Mark Dreyfus (Isaacs, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Attorney General) Share this | Hansard source

Regrettably, in the very short time the opposition has been provided with these amendments and the parliament has been provided with these amendments—they were first circulated to the parliament at 9.22 this morning, barely three hours ago, and there are 173 amendments covering some 50 pages—the government's contribution to this has been for the Prime Minister to give an intemperate and, frankly, ridiculous press conference rather than focusing on the fact that, despite the consensus report made by the 11 members of the Parliamentary Joint Committee on Intelligence and Security, which recommended to the government that a large number of changes be made to the inadequate legislation brought to this place by the government, it's already apparent that the 173 amendments do not conform with the 17 recommendations of the intelligence committee in a number of important respects.

I will just take some examples, although I'm not going to take up time going through the whole of the ways in which the 173 amendments don't conform to the committee's recommendations. Take recommendation 11 alone. That's a recommendation which makes it very clear, in very substantial detail, that the assessment of a technical capability notice—this is right at the core of contentious schedule 1 of the legislation—by a former judge and a technical expert is to be binding on the Attorney-General, and that both of them must be satisfied of certain matters. By contrast, the government's amendments only require the assessors to 'consider' certain matters rather than 'be satisfied of them', and only require the Attorney-General to 'have regard' to the assessors report rather than 'be binding' on the Attorney-General. This is a sharp and clear example of the government's failure to consider the recommendations or fulfil the recommendations. It's consistent with the sloppy approach that this government has taken pretty much to every national security bill. I see one of its authors, the former minister assisting the Minister for Home Affairs, the member for Hume, is in the chamber. The member for Hume is, of course, the minister who is responsible for the inadequate consultation on this bill, where—

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