Andrew Wallace (Fisher, Liberal National Party, Shadow Cabinet Secretary) Share this | Hansard source

I rise to speak on the Australian Security Intelligence Organisation Amendment Bill (No. 2) 2025. This is an important bill that acknowledges Australia's challenging and increasingly complex security environment, a reality most tragically borne out by the Bondi terrorist attack. It also comes at a time when the national terrorism threat level is classified as 'probable', meaning around 50 per cent. But the risks we face are not limited to terrorism. Australia faces multiple dynamic threats from ideological actors who seek to disrupt society and sow discord, often in ways that are not so obvious at the outset. The bill responds to this reality by formalising and recalibrating ASIO's compulsory-questioning powers to ensure they remain fit for purpose to address the contemporary threat landscape.

ASIO's compulsory-questioning framework allows ASIO, with the approval of the Attorney-General and a prescribed authority, to compel a person to appear and provide information relevant to serious national security threats. In practice, this allows ASIO to require answers and the production of documents where voluntary cooperation is insufficient. These powers exist because intelligence work is inherently preventive. They are designed to identify and mitigate serious risks before they crystallise into acts of violence or mass harm rather than after tragedy has occurred.

The bill removes the longstanding sunset clause over the compulsory questioning powers and makes them permanent. When I say it makes them permanent, I mean it makes them permanent to the extent that anything is permanent in this place—that is, it is always subject to amendment, always. We're not talking about permanent like we talk about permanency with Constitutional provisions. Every single provision of every single bill that comes through this place is always subject to amendment. So while we talk about making them permanent, to the extent that anything is permanent in this place, if anything, after 10 years, I've learnt is that nothing is permanent in this place and the only thing constant is change.

Since their introduction in 2003, these powers have been repeatedly extended because the threat environment has not diminished. What was initially considered an exceptional post 9/11 measure has, regrettably, become an enduring feature of Australia's national security landscape. Not only has the threat endured but it has also continued to evolve. The bill formalises what has already been the de facto position for years. It provides legal certainty to ASIO and allows parliament to focus scrutiny on governance and safeguards rather than repeatedly revisiting the power's existence. Importantly, the bill also expands the scope of adult questioning warrants, which are the warrants that allow ASIO to compel questioning of adults in relation to serious national security threats. Currently, such warrants may be sought in relation to: espionage; politically motivated violence, including terrorism; and acts of foreign interference. The bill amends the definition of an 'adult questioning matter' to include sabotage, the promotion of communal violence, attacks on Australia's defence systems, and serious threats to Australia's territorial and border integrity.

We live in the most geopolitically unstable period since 1945. Foreign interference and espionage rate as some of our greatest national security challenges. Although Australia is a relatively small country by population and, therefore, its ability to be able to walk and chew gum—or to be able to afford to do so—our intelligence agencies have to be able to be equipped to be dealing with not only the threat that we are facing from, quite frankly, countries like China and Russia from an espionage perspective but also the threats that we face from within from extreme Islamic fundamentalists that we have seen result in the deaths of people in Bondi. We cannot be myopic in how we deal with the security of this country. We have to be able to walk and chew gum.

The expansion of the definition of an 'adult questioning matter' that is dealt with by this bill is significant because it reflects our current complex threat environment and recognises that contemporary security threats can be interconnected and do not always fall neatly within what we once considered traditional categories. For example, foreign actors and extremist networks often exploit domestic grievances. We know this to be the case. We have seen Iran up to their armpits in Australian domestic affairs, such that Iran was directly involved in acts of terrorism on Australian soil which led, quite rightly, to this government expelling the Iranian ambassador and two or three other diplomatic staff.

These attacks that were perpetrated by Iran-linked antisemitic groups, which were just criminal gangs, demonstrate how foreign interference can manifest not merely as covert espionage but as direct efforts to inflame communal tensions and undermine social cohesion. In such cases, waiting until conduct escalates into a narrowly defined terrorism or espionage offence may leave intelligence agencies without effective tools at the point that they are most needed. The expanded definition also supports earlier intelligence collection and disruption in complex threat scenarios. It enables ASIO to intervene where there is credible intelligence of serious harm while preserving existing warrant thresholds, ministerial approval requirements and independent oversight mechanisms.

The bill also strengthens oversight, reporting and administrative safeguards. It tightens eligibility and termination provisions for prescribed authorities to reinforce their independence and impartiality. A prescribed authority is an independent legal official, typically a former Superior Court judge or senior legal practitioner, who supervises and controls questioning to ensure it is conducted within strict legal bounds. The bill enhances reporting obligations to the Attorney-General and requires that any questioning occurring after a person has been charged must take place before a retired judge, providing an additional level of independent oversight. Public reporting indicates that ASIO'S compulsory questioning powers have been used very, very sparingly, with only around 20 warrants issued over more than two decades. Oversight bodies, including the Inspector-General of Intelligence and Security—the independent statutory watchdog for intelligence agencies—have consistently found that the powers are exercised judiciously and as a measure of last resort. Their limited use reflects the deliberately high statutory threshold governing their application, not overreach or misuse.

Some critics argue that legislation of this kind risks compelling innocent people to undergo questioning, but intelligence agencies are not investigating completed crimes; they are seeking to prevent serious harm to Australians. That necessarily involves compelling information from individuals who may not themselves be suspects but who may possess intelligence critical to disrupting imminent threats. Given the increasingly complex and volatile threat landscape facing Australia in 2025, it is crucial that ASIO retains the legal authority to compel information from individuals who may hold intelligence of national security importance, especially where those individuals would otherwise refuse to provide it.

While this bill is essential, it should not be the end of the conversation when it comes to equipping our intelligence agencies to navigate our current threat environment. More needs to be done to prevent emerging threats in the current security environment post Bondi, particularly threats emanating from radical Islamist extremism. Following the Bondi attack, the coalition's antisemitism, extremism and counterterrorism taskforce called for a broader package of reforms to modernise Australia's counterterrorism framework. This includes updates to control order regimes, surveillance capabilities and other preventive powers. These commonsense measures would complement the intelligence tools provided in this bill and help ensure Australia's counterterrorism laws remain effective in a heightened and evolving threat environment. This bill is a step in the right direction, but much more must be done to properly equip our intelligence and security agencies to navigate the complex threat environment we face today.

I've had the privilege of serving in this place as the deputy chair of the intelligence and security committee that oversees ASIO and our intelligence agencies. I have seen how the sausage is made. It's really important that we retain that parliamentary oversight of our intelligence agencies. For all those who may argue that our intelligence agencies have too much power, I want to remind them of one thing. Just think about Bondi. Just think about the 15 people who were killed. The threat environment in which we live is extremely dynamic and, as Mike Burgess, the ASIO director-general, has rightly pointed out, ASIO and our other intelligence agencies are not all-seeing and they are not all-knowing, nor do we want to be in that environment. We do not want to live in a police state where our freedoms are taken away from us in the name of national security. We have to get the balance right between keeping Australians safe and ensuring that we have the appropriate liberties that 103,000 Australians have died for over the last 126 years.

I want to use my last few moments to, as I often do in this place, acknowledge the efforts of our ADF personnel. We often acknowledge the 103,000 men and women who paid the ultimate sacrifice for protecting this country, but we rarely, in my view, acknowledge the efforts of our intelligence agencies and their people that are stationed in the four corners of this world whose job it is to keep Australians safe. They don't wear a uniform, they certainly don't wear a flag on their left shoulder, they're not armed and, yet, they work to keep us safe. All those men and women often work in what are incredibly dangerous situations for their own personal safety. They do that for you and me and the other 27 million Australians. We should acknowledge the risks that they take every day, and we should thank them for their service.

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