James Paterson (Victoria, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Cyber Security) Share this | Hansard source

As I foreshadowed in my second reading speech, the opposition will be moving some amendments to deal with one aspect of this bill. Before I get to that, I want to update the chamber and anyone watching on what is happening here and where we're up to here. Coalition members of the PJCIS handed down a dissenting report—the first one in 17 years—on 12 May. We said in that dissenting report that we supported this bill and recognised the importance of the measures in this bill, including: those there were recommended by Dennis Richardson, which our government commissioned and whose recommendations were accepted; and the other recommendation relating to the foreign minister's directions to ASIS, which is also in this bill but wasn't recommended in the Richardson report.

We said we would support all of those on the condition that the government did not proceed with one other change in this bill, which has not been recommended by any independent inquiry or by any independent expert. The government has not been able to provide any evidence on where this recommendation has come from. This recommendation is for the expansion of the PJCIS, which we believe is being done by the government for the purpose of putting a member of the crossbench or a minor party on the committee. That is the only area of contention between the government and the opposition, and my amendments seek to deal with that so that we can support this bill.

Just in case the government didn't pick up the signal that we send in our dissenting report, Senator Cash and I wrote to the Attorney-General and the Minister for Home Affairs on Tuesday last week. We said we would not be able to support this bill if the changes to the PJCIS remained in it, and we said it would potentially also impact our ability to support a subsequent bill, the Intelligence Services Legislation Amendment Bill 2023, which has just been introduced in the House and referred to the PJCIS for inquiry. That bill contemplates broader and deeper oversight of the intelligence community by the PJCIS and the IGIS. The coalition is up for a conversation about that; we are open to negotiating on that—not, however, at the expense of operational security. It is our view that the expansion of the PJCIS to include crossbenchers puts that operational security at risk, and we are not prepared to support this bill or any other bill that puts that at risk.

If the government still wasn't clear following the letter from Senator Cash and me, in which we offered to negotiate on these questions, in the Senate when this was considered on Thursday last week I again made our position clear. In a meeting with the Attorney-General's office on Friday, Senator Cash and our staff made clear to his staff what our position is.

I think it has now dawned on the government—only this morning—that this bill now cannot pass this chamber unless the government is willing to compromise with the coalition on PJCIS membership or unless the government is willing to compromise with the Greens on their amendments. Let's be really clear on this. The two amendments that the Greens propose would remove two of the recommendations made by Dennis Richardson, which we accepted when we were in government, which you have accepted now you are in government, which have bipartisan support and which are straightforward, uncontroversial, appropriate and necessary. So the government has a pathway before it: either do a deal with the Greens on national security and remove from this bill bipartisan recommendations made by Dennis Richardson, and, therefore, put our national security at risk; or do a deal with the coalition and maintain the bipartisan culture and ethos of PJCIS and get this legislation passed today. There are important provisions of this bill which should be enforced, and the sooner the better. But we cannot support them while the government makes this unilateral change to the PJCIS membership.

This is my final appeal to the government after many appeals: please pause on this. Please do not proceed with these PJCIS changes which were not recommended by any review, not recommended by any report and not recommended by any independent expert. The government has only been able to say it has been a 'decision of government' and has provided no evidence as to why it is necessary. I really appeal to you: support the opposition's amendments. I will move two of them, if necessary, in sequence.

The first one would simply omit the changes to the PJCIS membership from this bill and leave all other provisions of this bill intact. That doesn't mean that there aren't going to be other opportunities to have discussion about PJCIS membership; that could take place as part of the committee's upcoming inquiry into the Intelligence Services Legislation Amendment Bill 2023 that the government has introduced, or as part of that legislation, if the government believes that is necessary. But let's sit down and have a conversation on a bipartisan basis and maintain the very strong working relationship we've had on the committee; let's do it that way.

Alternatively, if the government is absolutely insistent that we must expand the size of the PJCIS membership, and if they are insistent that they need the flexibility to appoint different members of each chamber—from the House and from the Senate—then we have an alternate, fallback position. That is to permit the increase in the size of the PJCIS but to put in the IS Act for the first time that—as the convention has always been, save for one exception—that those members come from the parties of government: that members of the government and members of the opposition make up the committee. That will allow the government to expand the membership of the PJCIS and allow the government to choose members from whichever chamber they believe is necessary—within limitations; there should be senator and members, as a minimum, on the committee—and it will only prevent the government from putting a crossbencher or a minor party member on the committee. That is the only change it will make. We really think these are two reasonable propositions which solve the problem the government has got itself into today. We are offering to work on this on a bipartisan basis to solve this problem, and I really urge the government to consider it.