Michael Keenan (Stirling, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Justice, Customs and Border Protection) Share this | Hansard source

I rise to talk on the Intelligence Services Legislation Amendment Bill 2011. The coalition supports this bill in principle. The bill proposes to amend the Australian Security Intelligence Organisation Act 1979, the Intelligence Services Act 2001 and the Criminal Code Act 1995 to ensure consistency and interoperability of provisions, clarify provisions relating to computer access warrants, provide new grounds for the collection of intelligence on an Australian person and clarify the existing immunity provisions for intelligence agencies and officers.

Tuesday's budget revealed that Labor is going to waste another $1.7 billion in taxpayers' money on their blow-out—not on their border protection program but on managing their failure of the border protection program. We have gone from spending $100 billion a year under the coalition on asylum seekers to over $1 billion per year. That is an astonishing blow-out of 1,000 per cent per annum. Clearly there is a price to be paid for all of this wasted money. The price is being paid for Labor's failure by Australia's front-line national security agencies: The Australian Customs and Border Protection Service, the Australian Federal Police and, importantly in relation to this bill, ASIO, ASIS, ONA and the other Defence intelligence agencies are all suffering because of Labor's enormous failure to protect our borders and the cost to the taxpayer. The cuts need to be found from somewhere to pay for this failure, and it is the front-line agencies that are bearing the brunt.

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