. We need to invest in these agencies so that they are at the very top of their game.

This is going to become even harder now. One of the things that stands behind the difficulty that's now arising is what is happening with artificial intelligence. With artificial intelligence, as we move toward quantum computing, the capacity of a malevolent force to have effect, see everything you do, hear everything you say, observe every document you write and know of every interrelationship you have with every colleague—let's talk about a fundamental thing. Once I get access to your phone—and I do—I also have access to every person you talk to. I know every person you talk to. With AI, it's not like humans going around listening to people; it's AI listening to people, listening to the people who you talk to and listening to the people that they talk to. They can very easily cover this wide dynamic and absorb this information. It doesn't take them long before they know exactly what the Labor caucus is saying. It doesn't take them long before they know exactly what the coalition is saying. It doesn't take them long before they know exactly of all the interrelationships you have, and you can bet one of those paths leads to Babylon, leads to the capacity for a person to say, 'Got it; I'm inside and hearing everything.'

And how do we suss these people out? We have had people in cabinet who we later find are very closely aligned with companies that are state owned enterprises of the Chinese government. We were not at the time aware of them. That's a disgrace. That's a total disgrace—treacherous. And I'm not for one moment saying that they were on the Labor side; no, they were on ours. They are around. So those of us in this room also have a responsibility as members of parliament to keep your eyes and ears open and to listen to people. I hate to say this, but don't take them on face value; listen to them and be aware. There is a lot of money to be made if you are treacherous. You can set yourself up very well if you are treacherous, and that's when you need an organisation such as ASIO to come in and say, 'We want to ask some serious questions. You're going to sit down.'

I always believed, when I used to think about this, that it would be great if you had senior, highly respected members from both sides of the political fence who were retired and out of parliament and basically had a role to have general observation of members of parliament. They would have the capacity to walk in and say, 'We want to have a yarn to you, warning you about things. We want to have a yarn to you about how to not get yourself into a tricky situation.' I had ideas in my head of people such as Kim Beazley and John Howard, who could just say, 'Well, we're going to talk to you.' Also, if there was any suspicion, they could say, 'No. We really want to talk to you, and today we have an ASIO officer in the room with us and we're going to find out exactly what you've been up to. We're interested.'

If we don't understand this, we are so foolish. Our role right now has at its apex that this nation become as powerful as possible as quickly as possible. We have to understand the circumstances that we are in. The Russians are very good too; the Russians are excellent. The Chinese are very, very good. The North Koreans have a crack at it. The Iranians and others have a crack at it. But don't think for one second that they're stupid. Don't think that they're off their game. They are on point. We can say, 'No. That's all in the past,' but there's actually more of it now than there was in the past.

So I commend this bill and I hope that, in doing so, other people understand what we need to do. I hope they understand the dramatic build-up of the Communist arsenal that even Minister Wong has given reference to. No-one can really explain why it has been built up, and they don't want to tell us why. But I suppose you can divine why. You can sit back and think about why you need the projection of power.

I think we could all ask ourselves the question: What was the purpose of a Chinese flotilla circumnavigating Australia? What was the message that was being sent when they conducted live-fire exercises in the Tasman Sea adjacent to Sydney? Why were they doing that? Were they sending a message to say, 'Don't step out of line or you'll be in trouble'? Why did they send their research vessel, which was obviously finding any intelligence it could, through Bass Strait? Why do they hack into our computers? Why do they send vessels to monitor all electronic communications off Rockhampton? Why do they do that? And, between Silicon Valley and China, why are they absolutely scrambling and doing a very, very good job right now of getting themselves to the apex of AI for their assessment processes. Why do they incarcerate Uighurs? Why did they build access roads into India? Why did Wang Yi go to Timor-Leste, Port Moresby, Vanuatu, the Solomon Islands, Kiribati and have communications with the Cook Islands and have a look at Fiji? Why would they do that? Were they bored? Is there nothing on? Or are they thinking about encirclement and the capacity to put us under threat?

I'll close on this: if we get this wrong, people will say, 'They're going to invade.' No. That's too expensive. I'll give you the No. 1 thing they have in mind. Whether you like it or not, the trading currency for Australia is the US dollar, which we are all dealing in. Now imagine if you were forced or knew that you had to trade in renminbi, the Chinese yuan. At that point, they would determine the value of everything in Australia. They would have completely dominated Australia economically without ever firing a bullet.

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