Michaelia Cash (WA, Liberal Party, Leader of the Opposition in the Senate) Share this | Hansard source

I rise to make a contribution to the Royal Commissions Legislation Amendment (Protections for Providing Information) Bill 2026. I will say it at the outset: now that the government, whilst it has been dragged kicking and screaming to set up the royal commission, has finally established the royal commission, it does have a responsibility to ensure that the commission can do its job.

That is why the coalition supports this bill. We support its objectives, and we also support the legal framework it establishes to protect individuals who provide intelligence and operationally sensitive information to a royal commission. These protections are, of course, necessary because, without them, officials within Australia's intelligence and security agencies could themselves face legal risk for disclosing information that is critical to the royal commission's work.

If the royal commission is to uncover the truth—and that is what all Australians want—this royal commission needs to get to the very bottom of the antisemitic behaviour in our great country which got to such a level that 15 people were slaughtered last December on Bondi Beach. If the royal commission is to establish the truth, if it is to properly examine—and this is the key here—the role of Australia's intelligence agencies, then those who come forward must have the legal certainty about the protections available to them. That is what this legislation seeks to provide, so the coalition supports the bill.

In saying that, though, I now need to comment on what Australians woke up to this morning, which is, of course, the bombshell news that Dennis Richardson had quit the royal commission. Prime Minister Albanese had looked the Australian people in the eye and said this man was the best qualified person in the country—and I don't think anybody disputes that—to examine the intelligence and security failures surrounding the Bondi massacre. That's right. Last night, he issued a statement that he felt 'surplus to requirements' and that he was quitting the royal commission. As I said, he didn't leave quietly. He left with words that should stop every single senator in this chamber cold. He said:

… I was surplus to requirements.

The man in Australia most qualified to get to the bottom of whether or not there were failures within our intelligence agencies that contributed to 15 innocent Australians being slaughtered on Bondi Beach is 'surplus to requirements'. This is the Prime Minister's own, hand picked expert. For those of you who don't know, he is the former director-general of ASIO. He is the former head of both the Department of Defence and the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade.

This is a man with decades of national security experience at the highest levels of government, and he has issued a statement. He has been on media this morning—and I'll go to that shortly—saying he felt 'surplus to requirements'. I am very sorry, but that is, quite frankly, an indictment on the royal commission. This is what he also said this morning to media:

I felt it had reached a point where I was adding relatively little value and I wasn't getting a lot of satisfaction out of it, quite frankly.

It gets worse. Dennis Richardson also said this today:

… I felt I was the fifth wheel. It's a very legally driven process. The way it's structured, and the way it proceeds is such that there's not much need for someone like myself.

Again, I go to what the Prime Minister said: 'This man, Dennis Richardson, is the best qualified person in our great country to examine the intelligence and security failures surrounding the Bondi massacre.' He has now stated that (a) he's quit but (b) he felt 'surplus to requirements' and like he was a 'fifth wheel'. That is absolutely incomprehensible. This is not a bureaucratic inconvenience. This goes to the fundamental purpose of this royal commission. Did ASIO have this attacker on a watchlist? Was he removed from that list? Were there failures in the intelligence agencies in the sharing of information? Were there any failures in counterterrorism preparedness?

Again, Dennis Richardson—a former director-general of ASIO, which is the lead intelligence agency in our country; a former head of defence; and a former head of foreign affairs—was the best placed person to get to the bottom of what happened. This is not on behalf of anybody in particular; this is on behalf of the Australian people, who deserve to know why 15 innocent people were slaughtered on Bondi Beach because antisemitism in this country got to such a stage that that was the outcome. As I said, that is exactly why the Prime Minister appointed him. Five weeks ago, he was the best placed of any Australian. This morning, this same man—a man who is respected on both sides of the chamber—says that he was 'surplus to requirements'.

Prime Minister, that is not good enough. The Prime Minister should act today. He should be doing everything within his power. If Dennis Richardson is the best person to do this job, he should be doing everything within his power to bring Dennis Richardson back into this process. If the current structure of the royal commission is the problem—and this is not a structure that the coalition had said it agreed with. We had always said that there needed to be more than one royal commissioner. There is only one royal commissioner. There absolutely needs to be more than one royal commissioner so that evidence can be properly tested. I hope the Prime Minister is in urgent talks with Dennis Richardson about how we can restore him and his involvement in examining the intelligence and law enforcement dimensions of this attack.

In relation to the bill itself—I am part of the Parliamentary Joint Committee on Intelligence and Security, and we had a hearing into this bill. Can I be very clear, though: I was very disappointed, on behalf of coalition members and senators, that we yet again had to provide additional comments to a report. We've also previously provided a dissenting report. Let us be very clear: that is actually not how the PJCIS has worked for many years. The way this government now treats the Parliamentary Joint Committee on Intelligence and Security and is wanting to ram legislation through this parliament that has a direct impact on our national security laws with little to no scrutiny is an indictment on how this government treats the PJCIS.

More than that, it is an indictment on the importance that this government puts on national security. The bill we have before us, as I said, is something the coalition supports, but let's be very clear here: it's not a straightforward measure. National security legislation is never really a straightforward measure, but that's how the Attorney-General of Australia sought to characterise the bill we have before us. This bill amends the Royal Commissions Act to create a framework protecting individuals from Commonwealth secrecy offences when providing intelligence or operationally sensitive information to a royal commission because currently they do not have to provide that information because, under the acts under which they work, the secrecy acts, they are able to use those particular acts as a reasonable excuse.

But it also goes a step further and will permanently amend the Criminal Code 1995 to create an additional defence for certain secrecy offences where information is communicated for the purposes of providing it to a royal commission and the person believes that that information is relevant. These changes go directly to the interaction between royal commissions—it's ongoing legislation, so I'm going to say 'royal commissions' because we may well have future royal commissions—and Australia's intelligence community. As I said, it's the effect of secrecy laws that protect some of the most sensitive information held by the Commonwealth. The Attorney-General of Australia said, 'This bill doesn't need a review.' Well, guess what? We on the coalition side said it did, and we said the most appropriate committee to look at it is the committee tasked with doing just that, reviewing any changes to Australia's national security framework.

Lest anybody be in any doubt, the Attorney-General actually said on radio, 'We don't think there is a need for a separate parliamentary inquiry.' Well, guess what? We did. We take very seriously the review of Australia's security laws. There was an inquiry. It's as a result of that inquiry that we have satisfied ourselves in relation to a number of issues in the bill, but we have also made additional recommendations which I hope the government takes on board and actually enacts.

But, sadly, the issue is the contempt that the Prime Minister of Australia, quite frankly, is now showing what has always been considered to be, for the time that I have been in here, the pre-eminent joint committee in this country. It normally works in a bipartisan manner because it is usually treated well by the government of the day, regardless of who is in office. But, unfortunately, the government of the day is currently treating it with contempt. This is a pattern of behaviour by this government.

Sadly, in 2023, in relation to the National Security Legislation Amendment (Comprehensive Review and Other Measures No. 2) Bill, coalition members were, in their comments, forced to describe the government's conduct as:

… irregular, rushed and contrary to the good conduct of a national security inquiry of this importance.

Again, that is an indictment on the way the government tried to push that particular piece of legislation through the PJCIS with little to no scrutiny.

It doesn't stop there, sadly. You would have thought the government would have learned its lesson. In 2024, coalition members noted, sadly, in a dissenting report on a cybersecurity legislative package, that the inquiry timeframe had been so compressed that proper scrutiny of complex national security legislation was actually impossible. National security legislation, laws that go directly to the heart of whether a Commonwealth government is able to properly protect its people, were so quickly rushed through the relevant committee that normally, under previous governments, regardless of their persuasion—coalition or Labor—would work in a bipartisan manner. When it comes to national security, this is something you always hope the two parties of government can actually agree on—but not under the Albanese government.

Worse, it doesn't stop there. In January of this year, the inquiry into the Combatting Antisemitism, Hate and Extremism (Criminal and Migration Laws) Bill was so compressed, to less than a week, that it effectively neutralised the PJCIS's ability to test the legislation properly. In fact, partway through that inquiry, the Prime Minister stood up, did a press conference and said, 'I'm pulling the legislation anyway because the people of Australia clearly don't like it.' You've got to be kidding me. Seriously? You try to rush it through the PJCIS, you don't like the evidence that's been received and so you just stand up and pull it? There have been three occasions, and, sadly, in relation to this bill, this is now the fourth occasion where the coalition has had to make comment on the contempt which the Prime Minister of Australia and, in this case, the Attorney-General have shown to what has always been, for years and years, a committee that works in a bipartisan manner. Four separate occasions on which members of this committee have had to warn that parliamentary scrutiny of national security legislation is being curtailed—that is an indictment on the government.