Christian Porter (Pearce, Liberal Party, Attorney-General) Share this | Hansard source

We were at the point where we were noting that defences will apply to ensure that the offences do not apply too broadly, including a defence specifically applying to journalists. Government amendments will ensure that this defence applies to journalists as well as to editorial and support staff who reasonably believe that their conduct was in the public interest. The new secrecy offences ensure that harmful information cannot be released, while also providing appropriate defences to maintain freedom of speech, the press and expression.

With respect to treason, treachery and other threats to security, the EFI bill will update and simplify the longstanding offences of treason and treachery. These are some of the oldest offences on the statute book, and as such they require modernisation and updates to the language to reflect the modern environment and international law concepts of armed conflict.

The EFI bill will also repeal archaic and outdated offences from part II of the Crimes Act. These offences will be modernised and moved to the Criminal Code to ensure that Commonwealth criminal law appropriately supports the needs of the Australian Defence Force and protects Australia's democracy.

The new offences will criminalise threats to Australia's security, including advocating mutiny, assisting prisoners of war to escape, facilitating military-style training for a foreign government, and the use of force, violence or intimidation to interfere with Australian democratic or political rights. Government amendments to these offences include extending the good-faith defence to the offence of advocating mutiny, introducing a defence for staff of the United Nations or the International Committee of the Red Cross for the military-style-training offence, and reducing the penalty for the offence of interference with political rights and duties.

With respect to sabotage, the EFI bill will also introduce comprehensive sabotage offences into the Criminal Code. The new sabotage offences will criminalise conduct causing damage to a broad range of critical infrastructure where it could prejudice Australia's national security. The new offences will apply higher penalties where sabotage offences are committed on behalf of foreign principals and will also contain offences that apply where a person's conduct does not immediately cause damage but leaves an item or system vulnerable to future misuse or exploitation. Government amendments to the EFI bill will also broaden the defence to sabotage offences to include private owners and operators of public infrastructure.

With respect to the Telecommunications (Interception and Access) Act, the final point is that the EFI bill will amend the Telecommunications (Interception and Access) Act 1979 to ensure that the powers under the act are available to investigate the offences contained in the EFI bill.

With respect to the Foreign Influence Transparency Scheme Bill, while it's the case that foreign actors are free to promote their interests in Australia and in our free and open society, this must be done in a lawful, transparent and open way. The FITS Bill will provide transparency for the Australian government and the Australian public about the forms and sources of foreign influence in Australia. Decision-makers in the Australian government and the public should know what interests are being advanced in respect of particular decisions or processes. However, it is difficult to assess the interests of foreign actors when they use intermediaries to advance their interests or activities, such as lobbying or the communication of information or material. This concealment ultimately undermines the ability of the decision-maker and the public to evaluate and reach informed decisions on the basis of those representations.

For the first time, the public and decision-makers in government will have access to information to enable them to accurately assess how foreign sources may be seeking to influence Australia's government and political processes. The FITS Bill will create a scheme that requires persons undertaking certain activities on behalf of a foreign principal to register. The person who registers will be required to disclose information about the nature of their relationship with the foreign principal and activities undertaken pursuant to that relationship. The disclosure requirements will be ongoing, and additional disclosure will be required during elections. Some of the information which a person discloses will be made publicly available, and the FITS Bill also introduces criminal offences for noncompliance with the registry scheme.

The FITS Bill will require persons who undertake activities on behalf of a foreign principal to register under the scheme, depending on who the foreign principal is and the activities that the person undertakes. The term 'foreign principal' in the FITS Bill will capture a foreign government, a foreign political organisation, and persons and entities closely related to foreign governments and foreign political organisations. The FITS Bill will require registration where a person engages in parliamentary or political lobbying, communicates information or material designed to influence debate, or makes certain disbursements. Certain information about registrants and their activities will be made publicly available.

With respect to transparency notices, the FITS Bill will empower the secretary of the department to issue a transparency notice setting out whether a particular entity or individual is related to a foreign government. This mechanism will ensure that a person who undertakes registrable activities on the entity's or individual's behalf will be required to register under the scheme. Transparency notices will assist potential registrants to understand whether they are required to register and will also shed light where a company or individual seeks to conceal their relationship with a foreign principal.

The bill also provides for certain exemptions. The FITS Bill will exempt a range of organisations and persons from registering under the scheme. The exemptions extend to humanitarian assistance, legal advice, diplomatic activities, religious activities, commercial or business pursuits, industry representative bodies, individuals making personal legal representations, registered charities, activities with an artistic purpose, certain registered organisations and certain professions. These exemptions appropriately restrict the application of the scheme to those organisations and persons which seek to influence Australian political and government decisions or processes in a way that threatens Australian institutions.

The FITS Bill will also introduce offences, which will ensure compliance with the scheme. It will be a criminal offence for a person who is liable to register not to be registered under the scheme. (Extension of time granted) Criminal offences will also apply for failing to fulfil responsibilities under the scheme or providing false or misleading information in purported fulfilment of responsibilities and also for destroying records. It will also be a criminal offence not to comply with a notice from the secretary requiring information in relation to the scheme.

By way of conclusion I'd like to thank all of my parliamentary colleagues for recognising the important need for the measures in these two bills. Comprehensive criminal laws are a critical part of Australia's response to the threat of espionage and foreign interference. The EFI bill reflects the government's commitment to addressing this threat and to ensuring that our law enforcement and security agencies have the powers that they need to respond to the broad spectrum of foreign interference and related criminal activities directed against Australia's interests.

Legislative reform is clearly a critical step in shedding light on foreign influence. The FITS Bill reflects the government's commitment to addressing this issue and to ensuring that the public and decision-makers in government will have access to information to enable them to accurately assess how foreign sources may be seeking to influence Australia's government and political processes.

Ultimately, no member of this House—indeed, no citizen of our great democracy—should underestimate the threat being faced by the Australian government, Australian society and Australian democracy. That threat is from new forms of espionage practised in the modern age. These bills are detailed and legally complex, but the central principle of their necessity can be described simply by saying that we cannot protect Australia against modern espionage in the age of Skyfall with counterintelligence laws drafted for the era of Goldfinger. In fact, the threat of espionage wedded to the technologies of a digital age is now catalysed by something even more potentially dangerous. Likely even more dangerous and potentially even more damaging than traditional espionage is the practice that traditional spying now morphs into a massively broad and inventive range of covert foreign interference, or hidden foreign influence, in our democratic systems. The phenomenon of foreign principals attempting to influence our democracy is neither new nor unexpected, but what in the modern age of information technology and digital communications demonstrates true cunning and what can cause immense harm are foreign influence cloaked in the disguise of a purely or uniquely Australian veneer or foreign advocacy channelled by and through a recognised and seemingly independent Australian voice, which might be paid for or directed by foreign principals in a way that is hidden from sight.

Deception has always been at the heart of espionage, and so transparency is the evergreen counterintelligence to propaganda. So it is that this legislative combination of new foreign interference offences and a register to make transparent the links of Australian advocacy to foreign principals brings Australian counterintelligence laws into the modern age. Ian Fleming once said of his most famous character in espionage that boredom was the only vice that he utterly condemned, and indeed literary commentators have noted that this character displayed both a craving for routine and a hatred of boredom. The practice of modern espionage now being encountered in so many Western democracies across the globe—and the prevalence of deception wedded not merely to traditional spying but to interference and attempts to influence democratic outcomes—means that the only certainty our excellent national security agencies have is that there'll be nothing routine about the threats that they will need to counter and that their government will need to legislate accordingly against. I commend these bills to the House.

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