Laurie Ferguson (Werriwa, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

On behalf the Parliamentary Joint Committee on Human Rights, I present the following reports to the 44th Parliament:

Examination of legislation in accordance with the Human Rights (Parliamentary Scrutiny) Act 2011: Bills introduced 20-30 October 2014, Legislative Instruments received 20 September-10 October 2014 (sent to the Speaker on 14 November 2014, pursuant to standing order 247)—Report, November 2014.

Examination of legislation in accordance with the Human Rights (Parliamentary Scrutiny) Act 2011: Bills introduced 14-19 November 2014, Legislative Instruments received 11-23 October 2014—Report, incorporating a dissenting report, November 2014.

In accordance with standing order 39(e) the reports were made parliamentary papers.

by leave—I rise to speak on the tabling of the 16th report of the Parliamentary Joint Committee on Human Rights to the 44th Parliament. The committee considered 15 bills. Of these, four do not require further scrutiny as they are compatible with human rights. The committee has decided to further defer its consideration of eight bills. The committee has identified three bills that it considers require further examination and for which it will seek further information.

Of the bills considered, those which are scheduled for debate during the sitting week commencing 24 November include the Broadcasting and Other Legislation Amendment (Deregulation) Bill 2014, the Counter-Terrorism Legislation Amendment Bill (No. 1) 2014, the Statute Law Revision Bill (No. 2) 2014, the Telecommunications Legislation Amendment (Deregulation) Bill 2014 and the Telecommunications (Industry Levy) Amendment bill 2014.

The report outlines the committee's assessment of the compatibility of these bills with human rights. I encourage my fellow members to the look to the committee's report to inform their deliberations on the merits of the proposed legislation.

I would like to make some remarks to remind members of the context in which the committee undertakes its task of assessing legislation on compatibility with human rights. The Parliamentary Joint Committee on Human Rights, or PJC, is one of only three legislative scrutiny committees established or administered by the Senate. It is sometimes forgotten that legislative scrutiny committees perform a unique and important institutional role in the parliament, which is to undertake technical—and I stress that—assessments of bills and legislation against scrutiny criteria or, in the case of the PJC, establish human rights standards. Those points are extremely important to bear in mind.

This unique function of scrutiny committees has always been reflected in the bipartisan spirit in which they operate. With this bipartisan approach and with the support of well-respected external legal advisers, the scrutiny committees' reports have been trusted and credible sources of information since the establishment of the parliament's first scrutiny committee, the regulation and ordinances committee, in the 1930s.

Noting the many opportunities that exist for members of parliament to engage in the robust party and political debates that are a familiar feature of our parliament, the scrutiny committees therefore provide a balanced and objective source of information to educate and inform parliamentarians. However, if scrutiny work is not to have the character of contest that we are also familiar with in this chamber, what is the role of a scrutiny committee member if not to prosecute the case on the merits of policy? The answer to that, I believe, is that the role of scrutiny committee members has been and is to ensure that scrutiny committee reports are legally and technically credible as well as consistent with past practice. That is naturally done at meetings through testing and questioning of the issues and through the analysis provided in the committees' reports.

Members also contribute to directing the tone and nature of the committees' dialogue with ministers and to shaping the committees' actions in cases where legislation may offend a relevant scrutiny principle. Hundreds of parliamentarians have served on the parliament scrutiny committees and have conscientiously worked within the constraints of the scrutiny approach to serve the parliament's ethos of informed inquiry.

However, it is equally important to note that scrutiny committee members are not and have never been bound by the contents and inclusion of scrutiny committee reports. They are obviously free to otherwise engage in debates over the policy merits of legislation according to the dictates of party conscience, belief, outlook or even prejudice, as the case may be.

Scrutiny committee members may also legitimately apply the technical knowledge gleaned from their service as scrutiny committee members to mount arguments outside the technical scrutiny arena. Clearly involvement in the scrutiny dialogues enhances members' technical knowledge of legislation and enhances their capacity to prosecute their own views with reference to established and well-known principles, be they of a human rights or parliamentary variety.

I therefore encourage members who may not have yet performed service on a scrutiny committee to consider, understand and appreciate the distinct character of scrutiny committees and the particular benefits they provide in relation to not only informing debates in this place but also the broader ability of members to engage in informed and principled debate on the merits of legislation.

I want to turn very briefly to the minority report in this particular case. The committee concluded that one piece of legislation looked at in this report infringed upon privacy, equality and non-discriminatory rights in this country. I note that the minister declined to answer questions in regards to proportionality. I note that it was said that the person who would in future have to have all of their previous names on the back of their citizenship form controlled that document. That is clearly not the case because employers can ask for access to that document.

I want to briefly say that in a week where we all in this parliament were running around wearing a white ribbon the particular provision that in future people would have all of their various names listed on the back of a citizenship form could create a situation for people who have chosen to change their name because of very dire domestic violence histories. We could have situations where people have changed their gender. We could have situations where people have changed their name because in parts of the world their name would identify them as a particular ethnic or religious group. Cases that come to mind very quickly are the Tutsis and Hutus from Rwanda; different tribes in South Sudan, where there is conflict; and Christians and Muslims—and different types of Muslims—in the Middle East, northern Nigeria or Afghanistan. People might not travel on passports. They might choose to have these documents as a form of identification in those countries when they visit them. They may have changed their names to avoid being identified, and yet they could be identified, pulled off a bus and shot dead—by the Taliban, for instance.

There is a very serious matter of proportionality in this. It would be extremely dangerous for this country to allow an extension of people's private information to documents such as this, especially when the case has not been made that this would fundamentally aid the alleged campaign to reduce fraud. I commend the report to the House.

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