David Feeney (Victoria, Australian Labor Party, Parliamentary Secretary for Defence) Share this | Hansard source

Firstly, I will address your point concerning WikiLeaks, which I am sure was not entirely rhetorical. At a Senate estimates hearing on 25 May this year, the Secretary of the Attorney-General's Department stated that that was not the department's view and that the officers of the department did not refer to this amendment as the 'WikiLeaks amendment'. The Director-General of Sec­urity also advised that the amendments are not connected to the WikiLeaks matter and he stated that the amendments to the legislation were considered long before WikiLeaks arrived on the scene in the way that it did.

I suppose the government would emphatically assert that this legislation is not the product of WikiLeaks or the issues around WikiLeaks. We would assert that this bill was in development long before WikiLeaks became the topical issue that it has subsequently become.