James Stevens (Sturt, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

I rise to make a contribution on the National Security Legislation Amendment (Comprehensive Review and Other Measures No. 2) Bill 2023, and I will start by reflecting on the fact that we are addressing the framework of oversight of our security services. I think the most important thing when we debate these matters, which doesn't happen regularly, as that we reflect on that appalling and outrageous episode in 1973 when the then Attorney-General, Lionel Murphy, led a raid on the ASIO offices in Canberra and then, of course, flew through the night to undertake another raid, on the Melbourne headquarters of ASIO, without consulting, history tells us, the Prime Minister of the day, Mr Whitlam, without any particular consultation and not acting with any form of warrant or permission from any judicial oversight.

That did lead to our looking at how it was that someone could unilaterally behave in that way and, in particular, undermine and frighten some of our allies who until then had felt a great deal of comfort and confidence in sharing important intelligence with ASIO and other Australian agencies because there'd never been a reason to fear that they could not be trusted. Indeed, those agencies could be trusted, but it turned out that the Labor Attorney-General in the Whitlam government was the one who couldn't be trusted and had frightened those allies—and with no justification whatsoever, because, of course, the outcome of that behaviour was that it was determined that there no substance to any motivation that he allegedly had for that conduct.

So that was a good opportunity for all of us to start developing a framework for and oversight of our intelligence services and, indeed, the behaviour and role of executive government in how they interact with the intelligence services, and we know that within this bill there are some matters that have been touched on by other speakers around that and the role that ministers such as the foreign minister have with ASIS et cetera. It's very important that we have a robust framework through the PJCIS to look at and provide oversight of the intelligence services because we understand and respect that they are the custodians of certain powers that do need an appropriate level of oversight that it is not possible to provide in the open daylight of other processes that the parliament has the use of when looking at other parts of government, because the nature of the security services is self-evidently that they undertake activities and are in possession of information that needs to be protected.

So the PJCIS, which has existed for many decades, is the mechanism that we have, and I think it has been extremely respected, particularly by current and former oppositions, who, indeed, are engaged to serve on that committee on the basis that there is a level of trust and that there is a very important agreement that the confidentiality and the protection information that they have access to through that process is thoroughly respected.

I have colleagues that are also friends—including the member for Fisher, who gave his contribution earlier, Senator Paterson from the other place, and people in the former parliament who served on this committee—who absolutely had the highest standard of respecting confidentiality around the information that they had access to through that process. This building can be a rumour mill at times, and at times you do hear things regarding what is said and whispered in corridors et cetera, and I have never, in my four years, heard any suggestion of any concern that membership of the Parliamentary Joint Committee on Intelligence and Security has ever been disrespected or compromised by any member who has served on it.

This is an important principle to defend and protect, and that is why we have this very serious concern about the surprising proposal from the government to increase the size of the committee. As all previous speakers have outlined, it currently has 11 members—a majority of government members, which is very sensible and common in parliamentary committees—from the two houses, and five have been traditionally from the opposition benches. There are two important principles there. I respect and don't dispute the member for Wills outlining that there is a capacity to appoint any nongovernment member to the committee as things stand, and that has happened in the past. But it seems very much more likely when you have a larger size of committee that it will be the case and may become standard practice of the government to have a non-opposition member in that committee on an ongoing basis.

My concern there firstly is that, with the greatest of respect to members that serve here on the crossbench, they do so proudly on the basis that they don't seek to be a part of a government. They are independents. They get elected and they say, 'We intend to go to Canberra to represent this electorate as an independent member. That creates a different dynamic compared to a member of the opposition who hopes to be in the government. While I completely respect the aggravation of these remarks to crossbench members, there are—and crossbench members reveal ad nauseam that it frustrates them and grates—absolutely times when governments and oppositions do work together and cooperate in ways that only governments and alternative governments can understand the benefit of doing. On PJCIS, when it comes to some of the most important elements of our national security arrangements, many of which are going to transcends governments for years if not decades into the future—AUKUS is one of the best examples of that—there are members who serve on the PJCIS who are from the opposition ranks who tend to be shadow ministers that may, if/when there is a change of government, serve in roles. The benefit of access to information they have through PJCIS is very valuable for the continuity of important decisions that we want a degree of bipartisanship around when it comes to the forward national security priorities of our nation. That is largely the way things are structured at the moment with the current composition.

My second issue is about increasing the size of the committee—my colleague the member for Menzies made these comments, so I will very briefly summarise and associate myself with the point he makes. There are currently 11 people on this committee, and there is a one-in-11 risk that, for whatever reason, important information is provided to the committee. I'm not suggesting any skulduggery or motivation from those members, because a risk in bringing 11 people into an awareness environment of certain things that they do need to be made aware of in order to discharge their responsibilities on that committee. These are obviously sensitive pieces of information and/or intelligence, and they have the opportunity to ask questions in a very controlled, closed format environment. And they come back to their colleagues and say: 'Look, we are discharging our responsibility to interrogate things. We can't tell you what information we've been provided to achieve the level of comfort that we have over these matters, but we are indeed comfortable, because we've been given access to sensitive information, to support justification for certain things.

Increasing that number of people from 11 to 13 obviously adds a degree of risk around the security and protection of that information. I completely defer to members in my party who have served on the PJCIS in government and opposition and who, having the benefit of that service—which I don't have—hold a concern that the increase in the number from 11 to 13 comes with a risk that is higher than the return or reward on expanding its membership. The whole principle of the PJCIS is that members who aren't on it rely on, count on, the people who are on it, because it's not like another committee that, generally speaking, operates in the glare of public oversight and media reporting et cetera—as it of course should not.

So, we count on those members to counsel the rest of us on the fact that they are comfortable with how that committee is operating and that they're confident around the oversight that they're undertaking of the various matters that come before them. I'm in the position, as a member of the opposition, that my colleagues who serve on that committee have raised these concerns. Having not served on the committee, I find their concerns compelling. But, more importantly, from a position of trust—which, again, is the whole point of the PJCIS—I absolutely trust them that those concerns are serious and warranted. That is the basis of our concern.

Of course, there are rumours and scuttlebutt around tensions within the government around serving on this committee. I respect and understand why being on such a committee is a sought-after opportunity. We are told that there are tensions within the government around its membership. If we're going through this process in order to make it a bit easier to manage personalities on the backbench of the government, then that is an appalling approach to the national security of this nation. If there's a personality issue, if someone's nose is out of joint because they wanted to serve on the committee—'Oh, well, we've only got six members, and we've put at least six on; I know: we'll increase the size of the committee; we'll get seven government members'—we'll find out who that seventh person is, and it will be very interesting when we find out who that person is who gets appointed by the government, the person who was so grumpy and threw some kind of tantrum about not being on the committee. This committee that is central to the national security of our nation is having the way in which is operates changed to accommodate a grumpy personality in the government, if that rumour is true—and obviously I don't know that it is.

Nonetheless, we support the other elements of this. We've outlined our concerns. We concede, as the member for Fisher indicated, that the government will get their way on this. It's regrettable and disappointing, because, for those who have criticised us for having a dissenting position on this issue of the PJCIS—and I absolutely agree that the history is that that is not the case—it should be something that the government reflects on: why they've chosen to jettison bipartisanship on this, why it is that we have raised these concerns on something that everyone puts way above petty partisan politics and it's been the government's decision to ram this change through and abandon that bipartisanship. That is regrettable to us. Nonetheless, they are deciding to do it. We hold those concerns, and time will tell what the true motivation for that change is. With those comments, I conclude my contribution.

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