Andrew Nikolic (Bass, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

I welcome much of what the member for Isaacs said—in particular, the bipartisan support for this bill which I have personally experienced as a member of the Joint Parliamentary Committee on Intelligence and Security. But let me just correct one inaccurate component of his speech where he spoke about engagement with the Muslim community. I can assure the House and those listening that the Prime Minister, the Attorney-General and other members of the coalition such as Senator Fierravanti-Wells have regularly engaged with senior Muslim leaders across Australia.

Let me commence by providing some context as to why this particular bill is important. In September 1991, I led a United Nations mobile team in South Lebanon called Team Zulu. My partner and I one day, in about the middle of September 1991, were working east of the main United Nations base at Naqoura, and we were called up and directed by radio to move very quickly, as quickly as we could, to the site of a major incident that had occurred just north of the Israeli border at a crossing point called Rosh HaNikra.

What had happened was: three heavily armed Palestinian terrorists had landed on the beach. They had come via the sea from the Mediterranean, and the Israeli Defence Force and South Lebanese Army personnel had quickly responded to that threat. The terrorists, in response, took some UN personnel hostage at gunpoint, and they retreated into a small shed, very close to where their boat had landed on the beach. The UN personnel had simply been running up and down the beach. There was a road linking the UN camp with the crossing point at Rosh HaNikra, and they were running along for fitness before they were taken hostage at gunpoint and became human shields. Very quickly, an Israeli gunboat had cut off the terrorists on the sea side and Israeli Defence Force personnel and South Lebanese Army personnel cut them off on the land side, so there was no escape, and it was a very tense situation.

Soon after that, my Irish partner and I arrived on the scene with an Arabic speaking interpreter, and our intent was of course to try to negotiate the release of those UN personnel that had been taken captive. The situation escalated very quickly when one of the gunmen came out of the shed and commenced firing, which initiated a broader escalation of gunfire from both sides. One of our UN colleagues, a Swedish soldier of the United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon, was killed, as was one of the terrorists. Five Swedish and French UN troops and one further terrorist were wounded, and the third terrorist was captured by the Israeli Defence Force.

As I reported on my radio what had happened, we were quickly diverted to another incident site, this time inside the UN camp, because, unknown to us, another small motorised boat, a Zodiac, had landed with three more terrorists on the UN beach. They had been overpowered and taken captive by the UNIFIL patrol in the area, and my Irish partner and I were then further tasked to question those terrorists and produce a report for the United Nations chain of command.

All these years later I reflect on what an insight that gave me into the psyche of some of the people that this bill is meant to respond to. The three men that I questioned belonged to the Al Fatah wing of the Palestine Liberation Organisation, and their boat was crammed with AK-47s, many filled magazines, hand grenades, knives, explosives and RPG-7s, or rocket-propelled grades.

Their mission was to land on the Israeli side of the border, near a beautiful coastal town called Nahariya, and they were going there to, in their words, kill as many Jews as they could before they themselves were killed. I had a particular interest in that beautiful coastal town of Nahariya because, when I was not working in South Lebanon, that is where I lived with my family—my wife and two young daughters who were one and two at that stage—about a street away from that beach, which we often frequented. I asked the terrorist cell leader: how would he distinguish between the Jews and visiting Christians from Australia? His response was that his God would guide their bullets.

Their mission, in essence, was irrational, mindless, indiscriminate killing of innocent people. I can still recall, when things settled a day or two later and I had a moment for reflection, thinking how lucky we were in Australia not to have people like that in our country. Those days are gone. Those people are here. They are in England, Canada, the United States and in other western countries just like ours—people who are similarly and inexplicably motivated to engage in the mindless, indiscriminate killing of innocent civilians.

Fusilier Lee Rigby was run down and publicly butchered in East London. Corporal Nathan Cirillo was murdered in Ottawa while guarding Canada's war memorial. A week before Corporal Cirillo's death, two soldiers were run down in Quebec by a radicalised individual. Here in Australia, way back in 2005, we had the Operation Pendennis arrests, now almost a decade ago, uncovering terrorist cells in Melbourne and Sydney that were amassing guns, ammunition and bomb-making equipment.

A decade later, Australia's terrorism alert level has been lifted to high, 60 to70 of our citizens are in Iraq and Syria committing terrorist acts and learning the sorts of skills that we do not want to be exported back to our country. We have seen the police raids during Operation Appleby, foiling a plot to commit violent acts in Australia, including a plan to snatch a random member of the public, to drape them in a terrorist flag, to behead them, to tape it and to upload that video to the internet.

So when our intelligence, defence and law-enforcement agencies tell us that they need more measures to respond in an agile and adaptive way to an agile and adaptive enemy, we must take them seriously. We must acknowledge that their starting point is a desire to keep us safer.

I am pleased to say, as a member of the Parliamentary Joint Committee on Intelligence and Security, that there is the sort of bipartisanship that the member for Isaacs mentioned during his speech—an acknowledgement of how serious our current and anticipated security environment is into the foreseeable future. I believe, as the member for Isaacs does, that our committee has found a sensible bipartisan path between those necessary changes and the civil liberties of all Australians. Importantly, the government has either accepted or accepted in principle all of our committee's recommendations in respect of this bill.

I would like to touch briefly on just why the contents of this bill are so critical. The resurgence of terrorism—of Daesh—in Israel, in Iraq, in Syria and more broadly in the Middle East, is a direct threat to our way of life and no nation is immune.

To reject the measures in this bill is to deny that compelling fact and to lend de facto support to the emerging terror networks.

In the main, the measures in this bill are already being used, albeit in lesser ways, by security agencies and police forces in Australia and around the world. It is important to note that these measures pose no threat whatsoever to peaceful, law-abiding Australian citizens. Indeed, these measures improve the ability of our law enforcement and intelligence agencies to respond to addressing urgent operational needs and to apply the lessons that have been learned subsequent to the introduction of the previous two tranches of legislation. They include lessons learned from our troop deployments to Iraq and the exploitation of information from recent operations like Operation Appleby, which disrupted an alleged terrorist attack in Sydney.

Make no mistake, the terrorist threat is agile and adaptive. We must therefore help our intelligence, security and legal agencies cycle through their decision and response options more quickly than that agile adversary. This parliament owes the Australian people nothing less.

Singly and in unison, the measures in this bill represent a major step on the road to making all Australians safer. I know, from the public hearings undertaken by our committee, that some may think elements of this bill are excessive. But, set against the backdrop just presented, the government rightly considers them to be both necessary and essential to protecting our precious liberty and way of life.

The essential bottom line is threefold. Firstly, the enhanced control order regime in this bill allows the Australian Federal Police to seek control orders in relation to a broader range of individuals of security concern and to streamline the application process. This is focused particularly on the enablers—the recruiters, the urgers, the funders of terror—who are just as bad, if not worse, than those they coerce or mislead to wanton acts of aggression. Secondly, the bill facilitates heightened interagency support and cooperation, most notably between ASIS and the ADF, including on military operations.

The following points are noteworthy in relation to this enhanced measure. Contrary to some wild claims from the Greens and others, these amendments do not enable ASIS to kill Australians or others. There is no change to the existing limitation ASIS operates under in subsection 6(4) of the Intelligence Services Act. What we are doing is enhancing ASIS's ability to contribute to the Australian Defence Force's intelligence collection efforts in places like Iraq. But, importantly, in using any ASIS provided intelligence, the ADF is bound by its own rules of engagement, which are developed in consultation with the Attorney-General's Department to ensure compliance with our domestic law and our obligations under international law. Without that intelligence cooperation, the force protection of our troops is potentially put at risk. As a veteran of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and as the father of a daughter who has undertaken two tours of Afghanistan, let me say what a welcome outbreak of common sense this measure is. Thirdly, we enhance arrangements for the provision of emergency ministerial authorisations to intelligence agencies to undertake activities in the performance of their statutory functions. Together, all this means that law-abiding Australian citizens, who enjoy the relative tolerance and freedoms of our unique civil society, need not fear any of these changes.

By the range of steps and measures in this bill, the government does six things. Firstly, we support and protect our sovereign national borders. Secondly, we support our security agencies, including, not least, our Commonwealth and state police forces. Thirdly, we identify, at the very earliest opportunity, possible domestic terrorist threats to Australia, including individuals and terror groups or cells. Fourthly, we prevent, detain, or, at least, constrain the movement and transit of would-be foreign fighters. Fifthly, we reinforce the need for heightened national vigilance by all Australians, in response to the clear risks confronting our otherwise peace-loving communities. Lastly, we support and position our nation's relevant counter-terrorist bodies and agencies to work in closest collaboration with those of our allies, partners, and other legitimate governments of the world, the intent being to help restore civil normalcy at home and abroad, or, at the very least, to contain and limit the ongoing threat posed by transnational terrorism.

Both sides of the debate so far have talked about some of the important safeguards and protection measures that are implicit in this bill, including the existing control order regime requiring both the Attorney-General's consent and a court order, which will continue to apply. The bill includes implementation of the PJCIS recommendations, requiring the Independent National Security Legislation Monitor to review the control order regime, particularly safeguards. All of the existing safeguards and oversight mechanisms in the Intelligence Services Act 2001 continue to apply, including in relation to the amendments to better facilitate ASIS assistance to the ADF. These include the statutory thresholds for the granting of authorisations, ministerial reporting requirements and the independent oversight by the Inspector-General of Intelligence and Security.

Strong oversight mechanisms will also apply to the arrangements for emergency ministerial authorisations. Ministers will have to be notified within eight hours where an agency head has granted an emergency authorisation, in the event that no relevant ministers are readily available or contactable to consider or issue an authorisation. Where a minister has provided oral emergency authorisation, a written record of this decision must be made. As the member for Isaacs said, the IGIS will provide close oversight of these emergency authorisations, as will the committee that we both belong to, and the Parliamentary Joint Committee on Intelligence and Security will also be notified of all emergency authorisations.

As I have said before in this House, the resurgent barbarity of transnational terrorism and the direct threat it poses to Australia and our region means that doing nothing is not an option. While our troops are helping degrade Daesh forces whenever they concentrate in the field in Iraq, we need to support that effort domestically and legislatively with policies designed to safeguard homeland Australia. We must harness the abhorrence that all Australians—Christian and Muslim alike—hold for this perverted creed of wanton terror. I ask the House to endorse the government's domestic counterterror initiatives with understanding and conviction and to give them widespread bipartisan support. I commend the bill to the House.

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