Richard Marles (Corio, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Defence) Share this | Hansard source

With obvious reluctance I rise to indicate that the opposition will be opposing the suspension. The Brereton report has been shocking in its content and shocking for the nation. It has required much soul searching on the part of the Defence Force but also on behalf of our country. It needs to be dealt with with enormous sensitivity.

I want to make two points at large. Firstly, without reference to anyone who was mentioned in this motion, the moral courage of those who stood up and called out wrongs that were committed amongst those they served with were acts of extreme bravery and we as a nation owe those people an enormous debt of gratitude. Secondly, when the Director of Public Prosecutions initiates a prosecution there is an obligation to satisfy the public interest test in terms of proceeding with that prosecution. There is an obligation to give an explanation for that, and it's very important that the explanation for why prosecutions occur is given to the Australian public.

I want to make two points about this specific motion. Firstly, it has been Labor's position on the Brereton report and all that is contained within it that we as a nation ought to be making sure this is above the political fray. We ought to be making sure that people who are involved in this parliament are doing everything they can to support each other and the process of working through all that flows from the report's recommendations and, ultimately, the civil proceedings that flow from it. We want to hold true to that.

The second, more specific point is that the action on this resolution calls for charges to be dropped. The Attorney-General has set out eloquently the essential proposition here. This flies in the face of the well-understood principle of the separation of powers between, on the one hand, the legislature and the executive and, on the other hand, judicial legal proceedings. Officers of the Director of Public Prosecutions have been established at a state and federal level precisely to give an arm's length ability or separation, in terms of the procedure in respect of criminal prosecutions, from the determinations that occur in the executive and the legislature branches of government.

In short, politicians should have absolutely nothing to do with who gets prosecuted criminally in this country. That is a really important principle, and what is being proposed here flies in the face of it. Were we to get to a point where we were supporting this we would have crossed a huge threshold, which would be incredibly dangerous in what it allowed governments now and in the future to do. Governments should have nothing to do with the criminal prosecution of people in this country. That is for the Director of Public Prosecutions.

It's on that basis that, notwithstanding the normal practice of supporting suspensions, we in the opposition and in Labor feel that there is no way we can be a part of a resolution that would seek to fly so flagrantly in the face of that separation of powers.

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