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

On behalf of the Parliamentary Joint Committee on Intelligence and Security, I present the following reports: Review of the amendments made by the Telecommunications and Other Legislation Amendment (Assistance And Access) Act 2018, incorporating a dissenting report; Review of part 14 of the Telecommunications Act 1997telecommunications sector security reforms; and Advisory report on the Intelligence Oversight and Other Legislation Amendment (Integrity Measures) Bill 2020, incorporating a dissenting report.

Reports made parliamentary papers in accordance with standing order 39(e).

by leave—The first of the reports on which I comment is the Review of the amendments made by the Telecommunications and Other Legislation Amendment (Assistance and Access) Act 2018. The Telecommunications and Other Legislation Amendment (Assistance and Access) Act 2018 is known as the TOLA Act. It amended a range of Commonwealth legislation with the stated intention of introducing measures to better deal with the challenges posed by the rise of encryption technologies. In this review, the intelligence committee considered the ongoing appropriateness, effectiveness and necessity of the powers conferred by the TOLA Act 2018 and made 29 recommendations to the government to amend the legislation. The committee recommended that the powers be retained, with additional safeguards and oversight mechanisms to provide the public with confidence that the legislation continues to be used proportionately and for its intended purpose.

Labor members of the intelligence committee, while agreeing with the majority report, made some important additional comments. In particular, Labor members wrote that they strongly disagreed with the rejection by the Liberal members of the Independent National Security Legislation Monitor's recommendation to extend the industry assistance powers to state and territory anticorruption bodies. I quote from the additional comments by Labor members:

Labor members note that the original version of the Assistance and Access Bill extended the industry assistance powers to state and territory anti-corruption commissions. And in early 2019, a few months after the passage of the Assistance and Access Bill, the current Government introduced Telecommunications and Other Legislation Amendment (Miscellaneous Amendments) Bill 2019 – the primary purpose of which was to extend the industry assistance powers to state and territory anti-corruption commissions.

In other words, the position of Liberal members is at odds with the position taken by the Morrison Government in late 2018 and early 2019 – but which the Morrison Government appears to have now walked away from.

So, what has changed?

More than 1,000 days after promising to establish a federal anti-corruption commission, the Prime Minister has not even introduced a bill into the Parliament. Instead, the Prime Minister has launched an extraordinary series of improper attacks on the NSW Independent Commission Against Corruption – and on anti-corruption bodies more generally.

Against that background, the fact that the Government has walked away from its position that anti-corruption bodies should have access to the industry assistance powers appears to be politically motivated (noting that it could undermine the Prime Minister's misplaced, misleading and hysterical criticisms of the NSW ICAC if he followed through on his now-forgotten commitment to hand new powers to that very body).

As the Independent Monitor noted in his report, "integrity commissions identified concrete disadvantage that flows from their exclusion from the power to issue industry assistance notices". Liberal members have offered no explanation for their refusal to address that "concrete disadvantage".

I turn to the second report, which is the Review of part 14 of the Telecommunications Act 1997—telecommunications sector security reforms. This second report is being presented today as the review of the TSSR, the telecommunications sector security reforms. These reforms were enacted in September 2018 to help manage the national security risks of espionage, sabotage and foreign interference in Australia's telecommunications networks and facilities. The intelligence committee commenced a review of these reforms in late 2020 to ensure their operation, effectiveness and implications were being achieved in line with the original intention of the government and the intelligence committee when legislated in 2018.

The intelligence committee has now endorsed the use of the telecommunications security sector reforms, making six recommendations to improve their continued operation and address industry concerns. Those six recommendations cover ensuring that reforms and regulations are informed by the latest global network trends and threats, ensuring that the aim of increased security and cyberresilience is a central object of the Telecommunications Act 1997, and increasing government and industry collaboration and information sharing in a collaborative working environment to ensure that threat sharing is efficient and that any further reforms are co-designed between industry and government to avoid regulatory duplication.

Lastly, I come to the Advisory report on the Intelligence Oversight and Other Legislation Amendment (IntegrityMeasures) Bill 2020. This integrity measures bill implements some of the measures recommended by the 2020 Richardson review of intelligence legislation. It will expand the oversight jurisdiction of the Inspector-General of Intelligence and Security to cover the intelligence functions of the Australian Transaction Reports and Analysis Centre, AUSTRAC, and the Australian Criminal Intelligence Commission, ACIC, and expand the oversight of the intelligence committee itself to cover the intelligence functions of AUSTRAC.

The committee has recommended that the bill be passed by parliament following implementation of four recommendations. Those are, firstly, that the remit of IGIS and the intelligence committee be further expanded to also cover the intelligence functions of the Australian Federal Police; secondly, that, in addition to IGIS, the intelligence committee be similarly provided with an oversight role over ACIC; thirdly, that the government review the scope and adequacy of legislative provisions relating to the retention and destruction of intelligence material; and, fourthly, that the government consider convening a regular meeting of the heads of intelligence integrity agencies to discuss coordination of their work and promotion of integrity within the national intelligence community.

All of these sensible recommendations were unanimously supported by the committee. However, Labor committee members made additional comments, emphasising the importance of measures that strengthen oversight of our intelligence agencies and calling for more to be done to improve the oversight of our intelligence agencies. Those additional comments from Labor members note:

Intelligence oversight runs the risk of ceasing to be strong and credible if it fails to adapt and respond to the changing nature and activities of intelligence agencies.

The key elements of Australia's intelligence oversight system were put in place in the 1980s following the—

two—

Hope Royal Commissions. The most significant change since was the creation of the Independent National Security Legislation Monitor in 2010.

The demands on Australia's oversight system have not stayed static in the decade since.

Labor committee members commented that, in this context:

… it is unsurprising that both of the major intelligence reviews delivered in the past five years have recommended reform of Australia's oversight arrangement. The 2017 Independent Intelligence Review (Independent Intelligence Review) and the 2020 Comprehensive Review of the Legal Framework of the National Intelligence Community (Comprehensive Review) have each set out detailed recommendations to expand the remit of Australia's existing oversight bodies.

Unfortunately, this bill fails to fully implement the oversight recommendations of either review.In addition to noting the failure of the bill to fully implement the recommendations of the previous intelligence reviews, Labor members also noted the importance of the intelligence committee being able to initiate its own inquiries. Labor members also commented that, in 2020, Labor introduced a private senator's bill to implement the oversight recommendations of the independent intelligence review following several years of inaction by the government, which also contains a model for how such an own-motion power could be legislated. I commend all three reports to the House.

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