Michael Keenan (Stirling, Liberal Party, Minister for Justice) Share this | Hansard source

The government will not be supporting these amendments. I will go to the specifics of why that is the case in a minute. I just want to address the general point that the member for Melbourne made in his contribution, and that is that somehow the government do not believe that every Australian has their place in this country. That is absolutely not true. The government have been at pains at all stages of introducing and discussing our new security legislation to ensure all members of the Australian community that this is not about targeting an individual community and that this is not about targeting an individual religion. We have been at pains to point that out. To say otherwise in this place is irresponsible. It is not a true reflection of this government's values. The idea that we would not stand side by side with every Australian is completely untrue. All of these laws in every case target a very small criminal element. As I said in my earlier contribution to this debate, I think that is exactly what the Australian people would expect their federal governments to be doing.

I want to address the second general point the member for Melbourne made about freedom of the press. I think everybody in this chamber understands that freedom of the press is an essential foundation point of our democracy. We would not do anything that would willingly undermine that freedom. This bill does not do that. Hyperventilating and saying that it does does not make it true. I can assure the member and all Australian people that this does not undermine freedom of the press in any way, shape or form.

If we accepted these amendments, we would be opening up the offences to exploitation by allowing people not limited to journalists to recruit vulnerable individuals to engage in foreign fighting and to facilitate the travel of recruits to a place where that fighting is occurring on the pretext of reporting the news. On the pretext that you are a journalist and reporting the news, you could go about this insidious behaviour of recruiting young people to fight in these foreign conflicts. These offences do not capture the proper reporting of the news. They do not capture proper and legitimate journalism. What they are designed to do—and what they will do—is deter and punish those who recruit or facilitate the recruitment of young Australians, or sometimes not-so-young Australians, to fight in these wars.

I am not sure if the member for Melbourne is aware of this, but this is not a new offence. This has been part of our legislation since 1978. Since 1978, not one journalist has ever been charged under this offence. So the idea that somehow this will restrict freedom of the press is nonsense. All we are doing is modernising the language from an existing offence that has never once been used to prosecute a journalist. As I have said, freedom of the press is vitally important. This government would not do something that undermined it. But we will continue to undermine the criminal element that is going around and recruiting vulnerable young people to go and fight and often die in foreign conflicts.

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