Jenny McAllister (NSW, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

For over a century Labor has demonstrated its understanding that the paramount responsibility for parliamentarians is to keep our community safe and our nation secure. We demonstrate this in practical ways by working in a bipartisan fashion, whether in government or in opposition, to ensure that our security and law enforcement agencies have the powers and resources they need to keep our community safe. We may not always agree with our political opponents on how Australians can be best protected; however, we engage constructively in a political debate about matters of this kind. These are debates that all healthy democracies ought to have. And because we do not believe that national security should ever be manipulated or exploited for partisan purposes, we do not seek to politicise any disagreements that we may have with the government on national security matters. We always seek to resolve those disagreements through constructive and considered debate.

We acknowledge that it is the prerogative of the government of the day to decide how it wishes to organise the executive government and its agencies. The present bill, the Home Affairs and Integrity Agencies Legislation Amendment Bill 2017, is essentially a procedural bill that implements the decision of the Turnbull government to radically reorganise some of the nation's national security and law enforcement agencies. This bill was referred to the Parliamentary Joint Committee on Intelligence and Security, on which I sit. That committee recommended that the bill be passed subject to an amendment being made relating to the role of the Inspector-General of Intelligence and Security. In light of that recommendation and because this is essentially a procedural bill, Labor supports the passage of this bill. However, we wish to place on record several concerns about these changes to our national security and law enforcement framework that the bill implements. We do this because the machinery-of-government changes that this bill helps to legally implement are not minor or technical. They are a significant re-working of our national security and federal law enforcement framework and this is openly acknowledged by the government.

The Prime Minister declared in his second reading speech on this bill last year:

… these initiatives represent the most far-reaching reorganisation of our national security architecture since the Hope royal commissions of the late seventies and early eighties.

Our primary concern is that the government has struggled to explain why the sweeping changes to be brought about by this bill are required at all. Our national security agencies are recognised as highly effective. It is also recognised that they cooperate effectively with one another.

Just last year a comprehensive review of our intelligence services was conducted by Mr Michael L'Estrange AO and Mr Stephen Merchant PSM and that review was released in July last year. The review did not, in any way, recommend the kinds of changes that the Turnbull government is now putting in place. From the Labor side, we are concerned that the reasons for this experiment have not been sufficiently explained by the Prime Minister.

I also note that the concept of a Department of Home Affairs is not new. It was previously considered by Prime Minister Howard, by Prime Minister Rudd and by Prime Minister Abbott. After careful consideration, each of those prime ministers rejected the proposal. Yet this is the proposal that the member for Wentworth is now enacting; and it is not entirely clear what has changed, and the government has not sought to explain it. One effect of the new arrangements is to concentrate power that was once shared between a number of ministers and their departments into a single minister and a new super-department called the Department of Home Affairs.

Most democratic nations are careful to avoid the concentration of power in a single entity or a single person. Most of those nations favour systems with checks and balances, and this is particularly the case with the kinds of coercive powers and intrusive capabilities that our law enforcement and national security agencies necessarily exercise. Concentrating those powers and capabilities under a single department and its minister can weaken the checks and balances that are needed to prevent citizens from the inappropriate or unlawful exercise of those powers and capabilities.

Many of our most senior security experts have pointed out that the concentration of power might also weaken our national security by reducing the contestability of key decisions. Under the arrangements being put in place by this bill, a single minister, presently the member for Dickson, Mr Dutton, will alone be responsible for complex decisions that until now have been debated by multiple ministers who have shared responsibility for our nation's security.

I also note that the government's approach to legislating the various changes to the existing acts necessary for the creation of the Department of Home Affairs has been somewhat haphazard. The government first stated its intention to establish the Department of Home Affairs on 17 July, yet it took until 7 December to second read this bill—which at that time amended only four acts of parliament. Subsequently, following the government's disclosure in evidence to the PJCIS that there were a further 33 acts of parliament that required amendment in order to effect the creation of the portfolio, the Attorney-General proposed a further 311 amendments to the primary legislation. These additional amendments were considered by the PJCIS, which recommended that they be passed. At paragraph 1.27 of its report on this bill the committee stated:

The Committee notes that machinery of government changes are a matter for the government of the day. As such, it is not within the remit of the Committee to consider the broader policy decisions behind the changes, but to scrutinise the amendments as proposed.

The bill before the Senate reflects those additional amendments proposed by the government at that time.

In conclusion, and consistent with the intelligence committee's view, I reiterate that Labor acknowledges the prerogative of the executive to determine the machinery of government. We support this bill as implementing changes brought about under that prerogative. Labor will carefully monitor the operation of these new arrangements. We will listen carefully to the advice of our security agencies as these arrangements take effect to make certain that the new framework operates as the government intends and is in fact of benefit to our nation's security. I commend the bill to the Senate.