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

I thank the member for his question and his excellent work on the Parliamentary Joint Standing Committee on Intelligence and Security. There are 19 tranches of national security legislation that have been passed, as I noted yesterday, and of course yesterday the director-general of ASIO said that the critical counter-encryption legislation was used just 10 days after it was passed, in his words, to 'prevent a real risk of injury to Australians'. He also noted in that speech:

Encrypted communications damage intelligence coverage in nine out of 10 priority counter terrorism cases.

So we have a situation where, 10 days after those critical laws were passed, which prevented a real risk of injury to Australians, they were used. Five days before they were passed, the shadow Attorney-General would not support that bill. There were two reasons that he offered for the failure to support the bill. The first was that counter-encryption, in his view, should only be for terrorism and child sex offences and should not be extended to drug importation, serious fraud, murder and espionage. The second reason that he offered is that he did not support state police being able to issue under the counter-encryption system. I can inform the House today that I am advised by our departments that state police are actively using this system. Had our version of the bill not passed, had we not stood our ground, they would have been impeded from doing so.

I'm asked about alternatives, and the alternatives are very clearly represented by the position of the shadow Attorney-General. He wanted laws passed which would not have allowed counter-encryption for espionage offences. That was his position. And we now find out that the same person who said that the laws were not fit to pass parliament, the same person who does not believe these laws should be used for espionage operations, wants to be—can you believe it?—the leader of the Right faction of the Labor Party. Presumably, that's because Karl Marx is no longer available to fit into that position. In fact, one Labor member is quoted as saying that, on social and national security issues, the shadow Attorney-General 'is beyond Left'. I'm not so much interested in how he wants to be the leader of the right-wing faction of the Labor Party; I'm interested to know: how did the shadow Attorney-General end up in the Right faction to begin with?

Did he just walk into the wrong room, sit down next to the member for Hunter and say, 'This is a nice chair; I think I might stay for the next 10 years'? Can I offer this observation, Mr Speaker: to protect Australia's national security, the person to determine your position is not someone who is 'beyond Left'.

See this speech in context