Nick McKim (Tasmania, Australian Greens) | Hansard source

It's been a pretty dire week here in the Senate, and I dare say many of the people impacted by the events in this chamber this week would describe it as diabolical. We have got disabled people punched down on. We've seen pathetically weak gambling laws rammed through this place, and, now, we are seeing, again under a guillotine—the third in three days—a bill that massively increases the power of the intelligence and security apparatus in this country. What's the common theme between all these three things—punching down on disabled people, passing gambling laws drafted at the behest of the big gambling corporations and creating extraordinary new powers for the security industrial complex in this country? What is the common theme? That's right—the so-called parties of government in this place.

Let me give a warning to the parties of government. Firstly, if you rise to the head of a police force, a security group or an intelligence organisation like ASIO, you are primarily concerned with things like law and order, security and safety. That is an obvious statement. But let's be very clear about what our job is here in this place. Our job is to question when we get asked whether new powers are necessary. Our job is to ask the question. When we get told by the head of ASIO or the head of the AFP or the head of any of the other myriad law and order and security organisations that exist in our country that we have to give them new powers, our job is not to say, 'Of course, here you go,' as the parties of government do every single time in this place. Our job is to question the need and to balance a genuine need that people be kept as safe as possible in this country with the fundamental rights and freedoms that we used to go to war and fight and bleed and die to protect. That is our job in this place, and that job and that responsibility is being abrogated, as it is so regularly, by the so-called parties of government in this place.

So, of course, here the Greens find ourselves yet again standing for fundamental rights and freedoms—in the complete absence, I might add, of a charter or a bill of rights in this place, in the complete absence of the rights of citizens of this country being enshrined in the Constitution, which is where they actually should be enshrined in a country like Australia. In the complete absence of those things, it is left to the Greens, as we do every single time, to run the balance argument, to run the reasonable argument. I want to associate myself with the words of Senator Shoebridge in his excellent contribution to this debate, as well as Senator Hodgins-May's and Senator Faruqi's excellent words.

We should be really scared about what these powers allow ASIO to do. You can be literally dragged off the street for secret questioning, no crime required. You don't get a lawyer of your choice and you don't get a right to silence. This can apply to children as young as 14—kids! They get dragged out when they're walking home from school and dragged into ASIO for questioning. They don't get a lawyer that they might choose or that their family might choose. In fact, they may well not be allowed to tell their family what's happened. Certainly if you're an adult you won't be able to tell your family what happened. It'll be a crime to tell your family what happened, where you were and what you were asked. These are draconian, coercive questioning powers. It is a disgrace that in a so-called liberal democracy like Australia we are even thinking about creating and extending powers like these.

Of course, the Prime Minister, back in the day, was right when he opposed these coercive questioning powers when they were first introduced and said:

Its provisions—

the provisions that underpin the provisions that we are debating today—

potentially allow for the mistreatment of ethnic minorities, the suppression of dissent and the detaining and investigation of wholly innocent Australians.

He was right about that. But I'll tell you what—the office of Prime Minister empowers some people and diminishes others, and this current prime minister is someone who has been abjectly diminished by the office of Prime Minister. He has shrunk in office, as Senator Shoebridge said. He's a deeply unimpressive Prime Minister. A mediocre—