Mr Tony Burke (Watson, Australian Labor Party, Manager of Opposition Business (House)) Share this | Hansard source

Labor will be responding to the amendments in two ways. The shadow Attorney-General will follow me and will talk about the detail of the amendments. I will explain to the House the reason why we're taking the approach that we're taking right now. We had been given in writing a guarantee from the Attorney-General, which I will quote from now: 'As discussed with you in our meeting earlier today, the government also commits to introducing the agreed amendments in the Senate, subject to the passage of the bill through the House of Representatives without amendment.' We had presumed that that would be the process that would be followed.

The reason why we viewed that as the wisest process in terms of national security is simple: whenever the intelligence committee has come forward with recommendations for amendment, those amendments have been provided to the opposition and, on each occasion, as I understand it, the opposition have come back saying, 'Some of these amendments don't actually fully reflect the recommendations within the committee.' When that has happened, the government, in good faith, has revised the amendments and we have ended up with amendments that properly reflect the committee's report.

These amendments were provided to the opposition at 6.30 this morning. They were circulated online at 9.22 this morning. There are 173 of them. In the time that the opposition have had to go through them, we see that there are areas where the amendments that are currently in front of us do not yet properly reflect the findings of the intelligence committee. We believe it would have been the wisest path for the government to keep with their original agreement, but they have chosen not to. Notwithstanding that, the amendments that are in front of us get us closer to the committee's report than the original bill. With that in mind, Labor will be supporting the amendments that are before us. But, given that there are now comments following a particularly enthusiastic media conference from the Prime Minister, the government should recognise that there is a plan, potentially, to shut down the House today. I want to advise the parliament that that would not be wise.

We will be seeking in the Senate to pursue further amendments to make sure that this bill properly reflects the findings of the intelligence committee. We would have preferred to have done that correctly the first time, but the government has chosen a path of particular haste. So we will support these amendments now, we will support a third reading of the bill and we will continue to pursue further amendments in the Senate, which will then come back to the House for this bill to be finalised. The amendments we will be pursuing will be within the frame of what is recommended through the intelligence committee report, in the same way we did when Malcolm Turnbull was Prime Minister or, indeed, when the member for Warringah was Prime Minister. I would simply ask the government to act on national security with a similar level of responsibility as what has happened under their two previous prime ministers. The intelligence committee operates this way for a reason. Bipartisanship matters and getting amendments right on national security matters as well.

We are not afraid of the parliament. We are not afraid of the parliament sitting. We're happy to stay here for as long as it takes today. We don't need to clock off early. Of all the issues to clock off early on, it would be extraordinary if the government chose to do that on national security. Therefore, given the limits around what the government have done in breaking their earlier agreement, we will support the amendments in front of us, send the bill across to the Senate and, in the Senate, seek to have amendments that properly reflect the intelligence committee's report.

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