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

The 2019-20 Australian bushfire season, the Black Summer, will never be forgotten. Over 24 million hectares of bush and farmland were burnt. Over 3,000 homes were destroyed. Nearly three billion animals were killed or displaced. Thirty-three lives were lost in the fires. Over 400 deaths were caused by the toxic smoke that blanketed much of eastern Australia. So, indeed, the horrors of the Black Summer will not be forgotten but nor will the response, because we witnessed the very best of Australia in the Black Summer. We witnessed countless acts of extraordinary bravery by Australia's firefighters and emergency services personnel, including thousands of volunteers. Their courage and dedication saved many homes, many lives and whole communities. We owe them a debt that can never be repaid.

We witnessed an extraordinary international response. Firefighters and other personnel from across the world—including the United States, Canada, Singapore, Fiji, Indonesia, Japan, the Philippines, Papua New Guinea and New Zealand—sacrificed time with their families over the Christmas period to help Australia when we needed it most. Tragically, three American firefighters lost their lives. We also witnessed thousands and thousands of other acts of kindness and generosity by ordinary people across this country and across the globe. Donations of money, food, clothes and other supplies came flying in, thick and fast. People gave up their time to travel to bushfire ravaged parts to assist their fellow Australians. Many opened up their homes to strangers who had lost everything. The Australian people were tested during the Black Summer and the Australian people responded with courage, compassion and generosity.

The Black Summer will not be forgotten for another reason, too. At the same time as the world witnessed the very best of Australia, we also witnessed the very worst of Australia's political leadership: the catastrophic failure of leadership by an actor, a guy from marketing, who likes to play the role of Prime Minister on television but who did not appear to realise that what he did, or didn't do, had real consequences for the people of Australia. We saw a Prime Minister who proved himself unworthy of the country he nominally led. While it is true that the Black Summer was unprecedented, it did not come without warning. For many months, a coalition of 23 former fire and emergency chiefs tried to meet with the Prime Minister to tell him that a bushfire crisis was coming. They wrote to him. They pleaded with him to listen to their warnings. But, when the warnings came, the Prime Minister's first instinct was to ignore them. When the warnings were realised, his first instinct was to flee the country. When the inevitable criticism followed, his first instinct was to stage a media stunt. When the criticism grew louder, his only instinct was to make excuses. He said, 'I don't hold a hose, mate. It's a state responsibility. I don't have the power to do anything. If only we'd known what was coming.' In the middle of a national emergency, these are not the words of a leader. These are the bleatings of a coward.

In January of this year, the Prime Minister complained that the legal framework that would allow the Commonwealth to declare a national state of emergency does not exist. The Prime Minister wanted Australians to believe that, if only there had been a law that told the Prime Minister how to respond to a national emergency, everything would have been okay. But the law was not the problem. The law did not require the Prime Minister to ignore the coalition of 23 former fire and emergency chiefs in the lead-up to the Black Summer. The law did not require the Prime Minister to fly, in secret, to Hawaii for a holiday while Australia burned. The law did not require the Prime Minister to force grieving and traumatised women and men to shake his hand for a photo opportunity. The law was not the problem; this Prime Minister was the problem.

There is a long history in Australia of the Commonwealth government responding quickly and decisively to natural disasters, including through the speedy deployment of the Australian Defence Force to provide on-the-ground support. There is a long history in Australia of prime ministers showing national leadership and galvanising the country in times of crisis. When the Black Saturday fires hit in 2009, Prime Minister Kevin Rudd did not run. He did not hide. He did not shirk responsibility or make excuses. After the disastrous Queensland floods in 2010-11, Prime Minister Julia Gillard acted the same way. They both acted quickly, decisively and with compassion. They acted in the national interest; they acted like prime ministers.

I'll come now to the bills that are before the House. When the government provided us with copies of these draft bills one week ago, we proposed a number of amendments to address some poor drafting and a number of potential unintended consequences. The government has largely addressed those concerns with the amendments that it proposes to make. As amended, Labor believes that these bills would make a number of very minor and largely technical improvements to the law. We support them.

I fully expect the Prime Minister and his ministers to make very large claims about these bills. The Prime Minister will probably pretend that, had these bills been in place prior to the Black Summer, they would have made all the difference. That's not true, and a press release does not make it true. No amount of marketing would make it true. Beyond providing a statutory basis for the government to declare a national emergency, which the Prime Minister could already do, these bills add very little of substance to the existing large array of powers that are already available to the Commonwealth in response to a national emergency. I urge our friends in the press gallery not to fall for the government's spin.

Labor is, of course, always concerned when legislation is rushed through parliament without the usual process of scrutiny and debate, which are cornerstones for a healthy parliamentary democracy. Problems can be overlooked and mistakes can be made. For that reason, as a condition of Labor supporting the swift passage of these bills during this sitting week, the government has agreed to the unusual process proposed by Labor that the bills will be reviewed by a Senate committee immediately upon passage of these bills through the parliament. I thank the Attorney-General for agreeing to that amendment as well as agreeing to a number of the other sensible amendments proposed by Labor.

The amendments to section 15 of the primary bill, for example, ensure that it would not be possible, in any circumstances, for any minister to vary or suspend the information-gathering or other powers of various parliamentary committees or Commonwealth oversight bodies during a national emergency. The fact that the original bill would have given rise to such a possibility is concerning, but it is not surprising; in fact, it is entirely consistent with this government's approach to oversight and accountability. At best, it is an afterthought.

While the amendments to section 15 are very welcome, I'd like to put on the record that, in these hastily drafted amendments, the government has not expressly excluded the powers of the Information Commissioner from the operation of that provision. I've been assured that this is an oversight which the Attorney-General will address by way of regulation immediately following the passage of the bills. There may also be other acts which should be expressly excluded from the operation of section 15. They include the Independent National Security Legislation Monitor Act, the Australian Human Rights Commission Act, the Public Interest Disclosure Act and all or part of the Privacy Act. I urge the Attorney-General and the Senate Legal and Constitutional Affairs Legislation Committee to give further consideration to those matters.

The amendments proposed by Labor and accepted by the government will also ensure that the powers in the bills—limited though they are—will be reviewed by a Senate committee every time a national emergency is declared. However, the government did not, unfortunately, agree to all of Labor's proposed amendments. One of those proposed amendments, for example, would have required the Prime Minister to consult with the opposition leader prior to declaring a national emergency. That would be a modest and sensible recommendation. Another amendment proposed by Labor but rejected by the government would have meant that a declaration of a national emergency would be disallowable by the parliament. In our view, the capacity of the parliament to take that action along with the requirement to at least consult with the Leader of the Opposition would act as important safeguards to prevent the declaration of a national emergency in clearly inappropriate circumstances, such as for reasons of political self-interest. Those are further matters that should be considered by the Senate committee following the passage of this legislation.

Last, I come to a more significant matter, which is the failure to prepare for the upcoming bushfire season. Much more significant than anything in these bills is the fact that it is December 2020 and the Prime Minister is still refusing to listen to experts in the lead-up to this disaster season—just as, last December, this Prime Minister was refusing to listen to experts. The chief executive officer of Suncorp, one of Australia's largest insurers, has warned, 'Our nation is no better placed to withstand the impacts of extreme weather than we were last year.' Yesterday, the same former fire chiefs the Prime Minister refused to meet with last year repeated their concern that the government has not done enough to prepare for the next horror bushfire season. The Morrison government has not spent one cent of the $4 billion Emergency Response Fund that this Prime Minister announced 18 months ago. This money could be building cyclone shelters, it could be building firebreaks, or it could be building flood levees in disaster prone communities. Instead, this money is sitting in Treasury doing nothing, just like the Prime Minister—another announcement and another failure to deliver.

The Morrison government refuses to support the establishment of a national aerial firefighting fleet—something that Labor committed to doing long before the Black Summer bushfires. Establishing a national aerial firefighting fleet was a key recommendation of the bushfires royal commission—a royal commission the Prime Minister announced but whose report he is now ignoring. It is another example, if another were needed, of this Prime Minister caring only about the headline and delivering nothing.

And, after eight long years of this Liberal government, the Prime Minister refuses to take any real action to address climate change. Indeed, he refuses to even acknowledge that climate change caused by carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gas emissions is the reason Australia and our friends around the world are suffering increasingly catastrophic events with greater frequency than ever before in recorded history. Just like last year, the Morrison government isn't prepared for the coming disaster season. Just like last year, the Prime Minister is engaging in stunts and making announcements rather than taking the action that is needed to keep Australians safe. The member for Cook needs to stop pretending to be the Prime Minister and start acting like one.

I move:

That all words after "That" be omitted with a view to substituting the following words:

"whilst not declining to give the bill a second reading, the House:

(1) notes the:

(a) Prime Minister's failure to prepare adequately for the last bushfire season;

(b) Prime Minister's catastrophic failure of leadership during the last bushfire season, which Australians have come to know as the Black Summer; and

(c) bill largely re-states emergency powers that are already powers of the Commonwealth Government; and

(2) calls on the Prime Minister and the Government to:

(a) learn from their catastrophic failure to prepare for, or respond to, the Black Summer;

(b) urgently prepare for this disaster season, including by releasing funding for mitigation works from their $4 billion Emergency Response Fund; and

(c) accept, and implement, the Royal Commissioner into National Natural Disaster Arrangements' recommendation to develop a sovereign aerial firefighting fleet".

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