Bob Brown (Tasmania, Australian Greens) Share this | Hansard source

Isn’t he just so wonderful! By the way, Senator Abetz was not here when I explained that the Greens support the legislation. He got that wrong, too. The problem with the legislation that this seeks to amend is that it strips away basic rights under Australian law, which concerns people far more learned in the law than I am—though they may not be more learned than Senator Abetz. A former Liberal Prime Minister said, of the basic laws we are dealing with here, that other countries have not found that they need these sorts of powers and other countries have been under much greater terrorist threat and greater threat of attack than Australia. Justice Ron Merkel told the Age:

The move to granting ever-expanding coercive power to the executive arms of state and federal governments, to be exercised behind closed doors and without public scrutiny, carries with it grave risks to the democratic values we are trying to defend ... One must have serious concern as to whether the political hierarchy is deserving of the kind of trust and integrity that the public are entitled to expect of them in administering that power.

One of the things that have failed to happen with this legislation is the adequate protection of the rights of people taken off the streets in secrecy to be questioned by ASIO. I asked a question of Senator Ellison about the ability of ASIO to effectively deny a lawyer to somebody they are about to question through the authority that decides these matters. There is no basis of evidence as to why a lawyer should not be brought in to advise a person held under those extraordinary circumstances. It is simply left to ASIO to convince the judge that they do not trust the lawyer and therefore do not want the lawyer in there. The lawyer will not know about it. The client will not know the argument. There is no opportunity to argue that out. Moreover, while this amendment says, ‘In those circumstances the person could ask for another lawyer,’ they are not told that. They are not necessarily given that opportunity. In fact, this legislation can be used by ASIO to deny a person a lawyer no matter who they ask for—and that is that. That is a very grievous departure from the standards of behaviour the people I have just quoted would expect in the Australia they value.

There is so much more here. You can have your passport taken off you while a warrant is being considered, but if the warrant is not issued there is no provision for your passport to be given back. There are all sorts of mechanisms here for inappropriately treating Australian citizens, because they are under suspicion, without them having proper recourse under those circumstances to the usual checks and balances of the law. The reason the Greens are supporting this legislation is that it is a very weak response to a committee that said these laws, as they stood on the books, ought to be curbed. But this legislation has done very little to address the wrongs of the laws that have passed in the name of fighting terrorism but that effectively have done what terrorists would wish to see—that is, dismantle a little of the liberties and freedoms which we in our country hold so strongly as being part of the ethos of our community and which make us the envy of many people around the world.

It is fair enough to debate the matter in here and to ask questions about it, and one would expect to get answers to the questions, but I know there is no answer to the question of why a lawyer should not be brought in to represent a person under these secret circumstances, out of the view of the public, the media, loved ones—anybody. It is because the intelligence agencies in these circumstances simply want to circumvent the law as we know it, and that is effectively what recent legislation has done. The government supports that; the Greens do not. I agree with Senator Abetz that there is a difference in the approach, and I maintain very strongly that before this recent legislation we had enormous powers for surveillance, interdiction, arrest, bringing to justice and putting out of action any would-be terrorist in Australia. It is curious that the Greens have such a strong position of supporting the norms of Australian delivery of law to citizens and the checks and balances that are there while the coalition has stripped some of those away, we think quite unnecessarily.