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

To make this country safe we should be doing everything that we possibly can to ensure that members of our community—many of whom were born here and grew up here—do not think it is a good idea to do Australia harm, and that they do not think it is a good idea to travel overseas to learn how to do Australians harm. Distressingly, we have in recent times seem too many people decide, for whatever reason—influenced by whatever people, many of whom may not even live here in this country—that they dislike what is happening in this country so much that they want to do us harm, including doing innocent people harm; not just those who are engaged in combat but doing harm to innocent Australians.

And so the question that we have to grapple with is: what is the best thing to do to ensure that people in Australia feel that they have a place here and that they identify with this country, and that the last thing they would ever want to do is to do us harm? That is the national conversation that we need to have. We need to ask the hard questions about why it is that people, including those who were born and bred here, want to hurt Australia.

But that is not the conversation that we are having. And this Counter-Terrorism Legislation Amendment (Foreign Fighters) Bill 2014 does not do the things that would be needed to be done in order to stop people deciding that they want to do us harm. This bill does not do the things that are needed to stop people becoming radicalised in the first place. What this bill does to is to remove a number of freedoms and rights that Australians have enjoyed for some time. And it is within some incredible irony that we hear the government say to us, 'Well, what the terrorists want to do, because they don't like our way of life, is to make us live differently.' Now, that is what this government is making us do, because this bill removes many of the rights and freedoms that define us in the first place. What this bill will do is affect people who have done nothing wrong and how they live their lives.

It is incredibly disappointing that it is being rushed through parliament, with only one speaker from the Labor opposition, and that it is left up to the crossbench and to the dissenting voices who do not have a voice on the two-party club that is the joint intelligence committee to raise some of these things. It is left to the crossbench here and in the other place to offer the real alternative view about how you would make Australia a more inclusive and safer place. You would expect, especially from a government that calls itself Liberal, if there were bills that were taking away peoples' rights and freedoms, that they would be subjected to the maximum scrutiny. And you would expect from an opposition that says they oppose everything that this government stands for that, in their desperation to hold to account the Prime Minister, Tony Abbott, so tightly on national security, they would not forget how to be an opposition. But that is what is happening.

I want to talk to the parliament and to the people about how this is going to affect peoples' lives. In Melbourne and around the country, given that we are now a country where a quarter of us have a connection with being born overseas, there are many people who regularly travel to other parts of the world to visit people who are close to them. Thanks in part to the refugee program that Australia has had over many years, we have people who have fled war-torn countries who have come here seeking a peaceful life for themselves and their families. Many of them are trying to bring those close to them out of harm's way to join them here. They are often unsuccessful and all that they can do to look after the people they have had to leave behind is go back to visit them. What do you do if you are here, now an Australian, and you want to go back to visit your close relative, your friend, or someone you grew up with who is now potentially in harm's way or who is in a difficult situation and needs a bit of advice? You want to go back to check they are alright, but they happen to be in one of those zones from where, because it is so bad, you fled. Under this bill, just the fact that you go back to check up on them means that you are presumed to have committed an offence because a longstanding principle of the rule of law is now reversed. You do not even have to have an intention to do anything wrong; if you just happen to have been in a particular place at a particular time, you are presumed to have committed a crime unless you can demonstrate that you had a good reason for being there.

Many of the countries that people visit do not have systems of authority or the rule of law that we would respect. In fact, that is why we have let people come here as refugees, or it might in fact be why we are supporting other governments or our own government in taking action against dictators or governments that are overstepping the mark. What do you do if you have been over to visit your grandmother, who might be illiterate in her own language let alone being able to speak English, and when you come back you are asked to prove why you went there. What do you do? Do you need a statutory declaration from your grandmother to satisfy this new provision in the legislation? Do you need to bring your grandmother over to appear in an Australian court to justify why? What if you cannot find those you went to visit? What if the authorities in the place that you are coming back from have no interest in helping you, especially given that you have been a refugee? You are now presumed to have committed an offence and you could go jail under this legislation.

If you go to another country on a religious pilgrimage, there is no exemption in this legislation for you. That does not count as a bona fide reason. You are presumed, if you have gone to a place that is now declared to be a no-go zone, to have committed an offence. As I alluded to before, one other new thing that this bill does which should be incredibly scary is that it is now an offence that does not have a mental intention element. In other words, whereas with most offences under our criminal law you have to have had an intention to do the wrong thing, or at least to be reckless in doing the wrong thing, now it does not matter. Your intention could have been purely innocent in that you just went over to visit someone, to a wedding or to see an old friend, but it does not matter. Now, just by being in a particular place, even if your intention was pure, you are presumed to have committed an offence.

What is worse is that going overseas to do something harmful to Australia is already covered by our criminal law. There are already provisions under our criminal law that would cover precisely these kinds of activities by people who are wishing to do us harm. The case has not been made for a new wide-ranging offence that cannot but catch people who have done nothing wrong. So it is going to have an effect on how people who have done nothing wrong will live their lives and choose to travel overseas. For many people in my electorate and also for many people right around this country, including those who regularly go on pilgrimage, who visit family or friends or do business with family and friends overseas, this is going to change how they live their lives.

Secondly, it is going to include an extension of control orders and preventive detention orders. The Independent National Security Legislation Monitor, that previously existed and is now in abeyance, had said that these provisions should go. They were extensive provisions that allowed governments, even when you had not committed a crime, to detain you. You can be detained in secret without any rights, even though you have done nothing wrong, just on the basis of suspicion. The Independent National Security Monitor said, 'Don't keep these provisions because they are not compatible with a society that is based on rule of law and let us look at how they have been used.' But, no, this government wants to extend them and the opposition is going along with it saying, 'Oh well, we have extended it only for a little bit less longer than the government wanted to'. So we are now having extension of provisions that allow governments in our society to detain you even when you have done nothing wrong.

Thirdly, we are going to have an expansion of biometric material that is going to be kept by authorities and, because this bill has been so rushed, there is an incredible lack of definition about what is going to be captured by this. No-one has had the time to carefully consider what this change might mean and what impact it will have on the privacy rights of all Australians leaving on international departures, including those who pose no risk to Australia's national security. It is those people who should be at the forefront of our consideration of this bill—people who have done nothing wrong. What does it do to them? This bill makes their situation worse.

There are two sets of amendments that I will be moving to try to address some of these issues, and I will come to those in the moment. But it is worth noting before this passes that the Human Rights Committee that scrutinises these bills said that these bills are incompatible with some fundamental human rights and made the point that a person could commit an offence without actually knowing the area they were in was declared, and without any intention of engaging in or supporting terrorist activity. They also said that a person accused of entering or remaining in a declared area would bear an evidential burden—that is, that they would need to provide evidence that they were in the declared area solely for a legitimate purpose, and that that would place defendants in the difficult position of having to prove a negative.

When a parliament's own Human Rights Committee says, 'There are problems with this,' we should listen and we should not rush this legislation through. This legislation deserves proper scrutiny—and more than just a cursory roll-the-arm-over debate in this place and in the other place. So I will be moving two sets of amendments and if these amendments are supported it will at least in part allow the government and Labor to avoid having to cry crocodile tears afterwards and say, 'Perhaps we pushed things through that we shouldn't have,' because now they have an opportunity to fix up at least some of the worst parts of the bill.

The first amendment we will seek to move is to allow journalists to report on what might count as recruitment activity. This is something that was raised in Herald Sun this morning. They made the point very clearly—and I agree with them—that we need more openness and honesty and discussion about what is driving people to radicalisation. We should be able to discuss it in detail, in public, so that people know what is going on and people know what tactics are being used so that they can steer their kids away from them. People deserve to be able to have a discussion about why people are being radicalised and the tactics that are being used so that we can stop it. If we stop our media from discussing what is going on under our noses, it is only going to help it continue. It is only going to keep the culture of secrecy alive. We need to shine a spotlight on these offensive recruitment tactics so that we know how to stop them, so that we can have a serious discussion about what is driving people to radicalisation in this country and how we can stop them from getting there.

Secondly, I will be moving amendments that remove or at least tone down some of the parts of the no-go zones provision, so that it will be required that someone intends to do harm before they can be convicted of having committed an offence. In other words, what we will do is remove the provisions that mean someone is guilty until proven innocent and that someone can be sent to jail just for being in the wrong place at the wrong time because they did not have a stat dec in their pocket to prove why they were there. In other words, it will be just like other aspects of the criminal law, where you have to prove that someone wanted to do something wrong—not that hard and something that everyone should agree with. So let us avoid having the crocodile tears after this bill goes through, and I hope that these amendments are supported.

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