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

by leave—There was one area of disagreement between the Labor and Liberal members of the committee. On that issue, the additional comment from Labor members which is annexed to the committee report speaks for itself. I would stress that it is an additional comment. It is not a dissenting report. It's an additional comment which notes the different position that was reached in respect of an aspect of the bill. Otherwise, Labor's view is that the bill should be supported. I will elaborate on the comments that are made by Labor members in their additional comment when the time comes to debate the bill.

Rather than speaking about the bill today, I'd like to use this time to talk about the conduct of the Department of Home Affairs during the committee's inquiry. The Parliamentary Joint Committee on Intelligence and Security heard that 52 offenders are currently serving periods of imprisonment for terrorism offences. As recounted in the committee's report, the committee repeatedly sought further information on these offenders from the Department of Home Affairs and asked that, to the extent possible, the information be provided in the form of a public submission. In response, the Department of Home Affairs provided the committee with a classified supplementary submission that set out the requested information. As this report tabled today notes, it is the strong preference of the committee that it be able to report in as public and as transparent a manner as possible. The department chose to adopt an approach that made the committee's job harder than it needed to be by refusing to provide it with the information it requested in the form in which it was requested. We've seen similar examples of this sort of behaviour from the same department in other inquiries that are currently being conducted by the intelligence committee.

This is not a partisan criticism. Liberal members of the committee have also expressed their concern about the department's conduct during this inquiry. The bipartisan report that we are tabling today notes, 'The committee was disappointed by the lack of support the Department of Home Affairs showed the committee and the parliament in its repeated refusal to provide any of the requested information in a public submission.' The department's refusal to provide the requested information in the form of a public submission was not only obstructionist and unacceptable; it was also absurd. All of the information the committee requested is available on public databases and most of it is readily available, in a consolidated form, on the website of the Commonwealth Director of Public Prosecutions, an agency that forms part of the Attorney-General's Department.

I raised my and the committee's concerns about the department's unhelpfulness with the Secretary of the Department of Home Affairs during a public hearing on 20 September 2019 in the context of the committee's inquiry into the impact of law enforcement and intelligence powers on the freedom of the press. I noted that, during the press freedom inquiry, the department had emphasised that it did not inappropriately classify information. I asked the secretary how such a claim could be regarded as credible if the department was not even prepared to provide the committee in a public submission with information that other government agencies have made available on their websites. In response, the secretary agreed to look into the matter personally. The committee subsequently received a further submission from the Department of Home Affairs to this inquiry. That submission annexed the document from the CDPP's website. The committee resolved to accept this as a public submission. The department's supplementary submission was still not good enough but it is a lot better than its initial refusal to provide any information at all on the public record. For the benefit of members of the public, the media and the parliament, and in the interests of encouraging an informed public debate on counterterrorism issues, the committee has included the department's supplementary submission in appendix C of this report.

The Department of Home Affairs is now the primary Commonwealth department responsible for the legislation that the Joint Committee on Intelligence and Security is required to review and for the agencies that the committee is required to oversee. It is vital for the smooth and effective working of the committee that the department provides adequate support for all of the committee's activities. The only alternative would be for the committee's staffing and resources to be dramatically increased. Historically, the committee has been able to rely on the department, which was formerly responsible for most of the legislation and agencies relevant to the intelligence and security committee, namely, the Attorney-General's Department. My hope is that, from now on, the Department of Home Affairs will accept and properly fulfil the supportive role previously played by the Attorney-General's Department. The committee should not be required to, in effect, publicly shame the secretary of the Department of Home Affairs in order for the department to provide basic assistance to the parliament, nor should the Minister for Home Affairs allow the secretary to be placed in such a position. Clearly the Minister for Home Affairs has failed to make it clear to his department that officials who appear before parliamentary inquiries are there to assist the parliament, not to obstruct it. The Minister for Home Affairs should make this very basic point clear to his department so that we do not see a repeat of what we saw during this inquiry.

I commend the report to the House.

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