Michael Danby (Melbourne Ports, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary to the Leader of the Opposition) Share this | Hansard source

On 24 May in Brussels a tourist couple and a French curator were brutally murdered when a man entered the Jewish museum in the centre of the city and opened fire with a Kalashnikov. Mehdi Nemmouche, a French national, was detained in the bus station in Marseille a few hours ago with the Kalashnikov used in Brussels. He also, bizarrely, had a video with a voice-over that resembled his own voice. This is not the first murderous attack by an individual with this kind of ideology, but this jihadi from France is an embodiment of the Western nightmare. There are 3,000 Western jihadis who are believed to be travelling in Syria. If Nemmouche is taken to court and it is proven, he will be the first killer known to be a Western volunteer with these Islamist fanatics who have returned from Syria. This is a fear in all of our Western countries.

Nemmouche is one of 800 jihadis with French citizenship in Syria. The French are not only concerned about their own citizens; in an article in Le Monde on 16 October last year Australia was singled out as one of the source countries of these foreign fighters in Syria. When France, with many of its own citizens heading to Syria, is noting the number of Australians involved in jihad, then surely this is a wake-up call for our 'splendid isolation' on this side of the world.

They were lucky to pick Nemmouche up; he was arrested during a random check at a bus terminal. I notice very ominously in the reports just breaking that this Jihadist who trained in Syria with all those frightening skills that he has acquired was recently in Bangkok, Singapore and Malaysia—in our part of the world. The thing that concerns me is the apparent dichotomy between the views of people in Australia who are concerned only with the issue of privacy but do not understand that, in order to keep this country safe from people like this, our security agencies need to work under the rule of law, as they have been effectively doing, to prevent an attack on mainland Australia. More than 80 of our countrymen died in Bali, but it is a great credit to these hard-working agencies—working under the strict supervision of judges, the Attorney-General, the Director-General of ASIO, the Director of Intelligence and Security—that they prevented our countrymen from being attacked in a similar way to what occurred in Brussels the other day. When we have these laughable arrangements like the changes to security here in Parliament House, I think to myself, 'Do these people live in cloud cuckoo land or do they live in the real world?'

I want to deal with the views of people like Mr Snowden and Mr Assange, who seem to be principally concerned about privacy in the surveillance of American citizens. Yet, they leak how the Five Eyes countries—the United States and others—intercept telephone traffic of Al Qaeda in the Mosul area of Iraq. The entirely reasonable Middle East reporter for the Christian Science Monitor asked publicly: how does this have anything to do with preserving the privacy of western publics in Manhattan, Melbourne and Manchester? All Snowden is doing is preventing us stopping these people bringing their evil acts to Australia. Mr Snowden is, of course, based in Russia at the moment. Like Assange, he is idolised by those nihilists and anarchists who think that the internet is the be all and end all of the world. I think the security of society and individual people is just as important as some young person accessing internet pornography and wanting the government to know about it.

Snowden is not simply a person who is on the radical left of American politics. In 2006 he was something of a gun nut. He is quoted as saying, 'I have a Walther P22; it's my only gun but I love it to death.' He criticised the White House's attempts to ban assault weapons. He is unimpressed by affirmative action and is shocked by the number of Muslims in England. He is perfectly entitled to speak about his whacky views—anyone is—but the point is that I did not elect Mr Assange or Mr Snowden to make decisions about the security of the Australian people. The four people sitting in this chamber are much more responsible to the public and much more entitled to make decisions, as we struggle through the democratic process to preserve the privacy of our citizens and look after the security of our people.

Snowden's real motivations were explained in a front-page interview with retired General Keith Alexander, the long-serving director of the National Security Agency, who said of Snowden:

I think it's the greatest damage to our combined nations' intelligence systems that we have ever suffered. The biggest ever. And it has had a huge impact on our combined ability to protect our nations and defend our people.

Alexander also stated:

At the end of the day, I believe people's lives will be lost because of the Snowden leaks because we will not be able to protect them with capabilities that were once effective but are now being rendered ineffective because of these revelations.

Despite criticisms of Snowden's actions, I do not argue against the necessity of having a thorough debate on security versus liberty in our democratic society. Unfortunately, Snowden's leaks have generated a debate about alarmist claims of a mass totalitarian-style surveillance of citizens. Of course, Mr Putin would never dream about these kind of things. He just suckles Mr Snowden to his bosom.

The point about Snowden's leaks is that we need to have a debate about real things that affect people's privacy. The most important attack on privacy via the internet comes from criminal and commercial organisations seeking to hack people's data for their own benefit. My impression from working on the intelligence committee is that government agencies in Australia are constrained by vast amounts of legislation; by a non-partisan parliamentary committee on intelligence; by various Attorneys-Generals, who are very zealous about ensuring they are not politically embarrassed later on by these agencies going too far; by an independent inspector-general of security; by judges; by warrants—all the kinds of systems that rightly should be put in place in a democratic society. I am very concerned that the undemocratic activities of people like Snowden and Assange are jeopardising our ability to make those decisions in a logical and rational way.

I think the agencies in Australia, far from being rogue agencies, are doing very well. Professor Stone, who is a leading American civil libertarian, said in an interview in the Financial Review about his investigations of the NSA:

… I approached my responsibilities as a member of the Review Group of the NSA—

after the Snowden revelations—

with great skepticism about the NSA. I am a long-term civil libertarian, a member of the National Advisory Council of the ACLU … I was skeptical …

I came away from my work on the Review Group with a view of the NSA that I found quite surprising. Not only did I find that the NSA had helped to thwart numerous terrorist plots against the United States … since 9/11, but I also found it is an organization that operates with a high degree of integrity and a deep commitment to the rule of law.

That is exactly my impression of the agencies that are working here. In particular, the soon to be retired Director-General of ASIO, Mr Irvine, is the epitome of that mentality, a devoted civil servant who wants to see the country protected but who wants to make sure that nothing untoward happens here.

In Australia various assorted critics have been the shrillest voices in this debate. In reality, Australia's well-governed and well-administered security agencies follow the rule of law, which means that we do not have to do choose between security and liberty. If some accuse the US of hypocrisy for using the same snooping tactics as China, since when did we object to democracies defending themselves against dictatorships? Edward Snowden and Julian Assange portray themselves as warriors defending the internet realm of pure freedom. Instead, in my view, they are dupes that have left us exposed to a dark online world exploited by terrorists, dictators, warped loners and criminal gangs who are far more likely to steal our personal data than any Australian government agency. (Time expired)

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