Adam Bandt (Melbourne, Australian Greens) Share this | Hansard source

I will move the amendments, but I have asked a series of questions about vital legislation that is about the security of this country and people's individual liberties and how we strike a balance. I have asked simple questions of the minister about how big the network can be. He cannot answer. And I have asked a simple question of the minister about a case where someone is managing a network and thinks it has been hacked: are they susceptible to prosecution if they release information about that? He cannot answer that.

So let me ask him another simple question, and then I will get on to moving the amendments. I am asking these questions so that we can have some clarity about how the legislation operates because that goes to the question of whether or not amendments need to be moved. Let me ask another question. If there is a special intelligence operation in place, how will a journalist know that that is the case if they are reporting on something that ASIO or a security agency does? In other words, if something happens and the journalist reports on it, and it turns out later that that reporting was, in fact, about a special intelligence operation, how is the journalist meant to know that in the first place?

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