Anthony Byrne (Holt, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

[by video link] It goes without saying, with respect to the Counter-Terrorism Legislation Amendment (Sunsetting Review and Other Measures) Bill 2021, that the Labor Party supports this bill. I also support the second reading amendment that was moved by my friend the member for Scullin with respect to the declared area provisions, but I will come back to that a bit later on in this discussion. As I said, we support the bill.

The bill deals with a range of counterterrorism and other police powers in the Crimes Act 1914 and the Criminal Code Act 1995 which are due to expire on 7 September 2021. These four powers are the declared area provisions, the control order regime, the preventative detention regime, and a range of stop, search and seizure powers. This bill would extend the sunset date on each of these powers which was, as I've said, 7 September 2021. As well as extending a number of the sunset dates, the bill would also allow the Parliamentary Joint Committee on Intelligence and Security to conduct a review of the operation, the effectiveness and the proportionality of the declared areas provisions prior to the new sunset date. Finally, the bill would amend the Independent National Security Legislation Monitor Act to give the Independent National Security Legislation Monitor more time to finalise his review of the continuing order regime.

I note the contribution from the previous speaker, the member for Dawson. In terms of his broad support for the legislation that's been put before him and that he was debating and making a contribution on, he raised some issues about privacy concerns; I noted that. I've been someone who has had his parliamentary career defined by what happened on 11 September 2001. I think it was the defence minister who said everyone in Australia knew where they were at the time that those twin towers fell, at the time when those planes hit the twin towers. I can recall that moment nearly 20 years ago vividly, as vividly as though I'm watching it now. Having come into this chamber in 1999, my parliamentary career really has been dominated in many ways by our response to the terror attack by al-Qaeda and Osama bin Laden on 11 September 2001. Of the nearly 22 years I have been in parliament, I would say about 19 of those years have been spent working in the counterterrorism space and the intelligence and security space, working with wonderful professionals who do their utmost day and night to keep Australia safe.

The member for Dawson made some comments about what we are being protected from. I think one of the points to make to people listening who might not understand this legislation, the normal person out in the suburbs or someone who has just come in to try and understand this legislation, is: each of these bits of legislation—declared areas, control orders, the preventative detention regime and the stop, search and seizure powers—have been given to the government, to our security agencies and to the police to keep Australians safe, in response primarily to the threat of terrorism. It is a threat that we have experienced with the Bali bombings.

But I also want to make this point with respect to these powers and many other powers that the agencies have been granted: in my experience—and there have been a lot of new powers that have been granted to the agencies, to the security services and to the police force, particularly the AFP—those powers have been used in a judicious and measured way. Keeping in mind the safeguards that have been invariably built into these legislative measures, some of these powers are extraordinary powers—the preventative detention regime and the stop, search and seizure powers. They are not powers that were created without thought for the consequences; they were powers generated out of the necessity of the time, the necessity to respond to the terrorist threat, the necessity to do what it took within the law to keep Australians safe. And these laws for the most part have in fact done that, as have other laws that have been granted to the intelligence agencies and the security services.

I have a bit to do with the Joint Counter Terrorism Team here in Melbourne, and I have a lot to do with the AFP. What I've seen recently should give many people listening to this great heart about the great work that ASIO does, that the AFP does and that their local police do—in particular the Victorian police—to keep us safe. When you hear what the perpetrators of some of the attacks that you have read about in the broad are attempting to do, it chills the blood; it really does chill you to the marrow, what they are intending to do.

I can only relate, and I very vividly relate to, a specific instance, and I will need to take this opportunity because I don't know if parliament will sit again following this week. But coming up in the next week or two, on 23 September, is the seventh anniversary of the Endeavour Hills terrorist attack by a young man who'd been radicalised by ISIL and then sought to kill two police officers, officer A and officer B, who, I am proud to say, have been my friends now for many years subsequent to that event. I came into contact with them shortly after that attack, where the perpetrator, the young terrorist, was killed. Both of these men wear the scars of that attack. Both of these men will be wearing the scars of that attack for the rest of their lives—not just the physical scars, and they are very unpleasant to look at, but the psychological scars. The officers concerned, when they went and spoke to that young man, did not seek to harm him; they were seeking to keep him out of harm's way. Little did they know, on that very dark evening on 23 September, that that young man was beyond saving—beyond guiding out of harm's way. In effect, what had happened to that young man was that he had been so radicalised that he was there with one thing on his mind: that was to kill the police officers, and, if he were successful in killing those police officers, then to mount a further attack, I believe, on Endeavour Hills Police Station. But that attack was thwarted by the bravery of those two police officers. I made a promise to them: that every year, if I had the opportunity, I would mention these two and bring their bravery to the attention of this place. They responded to one of the first attacks put forward when ISIL issued its fatwa in about the middle part of 2014. They bore the brunt of what happened—of what actually can happen when you have a terrorist attack. So again, to those two, I want to specifically take this opportunity to say that there's not a day that I don't remember what you've done and the sacrifice you've made. Many members of the community can't know who you are and what you're experiencing and what you're suffering. But there are many of your friends who do know—friends from the police community, the AFP community and the intelligence community, and your many friends who again would offer you thanks for the great work that you have done in keeping Australians safe. We all want the best for both of you in continuing to heal from that very traumatic event.

I just want to touch more on the particular powers that are contained within this piece of legislation, which Labor supports. One of the things that concerns me, though, is that the control orders, the preventative detention and the stop, search and seizure powers were all due to expire on 7 September 2021, and they're currently under review by our particular committee. Now, it's a significant concern to me and to other Labor members that the Morrison government have left it until the last minute to extend the sunset dates on these powers. What if it hadn't been possible, for whatever reason, for parliament to sit this week, before 7 September, due to the outbreak of COVID in Canberra or other parts of Australia? We know it was a narrowly run thing and this parliament may not have been able to sit. What would've happened is that all of these existing control orders would have lapsed, and that would have left us much less safe. With counterterrorism, with these sorts of regulations, you just can't do 'just in time'; it's just not satisfactory. We could have actually avoided this risk—and it was a safety risk—had the government been paying attention and addressed this sunset clause issue faster. But we are supportive, and this will allow the government to extend those sunset dates to 7 December 2022. This extension will ensure that the intelligence and security committee will have sufficient time to complete the review, prior to the powers sunsetting, and the government will have sufficient time to work through and respond to any recommendations made by the committee.

There's another area, called the declared area provisions. The control order, preventative detention and stop and seizure powers, which were due to expire, as I've said, on 7 September 2021, are, as I said, under review. I want to describe the declared area provisions of the Criminal Code briefly. They allow the Minister for Foreign Affairs to declare an area in a foreign country, if he or she is satisfied that a listed terrorist organisation is engaging in a hostile activity in that area of a foreign country, and make it an offence for a person to enter or remain in a declared area. That is subject to a number of limited exceptions set out in section 119.2 of the Criminal Code, such as providing aid of a humanitarian nature, performing an official duty for the Commonwealth or visiting a family member.

In February this year, the intelligence and security committee recommended that the sunset date for these powers be extended to 7 September 2024 and that the committee be empowered to conduct a review of these powers at any time prior to that date. This bill implements both of these recommendations. The intelligence and security committee, however, also recommended that the declared area provisions be amended to allow Australian citizens to request an exemption from the Minister for Foreign Affairs to travel to a declared area for a reason not listed in section 119.2 of the Criminal Code. The former national security legislation monitor Dr James Renwick made a similar recommendation in 2017. The government has rejected this recommendation on the bases that it could not be effectively implemented and monitored and that the time and resources required to obtain information to assess an application would be significant and would divert security and intelligence resources from other national security priorities. We are not persuaded by this argument, and we think that the government should implement the committee's bipartisan and unanimous recommendation. We recognise that the implementation of this recommendation is complex, but we are calling on the government to work with the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade and our security agencies to implement the committee's bipartisan and unanimous recommendation.

As I've said, with everything that we're seeing—the terrors unfolding in Afghanistan, the terrible scenes that we've seen at the airport and the terrible reports that I'm receiving from our wonderful Afghan community here in Melbourne—I'd like to take the opportunity to pay tribute to the men and women of the Afghan community that have made this country their home and who have had a pivotal role to play in the creation of Australia. Afghan cameleers were essential to the development of Australia when they came to this country in the 1800s. Without them, we may not have had the bush telegraph. There are many things that we wouldn't have had, had our Afghan friends not been here. I believe that we owe it to them, in discussing this particular matter in Afghanistan, to provide the support we can to get as many as possible of the people that assisted us in our efforts to keep Afghanistan safe out of harm's way and to bring those that are appropriate and are security cleared to our country. I take this opportunity to speak on behalf of my friends in the Afghan community who are working with the government to assist, in terms of identifying appropriate people that can come to the country, to allow that to happen. We need to be there for them just as they were for us.

We can see what happens. I saw what happened when the Taliban controlled Afghanistan last. Women were sent back into the Stone Age. The great freedoms that have been enjoyed have created a different environment for women that, I believe, is going to be taken away, notwithstanding the rhetoric from the Taliban mark 2. The challenge that was made and particularly enunciated by our Leader of the Opposition is: we'll be watching you and making sure that you abide by the words that you've been saying to the international community.

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