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

More than a year ago, on a low-rating ABC program I raised reports in the French press, particularly in Le Monde, that Australia had foreign fighters who might be returning from Syria. Since then, this issue has become front-page, indeed daily, news. I do not claim to be a seer but I learnt much from my stint on the Joint Committee on Intelligence and Security prior to being Parliamentary Secretary for the Arts in the last government, including learning much from the various officials of the various agencies including ASIO and the AFP.

Particularly, I want to pay tribute to the former director-general of ASIO, Mr David Irvine, whose balanced and moderate presentation both in the public media and elsewhere were so interesting to me and so resonant with the Australian public. He of course pointed out that there are currently a number of returnees from the fighting in Syria, tens of whom presently live in my home city of Melbourne.

The Economist pointed out that in terms of terrorists fighting with ISIL, per capita Australia ranks fourth in the world. We are, to use the Australian boast, 'punching above our weight' in a most unwelcome area.

To paraphrase the editor of The Economist, Edward Lucas, spies—unlike those in most countries—are responsible to their elected leaders and supervised by judges and law-makers. Covert agencies in the West, including Australia, are no longer unregulated as they were in the past. Quite understandably, people in the past had fears, particularly about the political agendas of some of their security agencies, including here in Australia, with what seemed particularly to people on our side of politics to be the biased political nature of some of these agencies. They are of course now subject to legislative and judicial control in a much more regulated and a much more welcome way than they were in the past.

Government agencies in Australia, if we are looking at this area of national security, are constrained by a vast amount of legislation already, particularly by the Attorney-General of the day, the non-partisan Parliamentary Joint Committee on Intelligence and Security, which has been having public hearings this last few days, and the former Attorney-General Nicola Roxon who undertook a year-long inquiry into many of the changes that have been thought of and legislated in these recent days.

I think both the intelligence committees and the Attorney-General's are very zealous in not being embarrassed—if that is a good motivation—about the activities of these agencies going too far and it is very good constraint on their behaviour.

In Australia we also have an enviable international reputation in this area, because of the woman who appeared before the public inquiry this morning, the Inspector-General of Intelligence and Security—not just as an individual but in that particular role. That role does not exist in many other countries.

Judges issue warrants. We have all of the kinds of systems that rightly should be put in place in a democratic society in order to constrain the legitimate activities of security services and to see that they act in a democratic way. Now, thanks of course to Labor and particularly to the energetic activities of the shadow Attorney-General, the Independent National Security Legislation Monitor has been restored—a position that otherwise might have been eliminated by the so-called elimination of red tape in the government's cutbacks that they foreshadowed with the budget. I might leave it there and resume my remarks in the adjournment debate.

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