Stuart Robert (Fadden, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

My question is to the Attorney-General. Will the Attorney update the House on the impact the Commonwealth's changes to call-out powers for the ADF will have for Australia's national security?

Christian Porter (Pearce, Liberal Party, Attorney-General) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I thank the member for his question and for his fine contribution to our Defence Force over the years. Today the Turnbull government introduced the most significant and substantial reforms to the way in which defence call-out powers operate in over 20 years. Of course, as well as the economic security of Australia, the national security in keeping Australians safe is the foremost priority of this government.

To explain to the members of the House the substance of this change, it's necessary to have a quick look and an understanding of how the present rule operates. At present, the ADF is not able to be requested by a state who might be in a terror situation unless that state and the relevant authorities consider that the state is utterly overwhelmed and unable to respond to that threat. The difficulty with that is that it has been an incredibly high threshold, a very inflexible threshold, and it is not a question that could be properly answered by any state or authority until some distance down the time line of an offence itself. That has not worked. The view that was taken after the inquiries into the Lindt Cafe siege was that that was a standard that needed to be cautiously and sensibly changed. At the heart of the changes that we have brought in with the bill in the House today is that that standard changes to a more flexible and sensible standard where the state authorities—usually state police—would need to consider the nature and scale of the terrorist threat that they were facing and then consider whether there were any particular specialist ADF assets, skills or service personnel who could be brought to bear to improve the situation and the response and help save Australian lives.

For the benefit of members of the House: it's not particularly difficult, unfortunately, to consider and conceive of the types of the situations that we and the Turnbull government are now preparing our country for. When we look at the terrible and tragic events that occurred in Paris on 13 November 2015, we see that, in the space of about 43 minutes, three suicide bombers detonated bombs. There were three separate shootings at different locations in cafes and bars across Paris. The Bataclan Theatre was subject to a multiple-shooter incident where 89 French citizens lost their lives. Those people died. Others were subsequently used in a hostage situation where the attackers were wearing suicide vests. It is an unfortunate reality of the world in which we live that that type of situation is not inconceivable in any Western democracy, and it's also not inconceivable that, had that or an analogous situation unfolded in Australia, the present standard for the ADF call-out would not have been met.

It is very sobering to think that there is a need for legislative change that we have brought into this House today with great cooperation from all of the states and territories, coalition and Labor governments. I'm looking forward to working with members opposite on the passage of this bill. This is an example of a way in which on a bipartisan basis we can make Australians safer, the way in which the Turnbull government has that as an absolute priority and the way in which the fine service men and women of our ADF can potentially help save Australian lives.