Ewen Jones (Herbert, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

I rise to speak on the Counter-Terrorism Legislation Amendment Bill (No. 1) 2014. This bill makes urgent amendments to the counter-terrorism and intelligence legislation to address limitations that have been identified in the course of the current recent military operations by the ADF. This bill will enhance the ability of Australia's law enforcement and intelligence agencies to take timely action against Australians who are suspected of becoming involved in counter-terrorism and terrorist related activity. On 24 September 2014, the UN Security Council passed a unanimous resolution requiring all 193 United Nations member states to (a) prosecute and penalise people who travel or attempt to travel abroad for terrorism training or who help finance such efforts, (b) deny entry to anyone they have reasonable grounds to believe could be supporting or participating in terror related activities, and (c) share airline passenger information records and other personal details with international databases to help track and prevent movement of suspected foreign fighters.

Where I really suffer with this legislation—and where I suffer in the whole terrorism debate where we get radicalised Australians going across there—is, basically, getting my head around how this could happen in our country. This is the issue for me, and I do not know what happens to someone who can be just so normal a person—or so apparently normal a person—and then suddenly has the idea to go across to Syria or Iraq or Iran or these places and go around cutting people's heads off and committing these acts of terrorism and blowing themselves up. It is just so strange and so anti-Australian—so completely the opposite of what we think we are as a nation. That is why I think a lot of people in this debate really struggle with where we are. They really struggle to try and get their heads around it, to the point where it becomes a blanket generalisation about an entire religion. I think that is where we have to be very careful in this debate.

I can hear a young child up in the gallery, so I see I have a chorus of people who are interested in this debate up there. Congratulations! My son is now 12 years old. When he was in grade 1 NAPLAN, one of his best friends was Guruji, a young Aboriginal boy. If you put the two boys together, they looked very much alike. When they were filling out their NAPLAN tests, Andrew looked across and Guruji put down that he identified as Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander. Andrew did not know what it meant so he ticked it as well. So that is what it is to be a boy in this country.

There is the old joke about the Protestants and Catholics where there is a little Catholic girl on the beach and a little Protestant boy on the beach. Of course, they are naked, and the little Catholic girl says to the Protestant boy, 'I never realised there was that much difference between Protestants and Catholics.' I think when you get it all down to these things, you understand where we are coming from in this country. I am so proud to be Australian because we are such a great multicultural society.

I grew up in a very small country town in south-western Queensland by the name of Texas. We had tobacco growers. We had the Greek guy that owned the fish and chips shop, and we used to say horrible things about him. In the early- and mid-sixties the war was not that long ago, and if you had a German in there you made nasty references to their heritage. But, all the way through, I think we always took the individual as they came.

I was in high school with Hussan Isaac, a mate of mine who was a very dark Indian guy. He had all sorts of trouble fitting in, but we figured out that it was not the colour of his skin, it was his attitude, and once he changed his attitude he was okay. I think that is why we are a great country. That is why I think that this country really struggles with the fact that normal, born and bred Australians—second and third generation—can be radicalised in this space, and that is why this legislation is so important.

We have to be in this space. We have to make sure that we are doing what we can to prevent these people going overseas and participating in these crimes and actions. We know that, of the people who went to Afghanistan, a large number who came back have since been convicted of serious and terrorist related crimes. Those are the sorts of things we have to avoid. We cannot just say that those people are not allowed back into Australia, because they are Australian citizens, and one thing that Australia will never do is tell other people to take care of our problems. Those people have to come back, but we have to make sure that when they do come back we are able to grab hold of them and make sure that they do not affect other people. We have to make sure that you are not sitting down at a game of football one day and find that someone has taken a sword to your throat. These sorts of things can happen in our society.

I also want to make sure that, with these bills, our relationship with trading partners is not affected. We have a lot at stake in the world at the moment. We are opening up our economy. Andrew Robb has done a fantastic job with the three major free trade agreements—with Korea, Japan and China. There is more to come. We export more fresh food today to the UAE than we do to China. We are a services based economy. Eighty per cent to 85 per cent of our economy is services, yet only 15 per cent of our services are exported as tradeable commodities. We have to make sure that we are able to move into these places. But we have to make sure that our attitude as a nation is not so blinded by their predominant religion or by what is happening in their neighbouring countries that it affects our trading reputation.

To say that this is a modern phenomenon is a fallacy. My great-grandfather was plain Tom Jones. He arrived in this country in 1902. He was a qualified civil servant in Wales, but he could not get a job in the Australian civil service because he was a Catholic. He changed his religion to Church of England, and he was able to get a job in the civil service. He ended up having a very successful career as a civil servant in Australia. So, when it comes to these things I think we have to take a broad view. This sort of legislation is necessary.

I do take seriously—I have been approached by a number of people in my electorate about this—the view that we are winding back the freedoms in our society. I do accept that when you bring in regulations like this there is a natural proclivity to believe that we are looking at more things and that the government and its agencies are encroaching on our basic personal liberties, but I always say that if you do not do anything wrong, nothing much is going to happen to you. There will be mistakes made, and I suppose there always have been. We want to make sure that those things are minimised. But, I do not want be the person that has to ring someone up to say that their school has been attacked and that we knew all about it but we did not want to infringe upon civil liberties.

So I understand that there is a line that we have to tread here, that it is very serious that we have to move along that line, and that there are consequences for our actions. Newton's law of physics says that for every action there is an equal reaction. The angle of incidence equals angle of reflection. Those are the sorts of things that we must keep in our minds all the way through.

Law enforcement agencies have advised that there are a number of individuals who are serious security concerns, who are not covered by the current, existing grounds for taking control. We know that some of these people are not directly involved in terrorism, but instead provide support for terrorism and foreign fighters. Placing control orders on these persons will assist the AFP to disrupt their activities. However, there are, of course, some who may need to return to areas the government sees as terrorist danger zones. Those who have family, for example, may need to return. Residents now have to provide a reasonable excuse for travelling to those locations. Religious, study and business purposes may not be good enough reasons to travel to a very dangerous zone.

This bill will enhance the control-order regime in the Criminal Code Act 1995 to allow the Australian Federal Police to seek control orders in relation to a broader range of individuals of security concerns—namely, those who support or facilitate terrorists and foreign fighters. This has to enhance our agencies' ability to track financial records of suspected foreign fighters.

While I have your attention, I just want to say to people signing up against halal certification—all the stuff that goes on about that—that this is not about the halal certification. Halal certification on vegemite, chocolate and dairy is about opening up new markets. If a company like Cadbury—we have 23 million people in Australia and 245 million people and Indonesia—want to open up new markets and get people over there hooked on our chocolate, and it means putting a little label on their chocolate wrappers, then more power to them. I will back them 100 per cent.

This legislation provides for a lower threshold for arrest without warrant for terrorism offences so that we can disrupt terrorist activities earlier. We will cancel social welfare payments to cut off funds used for terrorism. The Intelligence Services Act covers the need to collect intelligence on persons who are fighting with or alongside terrorist organisations. This amendment legislation will enhance the ability of ASIS to assist the ADF in support of military operations.

All the way through this we have to make sure we are trying to do the right thing by the Australian people. With our leadership group—foreign minister Julie Bishop, Scott Morrison and Tony Abbott—involved in these negotiations, and by working with the AFP and all our agencies, we are in that space and we are trying to do the right thing. I think that this is one area where no-one really wants to have the discussion, but it is something that we do have to talk about. It is something that we have to understand as Australians in this space. I stand with the government on this. I understand the threats posed by Daesh and the organisations there. I understand the threats of people going over there to join in this fighting and the glamour they espouse, but I do not want these people coming back and living in my community, not without our agencies knowing exactly who they are and what they are doing at all times. I want to make sure that we are doing whatever we can to limit these things and to stop people going overseas, working in these places, fighting in these places and killing people. To me, that is the abhorrent thing here—that these people are Australians who have benefited from our education system, have benefited from our social infrastructure and are part of our nation and yet they can turn around and do these things. Sometimes I think it is more like a drug addiction or an addiction of some sort that they find themselves weighing into these things.

In conclusion, I support the government. I wish it was not so. I wish we lived in a place where these sorts of things did not happen. But you can wish for whatever you want; the facts remain that we are living in a very, very dangerous world and a very global world—and some of the things that the AFP and our other agencies have uncovered show that we are in a very dangerous part of the world as well. I want to make sure that Australians are very safe and that our personnel are very safe.

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