Lidia Thorpe (Victoria, Australian Greens) Share this | Hansard source

The Greens will not be supporting the Security Legislation Amendment (Critical Infrastructure) Bill. Very few key stakeholders, in fact, support this bill, so we cannot support it in its current form. The government, as usual, is introducing even more half-baked legislation that no-one actually wants so those opposite can stand here and pretend to be doing something. This legislation is a greedy little power grab, and the Greens cannot support it in its current form. I foreshadow a second reading amendment in my name which outlines our main concerns. I'll go over some of our concerns.

This bill is not supported by key stakeholders in the logistics, technology and education sectors, among others. In the review of this bill that was undertaken by the Parliamentary Joint Committee on Intelligence and Security, numerous stakeholders reported insufficient consultation by the government with their respective sector or industry. The government's failing to consult is nothing new to me. Believe me, as a First Nations woman, I know that this government does not know the difference between consultation and consent. We know Labor has a problem with that too. In the case of this bill, the government failed to consult, and many of our key stakeholders don't consent. In fact, many stakeholders reported that this bill would result in the imposition of an excessive regulatory burden on their businesses, including the potential duplication of regulatory systems. These stakeholders will now have more regulatory and compliance burdens heaped upon them. I note that for the education sector there is no new additional funding to allow them to comply.

From the position of the Australian Greens, the critical flaw in this bill is that it imposes very, very serious obligations on entities that, I remind the chamber, have not been properly consulted. These obligations include the potential for the takeover of businesses or operations by government security agencies. They also include the ability for the minister to authorise the Secretary of the Department of Home Affairs to direct one of these entities to gather information; undertake an action or direct that an action not be undertaken; or authorise the Australian Signals Directorate to intervene when a cybersecurity incident has occurred, is occurring or is likely to occur. In short, the government and its spy agencies can take over the operations of an industry, based on the decision of the minister. This is wrong, and the stakeholders have not asked for this. This bill would give the minister considerable powers under the guise of protecting the security of critical infrastructure.

As I said at the beginning, this is a greedy little power grab that has been done without proper consultation and without any real co-design—we know the government loves that word 'co-design'—with the affected sectors. The Australian Greens will not be supporting it. I move:

At the end of the motion, add ", but the Senate notes that:

(a) this bill proposes to introduce an extended supervision order regime that would allow a Supreme Court of a state or territory to make orders in relation to a person who has completed a sentence of imprisonment;

(b) the Criminal Code Act 1995 already contains provisions that permit a court to make a similar order in relation to the same category of offender;

(c) the new extended supervision order regime proposed by this bill does not repeal the existing similar provisions;

(d) the extended supervision order regime in this bill departs in very significant ways from the model proposed by the third Independent National Security Legislation Monitor; and

(e) over 70 counter-terrorism laws have passed this Parliament in the last two decades, many of which have not been supported by human rights organisations because they create broad, extensive, and often overlapping powers, as is the case with the regime proposed by this bill".