Julian Hill (Bruce, Australian Labor Party, Assistant Minister for Citizenship, Customs and Multicultural Affairs) Share this | Hansard source

I'll put on the record that I agree with bits of the previous speaker’s contribution, and I thank him for bits of that contribution. I'm fairly sure that, having listened to the speech, he's suggesting that he may support the bill or that the opposition supports the bill this term. I didn't hear an unequivocal statement that they will vote for this bill this term, because they voted against it last term.

I will remain reasonably optimistic. It is a bit hard to know. You missed the point of order on relevance. I did invite him to take a detour into irrelevance, when he wanted to have an extended go at the crossbench. I thought that might be nice to have on the record. But there were some useful bits in the second half that I could agree with. That's the third speech in the last two days that I've endured from the member for Goldstein. We're a few months into this parliament, and it seems that we're seeing a pattern where he wants to speak on everything as part of his ongoing leadership campaign. I suggest that he provide a little more structure and purpose to the contributions. It might stand him in better stead. The first six minutes yesterday, as with today and as with the day before, were completely irrelevant. Yesterday, after 4½ minutes, he called relevance on himself before the deputy speaker pulled him up. But here we are.

I spoke very strongly in support of this bill on 24 July, and I do so again today. It's something that's very dear to my heart because, when I was chair of the defence committee, I did the work to put this forward. It builds, as I will acknowledge in a moment, on a legacy of many coalition members, including Senator Fawcett, the late Senator Molan and Senator Reynolds, who have advocated for this reform. The irony for poor Senator Reynolds, of course, was that, as chair of the subcommittee, she advocated for the reform and then they made her defence minister. Then she wasn't allowed to implement her own bill because the government wouldn't actually support it. But, anyway, here we are.

There is a clear and urgent need for this. It should have passed in the last parliament. We ended up in a very weird set of circumstances where the then shadow minister, who was strongly in favour—I read the quotes from media interviews where he was in favour into the Hansard when I spoke on the bill last term, and, to his credit, it was a principled view and a well-articulated view—got rolled at the last minute in the shadow cabinet, when the then leader, Peter Dutton, ambushed him. It was pretty shocking. That's a matter of public record now, all the entrails of the campaign. Peter Dutton also seemed to criticised the member for Canning for not doing the work as the shadow minister for defence, but that's their civil war that's ongoing in the bin fire that is the opposition. But I really pay tribute to those who've advocated in a principled way for this reform to have a standalone statutory joint committee on defence. The then shadow minister for defence then got appointed shadow minister for home affairs. Now he's the immediate past previous shadow minister for home affairs, if you don't count the interim shadow minister for home affairs, who was in the job for a week or two during Senate estimates after the member for Canning quit. He cut and ran from his post just before Senate estimates and he now makes car fetish videos—but, anyway, perhaps he will return to greater things one day.

The committee here is modelled on the longstanding Parliamentary Joint Committee on Intelligence and Security, which has stood the test of time. This is a really important thing, and I'll draw the analogy. The PJCIS—I served on that committee for some years—has been critical to building the social licence for intelligence agencies and also to enhancing the parliament's ability to do its job. Inherently, necessarily, most of the work of the intelligence agencies is classified. That's the nature of their work. But it is still important, in a parliamentary democracy, that parliamentarians, not just the executive, can do two critical things: (1) hold executive government to account for their use and control of these agencies—the same parallel operates for defence—and (2) have appropriate forums in the parliament to interrogate and hold the agencies to account. The parliament's role, of course, as we know, is distinct from the executive. Having served on that committee, I think it does well.

There's an inherent tension in the security domain in particular—a little bit in defence but not so much. There's this inherent tension in a liberal democracy between our collective security as a society and notions of individual liberty. And, when the parliament considers natural security laws, in my view, that's actually the tension, the eternal tension, which we're reconciling and making judgements on. If the security agencies have more powers, they can be used covertly. That does impinge on individual liberty. If they have fewer powers, it can diminish our collective security. The ability of parliamentarians to interrogate legislation, to understand the need for it, to see the classified intelligence through the PJCIS, has been well established.

I pay tribute to the Hawke government, particularly to former prime minister Bob Hawke, for the creation of the then parliamentary joint committee on ASIO, as it was, which later morphed into the PJCIS. That was an act of courage, because those who've studied the history of this would know about the two Hope royal commissions—in the late 1970s and, I think, the early eighties. There were two royal commissions headed by Justice Hope to examine the intelligence agencies. The second of those Hope royal commissions explicitly recommended to the Hawke government that there be no such committee. The royal commission said to the government, 'Do not set up a parliamentary committee to oversight the intelligence agencies.' Prime Minister Bob Hawke and his cabinet made the right call—to reject that recommendation and say: 'No. Parliamentary oversight of this part of our national enterprise is important. It does matter.' It was legislated into being and, as I said, I think it's stood the test of time. This prime minister, Albanese, with the support and stewardship of the Deputy Prime Minister, the Minister for Defence, will, I think, in future years and decades to come, be seen to have made the right leadership call, finally, in doing what has long been called for, including by numerous Liberal MPs—yet their own leadership was too spineless to stand up to those in the defence establishment.

This is not a universally loved proposition, but it does have a lot of supporters in the defence establishment, once they've thought it through, because this committee has the potential to do a lot of good: to transform the institutional relationship between Defence and the parliament over time; to support our Westminster system; and to prepare, as the former speaker rightly said, the alternative government—because there are changes of government—to actually move straightaway into their critically important job in defence, because they will have had classified briefings. They will understand the threats that we face. They will understand the capability acquisitions and the rationale for them. They'll understand which projects are on track and off track, and they'll understand the job that they're walking into. That's been a function of the PJCIS for decades—senior members of the opposition serve on that committee and are better prepared to take on their roles if there is a change of government. Obviously, I hope, that's a long time away, but, of course, it will happen, in a Westminster system, one day in the future.

I acknowledge the point the member for Goldstein rightly made. He defined the core purpose as being 'to scrutinise public expenditure and raise the standard of the ADF'. He said that's the core purpose of the committee. I don't fully agree with that. I think that's part of the purpose, but there is more. There's another, broader purpose, which was actually the genesis for this piece of legislation. It was an inquiry that the member for Macquarie, here, and I served on—that I chaired—which was the first serious examination for decades of war powers, of how Australia goes to war. I think there is no graver decision which executive government could make than to take our nation to war, to commit to armed conflict, to enter into armed conflict and to put the lives of the men and women of the ADF and their service personnel at risk, and indeed, if the worst happened, to risk the future and survival of the nation. That is the gravest responsibility any government bears. There are legitimate questions, and there have been in the committee for a long time, about how those decisions are made and the transparency of them. Part of the point of this committee is to improve the transparency and accountability of how those decisions are made to provide a statutory, classified forum where parliamentarians from both sides—the backbench and non-executive members—can be briefed in order to understand the rationale of the intelligence and, importantly, to then have better oversight of a government's conduct of armed conflict operations in war.

There are appropriate restrictions and protections in the legislation for the secrecy of the information which would be provided to this committee, including criminal offences and jail terms for members who may choose to try and leak or misuse the classified information. Those provisions are built into the bill. I want to put on the record that the importance and the significance of this change for the relationship between the parliament and our democracy and the defence establishment shouldn't be underestimated. As the former government said and as this government has rightly continued to say in our statements but also the official documents—the Defence Strategic Review and our national defence strategies—we do face the worst strategic circumstances which our country has seen since the Second World War, and they're deteriorating. In response the government has sensibly and rightly increased significantly the investment in defence. That will continue at record levels and is set to grow.

I noted some of the backhanders of the previous speaker about the government's management of defence and their suggestion that it all had to be held to account. Of course it does. The audit office does its job; the new defence committee will be able to do its job. I would point out that it was not our government but the coalition that saw 28 projects run a collective 97 years late. It was the previous prime minister in particular who was all about announcing but never actually delivering on the capability. We'd all remember the press releases. You'd run out of Australian flags, often, for the announcement, but then, when you'd go and look in the budget papers, there'd be no money or it'd be underbudgeted. They'd announce the capability but they wouldn't put the order in. How many submarines did they announce? We had the Japanese, then we had the French and then they ripped them up—literally billions of dollars. You could have the ATMs whirring, flowing the cash right through the wind, out on the oval and out on the forecourt of parliament and everyone could pick up their money. Billions of dollars were completely wasted. They never placed an order for a submarine. They're the kinds of things that can and should be explored in a classified forum.

Then, of course, the former shadow minister for home affairs and former defence shadow minister the member for Canning—as I said, he makes car fetish videos now, but, when he wasn't doing that, he was putting out the one policy he was allowed to release at the last election, which was their genius idea to order another squadron of F-35s. You can argue the case for that capability. It hasn't been identified as a priority through the proper, thoughtful work, but that was their election platform: fighter pilots. Actually it wasn't fighter pilots; it was some planes. Because they hadn't budgeted for the fighter pilots, they hadn't budgeted for the sustainment and they hadn't budgeted for the petrol, so their genius idea was to order another squadron of planes that would sit on the tarmac and, I don't know, scare the enemy, knowing they couldn't fly. It was as clever as the press releases. They thought the ADF could run onto the battlefield waving press releases of capability that never actually came.

I'm just going to finish on the sticking point, if you like, which is the hand grenade that was thrown in at the last minute by the Leader of the Opposition for the shadow minister for defence's aspirations to support this bill last term. It was their venal, political outrage that their political enemies on the crossbench could ever be appointed to such a thing as the statutory committee of defence. The points that I've made in private—then, before then and since then, as this matter has continued to be talked about around the halls—I've said publicly, and I'll say them again. The composition of this committee is modelled on the tried and tested model of the Parliamentary Joint Committee on Intelligence and Security. The composition of committees is a matter for the parliament of the day, rightly, and we put that in legislation here. This committee has an extra provision that the Prime Minister has to appoint them for obvious reasons, for extra safeguards so that they're appropriate to serve on the committee in terms of handling the kind of information that they handle.

The idea that we should write into legislation forevermore a requirement that large proportions of the parliament be deemed unsuitable or locked out from ever engaging in our national defence is offensive and ridiculous, but I'll finish on the point that it's also incredibly naive. The fact is that about a quarter of Australians now don't vote for the major parties. I'm a big defender of the party system. I know you. We were elected together. We've had this chat. We have different views on this. I think, in a Westminster democracy, political parties perform an essential public good. They bring together people of similar values, not always the same ideas, and they do the hard work of actually putting forward a platform for government, because you change the country for the better through being in government, not through sanctimonious press releases, nice speeches and media stunts. That's my belief. Others can have a different belief. I don't believe overwhelmingly in Independents in the parliament. I don't think they do the work of an opposition, and I don't think they do the work of a government. I respect the individuals and the nature of their service. But Australians have every right to make their own choices, and we need to respect the choices that are made.

If we're serious about arguing for greater defence expenditure, if we're serious about persuading that quarter—perhaps larger in some places—of the Australian people who don't vote for the major parties, then we shouldn't be terrified of the idea of having one appropriate crossbencher on the committee. I'm not speculating about the government's intentions; I don't know what the government's intentions are. It's not my portfolio. I'd just make the principled point that I can imagine multiple scenarios where it would be an enormous advantage for the parliament, for the government and for the defence establishment to have a skilled, experienced crossbencher on the committee who is able to talk persuasively, having been briefed in, to that part of the Australian polity to speak up for the need for defence or a contingency or an armed conflict. Those things do and can and will divide societies in the future. I just think the idea that was put forward and that some are still playing footsie with in the opposition, that somehow their political enemies have to be locked out, is actually not good for our national defence, and it's not respective of our parliamentary democracy. I make those points on a very principled basis. I believe in parties of government. That's where I choose to put my energy. But the idea that it should be rejected again for the same reason is frankly ridiculous.

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