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

Everyone in this place wants to make Australia safer, but there are provisions in the National Security Legislation Amendment Bill (No. 1) 2014 that will not make Australia safer. Unscrupulous governments use people's legitimate fears to illegitimately take away their freedoms. Whilst there are parts of this bill that are uncontroversial and could be supported, there are other parts that will fundamentally remove rights and freedoms from people who have done nothing wrong and are not even suspected of having done anything wrong.

The opposition is going along with it. Labor is keen to sign up to Prime Minister Tony Abbott's khaki campaign and cannot move quickly enough to help get these laws through the parliament. The country is going to be the poorer for it.

If these laws pass, our security agencies could inadvertently kill an innocent bystander, and journalists would not be able to report on it. Whistleblowers would not be able to point out that an operation was bungled and resulted in somebody, who happened to be standing in the wrong place at the wrong time as an innocent member of the public, being killed. The whistleblower would face going to jail for pointing that out.

This throws an even greater shroud of secrecy over already secret operations in an environment where we do not have an independent monitor in the way that we have had under previous governments. There are examples in our recent history where we can see that it is only because of the scrutiny of the media or the courage of a whistleblower that we, the Australian people, have found that about what is being done in our name and when the line has been crossed.

Under these new laws, if it were deemed to be a special intelligence operation, we may never have found out that the Australian government had an involvement in bugging the East Timorese, and individuals who wanted to blow the whistle or report on that wrongdoing, because it was in the public interest, would now face jail if this legislation goes through.

This new category of special operations is to be decided on by the Attorney-General. They are limitless in number, and we will never find out that an operation has been determined in this way. So, as a result, journalists have rightly said: 'How do I know if I report on something that I am not inadvertently contravening this section?' That tells us two things: one is that whistleblowers and journalists, who now want to act in the public interest and draw attention to failings or mistakes by our security services, face jail themselves for acting in the public interest. In Australia we certainly would not see the kind of reporting by an Edward Snowden that we have seen elsewhere.

But more worryingly, it is going to have a chilling effect. This provision, if it goes through, will muzzle the media. It will have a chilling effect, because every journalist and every editor will now be worried about whether or not they are going to go to jail if they report on an operation in connection with our security services, and so they are going to be less likely to do it.

It is more than that; it is more than the attack on whistleblowers and journalists who are seeking to bring to light the operations of secret agencies where they step over the line. This bill also significantly expands the ability of the government agencies and of the government itself to access people's computers, their mobiles and their tablets, even where they are suspected of having done nothing wrong. Even if you are not a suspect, your computer can be accessed and it can be modified. The security services can put files onto your computer simply because you happen to be on the same network as someone who is a suspect.

Now, that is just wrong. If you are not suspected of having done anything wrong why should the security services be able to access your computer, phone or tablet? That is a fundamental step in this country that we are taking and one that, if most people knew about it, they would be very concerned, because what this legislation does is redefine what counts as a computer. It is not just one or more computers; it is one or more computer systems, or one or more computer networks or any combination of the above. Anyone with a basic understanding of a network will know that computers at a university might all be connected to the same network and there might be thousands and thousands of people who have access to those computers at that university. If this bill goes through then all you need is one warrant to access every computer on that network.

It is the same in the workplace. There may be hundreds of people and hundreds of computers connected to the one network. Even further, if you just read the legislation as it is, the internet is a network of networks, or a combination of networks. So a single warrant could access the entire internet.

I heard the shadow Attorney-General speaking with some confidence, saying, 'No. You can't access the entire internet from one warrant.' Well, the real Attorney-General refused to rule that out in the other place. When we get to the details stage I will ask the relevant minister here to confirm whether what the shadow Attorney-General said was right. It is very clear to clarify. The question is this: is there an upper limit on how many computers can be accessed from one warrant? A simple reading of the legislation says 'no'.

In the other place, at the Attorney-General said 'no'. And if Labor, in its desperation to be a small target on these issues and to get this legislation through this place as quickly as possible, is now saying, 'Oh, no, you can't access broad networks of computers from this,' well, I am sure that someone from the government will come in and clarify that, because I think the shadow Attorney-General has it wrong.

The shadow Attorney-General also let the cat out of the bag when he said yesterday—which is reported in the papers today—that he cannot be absolutely certain that a journalist will not go to jail for reporting on a story that someone got killed in a bungled ASIO raid. So, the opposition, which is quite happy to sign up to this bill, cannot be certain that if a journalist does their job and reports on a bungled ASIO raid that sees an innocent member of the public killed, then that journalist will not go to jail.

Given that uncertainty, the government and the opposition should support the amendments which we are going to move. We will move amendments that will allow the uncontroversial parts of this bill to go through but that will retain the ability of whistleblowers and journalists to act in the public interest.

We accept, as the Greens, that there should be some limits on revealing information that could potentially endanger an operation or endanger the life of someone who is involved in an operation. So we are not going to seek to remove that section—that will stay. Any argument that somehow opening up access to journalists and whistleblowers to report on the public interest will endanger people is a furphy because that section will stay. What will go, under the Greens amendments, is the section that turns legitimate whistleblowing and legitimate reporting into a crime where someone could go to jail. I strongly hope that Labor supports this amendment and that that is a sign to the government that it has got the balance wrong, and that that forces the government to have a rethink. Then we can at least put in some protections in that regard.

Secondly, when it comes to how wide a warrant can be, I do not believe that anyone who is sitting at home on their iPad who has done nothing wrong or who is jumping on their computer at work should themselves be the subject of an ASIO warrant simply because someone connected to that network is also the subject of a warrant. We accept, though, that times have moved on and it is now the case that a single person may have multiple devices in their home. They may have a phone, a tablet, a laptop and a desktop. So we accept that there may be a case for saying that the definition of 'computer' now needs to be updated.

We will move to limit the number of devices that can be accessed from a single warrant to 20. That should be more than ample to cover the needs of any single warrant served in respect of a particular person. If 20 is not the right number or there needs to be the capacity in certain instances to get more then we are happy to have a talk about how to fix that as well. Maybe it should be 25, maybe it should be 30 or maybe it should be that a judge can decide in an individual instance that an unlimited number is okay. But if Labor and the government refuse to support a sensible limit on the number of devices that can be accessed from the one warrant, whether it is 20 or something else, then the shadow Attorney-General and Labor's argument dissolves because it is then absolutely crystal clear that an unlimited number of devices can be accessed from the one warrant because Labor and the coalition will be standing in lock-step saying, 'There is no upper limit.'

So I hope that the greater reporting on this bill that has happened over the last few days and the legitimate concerns that have been raised by people about the breadth of new powers being given to our security agencies that still do not have independent monitoring and oversight, as well as the concern about what it will mean for reporting, gives people pause for thought. We should not be rushing legislation through this place under cover of what is going on in the broader community and thinking that somehow a hothouse of fear is the best time to make sober decisions about whether to permanently trade away people's freedoms and rights.

The case has absolutely not been made that anything in relation to whistleblower protections, the journalists' protections or the warrant protections will in any way make Australia safer. The government do not come in here and say, 'There are activities that we could have prevented if only we had these additional powers.' Instead, we have a government desperate to hide behind a uniform, as we have seen them do many times before, and to switch the national conversation away from the inherent unfairness of this government, using any excuse they can to remove people's rights and freedoms. As I said at the start, unscrupulous governments use people's legitimate fears to illegitimately take away their freedoms.

If the measures in this bill actually had the prospect of making us safer then we would consider them but they do not. We should not be supporting the bill and we certainly should not be rushing it through. I hope the opposition will be having more than one speaker on this and I hope it is doing more than simply rolling over and giving the government everything it wants. I hope that by the end of this debate we have altered this bill so that we can keep Australia safe while protecting our freedoms as well.

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