Senate debates

Monday, 10 February 2020

Bills

Telecommunications Amendment (Repairing Assistance and Access) Bill 2019; Second Reading

4:26 pm

Photo of Eric AbetzEric Abetz (Tasmania, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

All right. Seeking publicity, cheap or otherwise—people will make up their own mind in relation to that. But one has to ask and one might reflect on the motives, but I will not do so any further. Suffice to say, there is a complete inconsistency in approach by the Australian Labor Party in relation to matters of national security, and in my time on the Parliamentary Joint Committee on Intelligence and Security there has been a great degree of cooperation and a great degree of understanding by those of us on that committee of the need to protect our fellow Australians. Regrettably, we do live in an environment today where intelligence and security matters are very much front and centre of concerns—quite rightly so—and we need to protect our community to the very best of our ability.

Do I understand that with that you want to protect people's individual liberties, privacy et cetera as much as possible? Absolutely. As a Liberal that is always where I start: seeking to protect individual liberties and privacy. But you always have to balance these things, take a mature approach and ask: how much liberty do you give to the individual when it might potentially prejudice not just one or two but, in a very bad terrorist attack, it could involve hundreds of our fellow Australian citizens? So you need a mature balanced approach.

Did the initial TOLA legislation get everything absolutely right? Chances are not. Like every other piece of legislation, it's very hard to say that you always get it right right from the start. But guess what? That is why the government and the parliament have agreed to the Parliamentary Joint Committee on Intelligence and Security having this review of the legislation inquiry, which is ongoing as we speak, and because of all the issues involved there is detail, there is complexity.

The Labor members of that committee, with the government members of that committee, agreed that there should be an extension of time for consideration of what amendments may or may not be necessary. And that is why it is so disappointing to see the Australian Labor Party, through their shadow minister for home affairs, trying to peddle this private member's bill to the Senate in circumstances where their record was to vote for the initial bill, and full marks to them for that, then to have an inquiry into its operation, its efficacy, its capacity—all those things that new legislation should be subjected to to ensure whether it's working as planned. If not, how can it be amended and changed? That's what this inquiry's about. We're having support from INSLM as well in relation to that inquiry, and yet here we have this private member's bill. It defies logic. It defies consistency. There are certain political considerations that might be involved in this, but I simply say to the Australian Labor Party and their leadership that it does them no credit—having looked at their past history in this area, which has been exceptionally good—to now come in and try to truncate the inquiry and the consideration. It pays no respect to those people that have made submissions or will be making submissions to the inquiry. It pays no respect to the committee system of this parliament. It pays no respect to the unanimous bipartisan, or non-partisan, decision of the committee to undertake this investigation.

So it is genuinely a matter of disappointment that when we are dealing with one of the most important issues that our parliament can deal with—namely, a framework for our national security—somebody would come into this place with a private member's bill and seek to truncate those procedures that are already in place and the capacity that exists for Senator Keneally and anybody else in the Labor Party to have input to that committee, and to exercise whatever rights they want to or exercise their capacity to put forward suggestions and amendments that can then be maturely considered in the privacy of the committee and on which recommendations can be made to the government and then to the parliament. That's the way we ought to be dealing with these matters, especially when we are dealing with matters of national security. Mr Acting Deputy President Fawcett, I'm sure you are aware of all these sensitivities as well, being a long-time member of that committee—and, if I might say so, a very distinguished member of that committee. There are very real concerns from my perspective as to the way that the shadow minister has gone about this exercise, and I would invite the Senate to vote against the bill.

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