Anne Aly (Cowan, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I'm not going to speak too long on the Crimes Legislation Amendment (Powers, Offences and Other Measures) Bill 2017. I want to stand to reiterate and reaffirm the comments made by the member for Hotham, the shadow minister for justice, particularly around the bipartisanship shown in this process and in many of the processes around law enforcement. As the shadow minister for justice mentioned, Labor supported this bill with some very important amendments. It is an omnibus bill, which does several things. I won't go through all of them, but I want to focus on a few. The first one of those is the recognition of the importance of the Australian Federal Police in international cooperation, particularly around serious and organised crime. Serious and organised crime is becoming increasingly transnational, and our very top-notch and very capable law enforcement here in Australia has a strong role to play regionally in stopping international and transnational crime.

I'll just give you an example of how this kind of crime works. It is also particularly important to have regional and international cooperation in an era of new and emerging communications technologies, where criminals are taking advantage of that. They're able to coordinate using the dark web and encryption services across and between countries. An example of that was an Indonesian terror cell that used cryptocurrencies. First of all, they used some hacking devices to obtain the credit card information of people in one country, and then they sold that credit card information to people in third and fourth countries for cryptocurrencies. With this kind of technology-enabled crime, they managed to raise US$600,000 for a potential terrorist attack. That's just one example, but it highlights the importance of having a well-equipped law enforcement agency that can work internationally in this space.

As the shadow minister for justice quite eloquently mentioned, law enforcement is not just a matter of having a strong legislative framework; it's also very important that agencies are well resourced. Their capabilities are also very important. So this is about not just putting in place the legislative framework that enables law enforcement agencies to do the kind of work that they need to but ensuring that they are fully resourced and have the capabilities in order to ensure that as well. When funding is cut, that capability is compromised, and the work that they are able to do in stopping international and transnational serious and organised crime through these cooperative measures that are outlined in this bill is also compromised.

I also want to speak about another important amendment—again, reiterating what our shadow minister for justice said. That important amendment is on the custody notification issue. The bill alters the custody notification obligations of investigation officials when they intend to question an Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander person. As originally drafted, before we worked through these amendments in a bipartisan fashion as we did, the bill would actually have removed the absolute requirement to notify an Aboriginal legal aid organisation. The intent should have been to amend a drafting error that was brought to light in a case that the previous speaker mentioned It was a drafting error in the Crimes Act that, in effect, meant that investigating officials were not required to notify an Aboriginal legal assistance organisation or person before commencing questioning. This meant that the custody notification rules, which were originally intended to be an absolute requirement to notify, would have been scaled back to a requirement to take reasonable steps to notify and then a two-hour wait. The shadow minister for justice highlighted some of the difficulties with having reasonable steps and what qualifies as reasonable steps and then a two-hour wait.

As stakeholders noted, there are many reasons why an Aboriginal legal assistance organisation may not be able to respond immediately to a notification, so these proposed changes might have left individuals without those very important protections. What would have happened, had the bill gone through without the amendments that were recommended, is a watering-down of the notification provisions of the Crimes Act, which should protect Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people. So we're very happy that that didn't happen, that the amendments that we suggested were worked through, again, in a bipartisan manner and that those changes were made. We proposed amendments to protect the absolute obligation to notify an Aboriginal legal assistance organisation, and we called on the government to implement nationwide custody notification services.

I do want to mention and add something here that's not in the bill but that I think has been an issue, in particular for Western Australia but also around Australia. In the circumstances of the arrest and incarceration of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people, an issue has been access to interpreting services. There has been a lack of qualifications in determining whether or not somebody needs an interpreting service in a justice environment, an assumption that if somebody speaks English then they can comprehend and perform within a justice environment and a misunderstanding of the actual standards that would require access to an interpreting service. Apart from that, in Western Australia there has been a decimation of the Aboriginal translating and interpreting service. If we're talking about notifications and if we are looking at a more comprehensive approach, I think it's very important to mention here in this debate the need for more access to interpreting and translating services for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people, particularly in justice settings.

The bill contains a number of other measures. I won't go through all of them, but it does contain strengthened protections for vulnerable witnesses and complainants in Commonwealth criminal proceedings in the Crime Act. I will just mention that Labor are committed to protection for the vulnerable. In government we passed the Crimes Legislation Amendment (Law Enforcement Integrity, Vulnerable Witness Protection and Other Measures) Act in 2013. That provided protection for vulnerable witnesses giving evidence in proceedings for Commonwealth criminal offences and a scheme to enable the use of victim impact statements in the sentencing of federal offenders. We were proud to build on that wonderful work that we did in 2013 and support these additional protections as they are in the bill.

Schedule 3 of the bill creates separate offence regimes for insiders and outsiders for the disclosure of information relating to controlled operations in the Crimes Act. The terms 'insiders' and 'outsiders' do not refer to separate television shows on two different networks—just to be clear! The intention of these amendments was to bring AFP-controlled operations in line with the offences for disclosure of ASIO special intelligence operations, which makes sense. The changes in schedule 3 will mirror section 35P of the ASIO Act, which was amended in 2015 to introduce lesser penalties for outsiders than for insiders who disclose ASIO special intelligence operations.

There are a number of other measures. Considering this is the third reading debate, I won't go into them. But I will just close by again reiterating the importance of a couple of things—the first being bipartisan support, particularly on law enforcement. We are happy with this bill and we're proud to support this bill, given the amendments that were recommended and the acceptance of those amendments. That's the first thing I want to highlight. The second thing is just to reiterate again the importance of legislative reform that allows law enforcement to do its job and keep in mind and keep an eye on ensuring that they also have the capabilities to take advantage of a robust legislative framework. Those capabilities are intrinsically tied to resourcing and to the level of funding that we give to our Federal Police. I commend our law enforcement agencies. They do a wonderful job. But, increasingly, they are asked to do that job with fewer and fewer resources.

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