Raff Ciccone (Victoria, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I present the report of the Parliamentary Joint Committee on Intelligence and Security of its review into the Strengthening Oversight of the National Intelligence Community Bill 2025, also known as the SONIC Bill. I move:

That the Senate take note of the report.

Our nation is faced with a complex and challenging security environment. The threats that we face are increasingly varied, dynamic and unpredictable. They are diverse in origin, ranging from individuals to state sponsored actors. In response, the Australian parliament has a responsibility to equip our intelligence and security agencies with the powers needed to keep Australians safe. Those agencies are fully empowered to detect, disrupt and respond to threats to our national security. By necessity, these powers may be covert and go beyond those normally entrusted to government. In exercising those powers, our intelligence agencies must always operate in a way that is transparent, proportionate and accountable.

Strengthening oversight of these powers is essential to preserving the trust and confidence of the Australian people while ensuring our agencies can continue to protect Australians from those who seek to do us harm. Effective and holistic oversight of these agencies is therefore critical to maintaining public trust and confidence in the national intelligence community, commonly referred to as the NIC. This oversight is achieved through the important work of the Inspector-General of Intelligence and Security, the Independent National Security Legislation Monitor and the PJCIS committee.

The SONIC Bill represents the most significant reform to oversight of Australia's intelligence community since the 1980s. The bill realises important and long-awaited reforms recommended by multiple independent reviews over many, many years. This ensures that Australia's intelligence oversight framework evolves with the increasingly complex intelligence and security environment. The SONIC Bill expands the oversight functions of the committee, the PJCIS, and inspector-general to include all 10 agencies of the National Intelligence Community. This includes the whole of the Australian Criminal Intelligence Commission as well as the intelligence functions of the Australian Federal Police, AUSTRAC and the Department of Home Affairs. These amendments will, for the first time, bring the entire national intelligence community under a uniform and specialised oversight framework. This ensures that the intelligence capabilities of agencies such as the ACIC, the AFP, AUSTRAC and Home Affairs, each playing an increasingly important role in our contemporary threat environment, are subject to consistent and expert scrutiny.

The bill also broadens the own-motion powers of the Independent National Security Legislation Monitor and includes measures to strengthen the relationship between all three oversight bodies. In relation to the PJCIS, the bill gives statutory recognition to the committee's increasing role reviewing counterterrorism and national security legislation. The bill enables committee review of proposed reforms to such legislation, as well as sunsetting legislation on its own motion or on referral by the minister or parliament.

The bill also empowers the committee to request the inspector-general to inquire into agencies' operational activities, and for the inspector-general to respond to the committee on the inquiry's completion. The committee notes that this bill also gives effect to several longstanding recommendations from independent reviews of Australia's intelligence and security framework, ensuring that our oversight arrangements remain modern, accountable and fit for purpose in an increasingly complex environment.

As well as broadening the remit of the committee and the two independent oversight bodies, the bill contains important administrative amendments to the Intelligence Services Act 2001, affecting how the PJCIS operates. The committee has carefully examined these amendments before, giving them its support. As a result, the committee's report also includes a number of recommendations to refine and build upon those amendments, ensuring these provisions will be as effective as possible. These include a recommendation to give the committee a standing function to review its own operating provisions as required.

The committee also recommends changes to allow the chair and deputy chair of the committee to nominate a member of their personal staff to be provided with an appropriate security clearance to assist them in performing their duties on the committee. This addresses the increasing workload and responsibilities placed on both the chair and deputy chair, as the committee's remit continues to grow, and the strict disclosure offences in the Intelligence Services Act which limit the support that personal staff can actually provide both the chair and deputy chair. The committee also welcomes measures to strengthen collaboration between the three principal oversight bodies: the PJCIS, the Inspector-General of Intelligence and Security and the Independent National Security Legislation Monitor, including provisions for information sharing and, where appropriate, briefings to the committee. These steps will ensure our oversight mechanisms remain coordinated, informed and responsive. Overall, the committee strongly supports the bill's objective to strengthen the operational, parliamentary and legislative oversight of the national intelligence community.

Following consideration of the committee's other recommendations, the committee recommends that the bill be passed by the parliament. In doing so, the bill reinforces the democratic safeguards that underpin public trust in our intelligence community. It strikes the right balance between empowering our agencies to keep Australians safe and ensuring their actions remain lawful, proportionate and accountable to the parliament and, more importantly, to the Australian people. On that note, I commend the report to the Senate.

Question agreed to.