Mal Brough (Fisher, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

I do not intend to canvass in detail the specific measures within the Counter-Terrorism Legislation Amendment Bill (No. 1) 2014. They have been more than adequately covered by the numerous speakers who have come before me, and none more eloquently than the member for Pearce. I want to reflect a little bit about why we are at this point, how we have got here and what has changed since we, as a parliament, started to canvass these issues back in 2001.

I entered this parliament back in 1996 for the first time. Just to take people's minds back, the forecourt of this parliament was considerably different then. In those days, the traffic flowed two ways around the parliament. The road itself had to be amended at the front of the parliament to push the traffic further away from the forecourt and the front of the building. My understanding is that that extension was not for some good traffic purpose. It was actually so that if a bomb was blown up in front of the parliament the pressure from the explosion would not penetrate the front of the building. I recall in my early days in this place there were no bollards. You went and parked out the back of the House of Representatives. You left your car, without gates, underneath the parliament. In other words, there were great freedoms that were just taken for granted in this, the people's palace, the Parliament of Australia.

We took it for granted because we are a very lucky country. But the reality is that, since 2001, our world has changed. Today, to have men—and perhaps some women—with rifles in front of our parliament is something that I would not possibly have considered. It would have been a figment of someone's wild imagination. I take us on this journey for us to reflect, as a people and as a parliament, as to why we have got here.

Terrorism is not new. Terrorism is thousands of years old. Modern terrorism began with, from my limited research, a hijacking of an aircraft in Brazil, I think it was, in the 1930s. My understanding was that it too was to do with politics—constitutional revolution. There was the Munich Olympics massacre of the Jewish team in 1972, which brought this into stark relief for the public, and, of course, September 11.

I recall precisely, as I am sure many people do in this place, where I was on September 11. I was in Sydney in a hotel room and I remember I was watching Muhammad Ali in Rumble in the Jungle, and along the bottom of the screen came this little ticker tape saying a plane had hit the Twin Towers. Initially I just thought, 'What a fool! How the hell could you miss those!' or, 'Why didn't you miss them?' Of course, sometime thereafter, when the enormity of the situation dawned on me, I recall ringing my wife, getting her out of bed and just saying—and I remember the words precisely—'Turn on the TV. The world's gone mad. The world has gone mad.' And it really has in many respects because the things that we have taken for granted—the freedoms that we have enjoyed in this country and that we just take as our birthright—have actually been impinged in many ways by this parliament reacting to an ever-changing world of terrorism.

I asked the Parliamentary Library today to list for me the number of legislative changes since 2001. Today we hit No. 54. There have been 54 changes, and almost every one of those will be in some way impinging the rights of an Australian who means no-one any harm, who goes about their business in a law-abiding, free manner. We had the proceeds of crime bills, the border security legislation, the suppression of finance of terrorism bill, the security legislation amendment, the criminal code amendment—and, of course, we are amending the criminal code again today—all the way through to maritime transport security and aviation transport security bills. On it goes, all the way through. There were 48 in the time that I was last in parliament, a further two changes in the Gillard-Rudd years and then another four changes now.

There are two things about them. One is that they do restrict Australians' liberties—things that many Australians have fought and died for. But, as the member for Pearce said, there are those who will champion your rights to maintain your freedoms, and I, like many members here, would, no doubt, have had correspondence from members of the public about the metadata retention legislation and the intercept laws, and I do not want to see those things in place. But I recognise, as a former soldier, that when your enemy continues to change, when your enemy continues to innovate, when your enemy continues to want to destroy you, for you to stand still and not to react means that you will fail the people that we are here to support: the general public.

All of these measures, introduced by Liberal and Labor, have had one purpose: to strengthen our intelligence and our capacity to gather intelligence, to be able to detain people who may be of risk to our fellow Australians, to support our Defence forces and out police forces and to protect people when they are flying or in their normal work. They not only come at a cost to our liberties, they come at a financial cost. Over that period of time, these measures, which have been foisted upon us because others want their ideologies jammed down our throats and want us to pay the penalty—that penalty being the loss of our liberty—have also cost, it is estimated, something in the order, in today's money, of $16 thousand million to $17 thousand million. So the next time you walk through an airport and you go through a scanner or you see the bollards out the front here and the extra security guards that are in so many places, it does not actually add to productivity. It does not add to the wealth of our nation and to who we are and what we want to be. It does not put another teacher at a school or at a desk. What it does is give us some level of protection from those who seek to destroy who we are and what we are.

I would just like to make some comments about my philosophy on this. I have said it in the Federation Chamber and I would like to repeat it today. We have made mistakes in the past in the Middle East where we declare full-time, we declare that the game is over when the game is not over, because most people living in the Western world wish to live free. They do not want their sons and their daughters going to war. They do not want to spend money and they do not want to see the carnage that is caused by war. However, if we decide when the game is over, there are those with extremist views who do not hold to those rules. They will, like a flickering flame, die down and become hard to identify, but be assured that with the right oxygen—money, opportunity—they will rise again, they will burn brightly and they will attract to them moths from around the world.

At the time of the second reading speech by the Attorney-General, Senator Brandis—and I commend the job that he has been doing—it was estimated that there were some 50 Australians fighting overseas. That number has not lessened; it has grown since that time. The threat to Australia has grown since that time. Hence, we have to continue not only to remain vigilant but—and it is a word that we like to bandy around—to achieve containment. This is not something that can be contained. This is a scourge on the world that must, with every effort, be eliminated. The Islamic population of Australia is and will play an important role in ensuring that occurs.

I have a message to some in my own electorate. There is in Maroochydore at the moment an Islamic church wishing to purchase a spot to worship in. I support their right to do so. I am sure my uncle, who fought with the 2/25th Battalion in both New Guinea and the Middle East, would also have fought for their right. He may not have been a Muslim and he may have disagreed with many of the more extreme positions of that church, but he would have supported their right to be able to worship how, when and whom they wish. And I support that right. I think that once we allow fear to overcome our freedoms and our belief in the freedoms of speech, association and worship then we are lesser persons, and the terrorists of this world win.

There are 54 pieces of legislation, including today's. We are aiming to help our Defence Force personnel by ensuring they have the best intelligence available in the most timely fashion. We are removing obstacles—which could be unforeseen—where time is of the essence and where a minister may be not be available and there is no second party who can give that authority. These are simple things, but they are actually important. They are important for ensuring that we give the men and women of Australia who seek to defend us the weaponry, the intelligence, the command structure and the resources they need.

It is not Senator Brandis or the Prime Minister who have come up with these ideas. It is the professionals, the people we entrust with our freedoms. They are the people who put their lives on the line and send others into harm's way. This is the best advice they can give to us about how to help them fight terrorism. We should stand steadfast with them at all times. We should not be second-guessing these things, because none of them seek to remove, withdraw or limit their own freedoms or their families' freedoms. They do it because they believe it is in the best interests of us as a nation and of each individual within our nation.

To that handful of people who seek to destroy our way of life: be under no illusion. Every Australian, bar just a handful, stands against you and we stand as one—despite our religions, despite our political views, despite our cultural backgrounds—because that is what has made us great for our entire existence and will continue to do so into the future. I dream of the day when we do not need men out the front with rifles, when we can again have the freedoms that we had, those days of innocence which seem not that long ago. Maybe I live in a fantasyland, but we have to dream. We have to have a vision of a safer, freer world, and Australia stands ready to play its part.

To our Defence Force personnel, as they serve overseas today and in the weeks to come over Christmas: on behalf of the people of Fisher and Australia, I thank you for what you are doing. I pray you godspeed. May you return to your families and the bosom of Australia.

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