Nick McKim (Tasmania, Australian Greens) | Hansard source

As I said, I don't expect anything better from the Liberal Party, but I do expect better from the Australian Labor Party. You can call me naive, you can call me an innocent if you like, but, as someone who grew up in a time when the Labor Party would have stood up for fundamental rights and freedoms in Australia, they continue to disappoint me, and I know that they continue to disappoint millions of Australians who expect and want better from the Labor Party.

The Parliamentary Joint Committee on Intelligence and Security also reported on the 2018 bill. It made nine recommendations, six of which were for amendments to this legislation and two of which were that the Australian Federal Police be required to keep and report on certain records. Most of those recommendations were implemented in this bill, including increasing the thresholds for exercise of powers from the highly subjective aviation security to the less subjective public order and safe operation; increasing accountability and oversight over move-on directions; and providing greater clarity about the status of lawful advocacy, protest, dissent and industrial actions. These changes do address concerns that were previously raised by the Australian Greens in the context of the 2018 legislation.

I want to make a brief observation around the recommendations that relate to the Australian Federal Police. The government has not, in total, accepted those recommendations. It has merely said it will update its policies and procedures to require certain records to be kept 'to enable annual reporting' but has not committed to keeping all of the records that were recommended and did not explicitly commit to publishing that information annually.

In its report on the bill we're currently debating, the Parliamentary Joint Committee on Human Rights said:

The new narrower definition of 'public order and safe operation' in the 2019 bill appears to address these human rights concerns. However, it is noted that the proposed powers to require identity information and issue move on directions remain serious from the perspective of human rights. If the bill is passed, continued monitoring of these powers, in practice, would assist to ensure that they are only exercised in a way that is compatible with human rights.

That's the view of the Parliamentary Joint Committee on Human Rights. From where the Greens stand, this bill is an attack on fundamental rights and freedoms. I believe in this place we alone will oppose it on the basis that, as I mentioned earlier in my speech, the government has comprehensively failed to make the case for this kind of draconian legislation. This bill also repeals the term 'constitutional airport' from the Crimes Act and replaces it with 'major airport', which will increase the number of airports that will be subject to these new police powers. Major airports at which the new police powers can be used will, if this legislation is successful, be determined by the minister. The Crimes Act does not contain move-on powers. Various move-on powers do exist under state and territory laws as well as the Aviation Transport Security Act, but this bill will provide move-on police powers that are broader than those under the Aviation Transport Security Act.

As I said, we accept that this bill is an improvement on the 2018 legislation, but, ultimately, the changes do not make this a good piece of legislation; they simply make it a less bad piece of legislation. This bill should have been the subject of an inquiry of the legal and constitutional affairs committee, and we're very disappointed that major parties did not support an inquiry into this legislation.

On a matter of principle, and I want to state this very clearly, you don't protect the Australian way of life by trading off rights and freedoms. That is the wrong way to go about this. When you do trade away our fundamental rights and freedoms, as we collectively in parliament have done over 200 times in the last 20 years, you actually change the nature and fabric of our country; you change the nature and fabric of our society. You take away those rights and freedoms. I understand why governments want to make the community safer, and I support the community being made safer as long as it is done in a reasonable way, but this is not a reasonable piece of legislation; it's an unreasonable piece of legislation. We have a horrendously high road toll in this country. People are dying on our roads. We could transform that to zero tomorrow by banning people from driving cars, but we're not going to do that, are we, Senator Duniam?