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

Everyone in this parliament, no matter where you sit—whether in the government, the opposition, or on the crossbenchers—wants to keep this country safe. There is absolutely no dispute about that. Likewise, I agree with the previous speaker. I think everyone here in this parliament would look upon the acts of terrorism and horror that are being perpetrated around the world with disgust. And we want to do everything we possibly can to ensure that they are not visited on our shores. But, if we are to have a serious debate about how we stop terrorism from finding its way to Australia then, presumably, we would have serious discussions here about why people within this country, who are sometimes born and bred in this country, decide that they no longer have an attachment to this country and want to do us harm. We need to ask some serious questions about why that is happening and what we can do to stop it. We need to ask serious questions about whether sending Australia to war is, in fact, going to make the country less safe. We need to ask serious questions about whether getting Australia involved in a war—a conflict—that is not ours potentially increases the risk of an attack here on home soil, or an attack on an Australian citizen somewhere else. These are the questions we need to be asking.

One other truism is that as well as everyone wanting to keep Australia safe—no matter which political perspective you come from—we also, presumably, value Australia being a democracy. We value those things that for many others, according to the government and according to the opposition, are the reasons that people want to attack us—namely, individual liberties. The fact is that we have a strong tradition in Australia. It is part of our common law tradition that the government does not have the right to take you, as an individual, and lock you up when you are not suspected of having done something wrong, if you are not on your way to being charged or put through a judicial process. What distinguishes us from other countries is that the government is not allowed to pick someone off the street and hold them without a claim that they have broken an Australian law, and without a trial then ensuing. That is what, in part, defines us. That is what we have to defend.

What that means is that whenever there is a suggestion that Australia, or Australians, are at risk, we need to make an assessment about whether that justifies giving up some of those rights and if so, for how long. The difficulty is that we know that security agencies will always want more power. That should come as no surprise. It is the same with every government department. Ask them if they would like a greater remit and they will say, 'Yes; where do I sign?' That is why it is absolutely critical that, in times when emotions and fear are running higher than they otherwise would, we in this place have to make sober judgements and sober assessments.

Whilst I do not doubt the intentions and bona fides of the experience of the previous speaker, I was distressed to hear him say at the end that we must harness the hatred people feel towards the likes of ISIS in order to pass this bill. That is the wrong approach. That approach is saying that, because something terrible is happening elsewhere—something that Australia might have contributed to by going over and destabilising that region for the last decade or so—people automatically should be prepared to give up rights and liberties that they have enjoyed for a very long time, and which, once given up, they will probably never get back.

And this is happening in an environment where we do not have an independent national security legislation monitor to oversee what the government is doing. The reason that is so important is that in the past the Independent National Security Legislation Monitor has spoken out against exactly these kinds of measures. That is important to note, because while some in the government and elsewhere may say that you would expect critics to always make these points, when the Independent National Security Legislation Monitor says, 'Hang on; what you are about to do with a proposal like control orders is to enable someone in a government agency or a security agency to impose limitations on you and your freedom,' we should listen. When the Independent National Security Monitor—not just the Greens, civil libertarians and the law bodies in their states—says, 'That is not a good idea,' we should listen.

Instead, the government, with the opposition's acquiescence, is saying, 'We are not going to appoint a national security legislation monitor, who might come before the parliament and tell you exactly these things; we are going to rush this bill through now.' It comes as no surprise that a coalition government wants to take away individual rights and liberties. They gave away the 'liberalism' in their name long ago. What does come as a bit of a surprise is that an opposition, willing to be a small target, is so quick to sign up to these proposals.

What do we know about this bill? We know that the control-order regime in this bill allows the imposition of controls on an individual, limiting their freedom without needing to follow the normal and long-established criminal law processes of arrest, charge, prosecution and determination of guilt beyond a reasonable doubt on the basis of evidence. We know that a control order under this legislation can impose a number of obligations, prohibitions and restrictions on the person who is the subject of the order. These include where a person must stay and when; preventing a person from going to certain places; preventing a person from talking to or associating with certain people; preventing a person from leaving Australia; requiring a person to wear a tracking device; prohibiting access to, or use of, specific types of telecommunications, including the internet and telephones; preventing a person from possessing or using specified articles or substances; and preventing a person carrying out specific activities, including in respect of their work or their occupation—their livelihood. Critically, these control orders can be applied to people who have not been charged with a criminal offence—you do not have to have been charged with anything to have these apply to you—and even to people suspected of harbouring a criminal intent.

It is because they are so broad and go well beyond what might be argued to be a legitimate narrow need to target terrorism, for example, that there has been substantial criticism from across the political spectrum and from civil liberties and legal groups of these provisions. This bill would make it possible to get a control order if a police officer suspects on reasonable grounds that it would prevent the provision of support for or facilitation of a terrorist act or hostile activity overseas and dilute the existing safeguard that requires the court to consider whether each obligation, prohibition or restriction contained in the control order is proportionate and necessary. It would also make other procedural changes to make control orders easier to get. In that respect, it is no wonder that the Independent National Security Legislation Monitor has been critical of these provisions.

The Greens have moved some amendments in the Senate to try to address this, and some other provisions have been amended in the Senate, but the guts of this bill still remains. It is at exactly these kinds of moments, when people are, rightly, fearful for their safety and that of others whom they know here and overseas, that we need to step back and not make a decision informed by fear but actually ask a fundamental question: are we giving up those things that we think define us as a society? When others from across the political spectrum and the experts in the area say, 'These kinds of control orders are not an essential or helpful part of Australia's comprehensive response to terrorism,' we should listen. But the reason we have not listened here is that there is a committee, which is a club of the two old parties, who walk in lockstep on this issue, that has been quite happy to say, 'If the security agencies have asked for it, we'll give it to them.' Because of that, in this parliament, either in this chamber or as a legislature, we have not paid sufficient attention to those who have been saying, 'No, you'll be giving up something that is actually quite fundamental. You're giving up individual liberty and you are extending to our security agencies more extensive power than they have had before—and you are doing it in a situation where there is no Independent National Security Legislation Monitor and where the only supposed oversight is a committee that is a club of the two old parties, who agree on all of this anyway.'

It is for that reason that those parts of this bill cannot be supported and should not be supported. We should not be using conflict in Iraq and Syria that we helped start as an excuse for passing these laws and taking away individual rights and liberties, because that is what will be done if this legislation passes here. If we were serious about stopping terrorism, we would have a searing examination of Australia's role, together with others, in not only creating the instability in Iraq and Syria that helped the likes of Daesh gain a foothold but, actually, in some instances being part of coalitions that provide arms to groups that then find their way into the hands of the likes of ISIS. We would be asking: is more war and more intervention in the Middle East going to solve it? Or might that just keep it going for a bit longer so that we find ourselves back here in another five or 10 years facing similar conflicts and similar threats, with the government saying, 'We want you to give up more of your civil liberties because, clearly, you did not give up enough last time'? If we keep going down that road, then, slowly but surely, we will lose what defines Australia as a free and democratic country. We cannot keep giving up our rights and our freedoms to deal with this threat. We have to attack this threat at the source and we have to ask the honest questions about whether Australia's involvement is actually making this country less safe and whether continuing to go and wage wars in other parts of the world creates exactly the kind of instability that allows these kinds of lunatics in the likes of Daesh to gain a foothold and to be seen as somehow an attractive option. That is the direction that we are going in.

The Greens will be steadfast in saying, 'The safety of Australia should not come at the expense of giving up our rights and the things that define us.' If we want to make Australia safe, which we all do, let's be serious about it. Let's be serious about it and not participate in wars that give these terrorists the opportunity to gain a foothold and, in some instances, legitimacy—because that is exactly what is happening. Let us stop fuelling this instability and terror on the other side of the world and let us ask whether or not we have in fact helped arm some of these mobs. That is exactly what many independent reports are saying—that the forces that have gone in, supposedly with good intentions, have in fact helped make this threat worse. If we were serious about combating terrorism and making Australia safe, that is what we would do. We would not use it as a pretext to take away people's liberties.

See this speech in context