Peter Khalil (Wills, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

Espionage and foreign interference are the principal national security threats to Australia. These types of threats to our country are unprecedented. We're going through a very, very difficult period. The Albanese government is ensuring we are taking the right steps to protect our nation's secrets as well as our national interests. This is what the Australian Security Intelligence Organisation Amendment Bill 2023 is about—to ensure we are taking action to protect our most sensitive information and our capabilities. We're also ensuring our intelligence community is supported to recruit the people that they need, the people that we can trust to do the important intelligence and security work to ensure the long-term protection of Australia's interests. These are the principals like human rights, freedom of speech and equality before the law that make our democracy strong.

Unfortunately, state actors and non-state actors try to influence and diminish these principles and these democratic processes. They try to diminish our democracy through corrosive and harmful narratives and attempts to undermine what we hold dear. This is sometimes done through the use of social media, and sometimes in more underhanded ways. Ultimately what they are trying to do, in summary, is seek to sow division, stoke hatred and spread fear. It is relentless and it is insidious. It can be quite hard to spot and even harder to stamp out. That is why it is critical to ensure we can protect Australia from foreign interference, espionage and sabotage, because these types of efforts are aimed solely at undermining our democratic processes and, effectively, our values.

This year, as part of his annual threat assessment, the director-general of ASIO, the Australian Security and Intelligence Organisation, said that 'more Australians are being targeted by espionage and foreign interference than ever before'. The government is very alive to this threat, as I know are other members of this place, and I appreciate the bipartisan support on a bill such as this. The government is taking action and proposing reforms to ensure that we can remain protected. The ASIO Amendment Bill will enable ASIO to issue, maintain and revoke Australia's highest level security clearances with more consistency and ensure that we continue to protect Australia's most sensitive information, capabilities and secrets.

Earlier this year, the Parliamentary Joint Committee on Intelligence and Security, the PJCIS, which I chair, commenced a review of this bill. Just this past week, in my capacity as Chair of the PJCIS, I tabled the committee's advisory report on this bill, and I note the presence of the deputy chair in this place and the bipartisan support for those recommendations. Speaking now as the member for Wills and a member of the government in this place, I support this bill because I do really think it gets the balance right. It will protect Australia's national security interests while also upholding the rights and privacy of individuals, and that's a very hard balance to strike.

Specifically, the bill contains amendments that uplift our highest level security clearance in response to the unprecedented threat from espionage and foreign interference. It will also drive shared initiatives and investments that improve interoperability and burden sharing as the government delivers critical national security capabilities. The bill provides ASIO with new security vetting and security clearance functions, enabling ASIO to make security clearance decisions for ASIO and non-ASIO personnel in the intelligence and security space. These security vetting processes are critical in determining the suitability of an individual to hold a security clearance. Before a clearance is provided, an assessment is performed to determine whether an individual has the necessary loyalty and integrity and can be trusted to protect Australia's classified information and resources. At the moment, we have several vetting agencies in Australia and each of them can issue top secret positive vetting, or what are called TSPV, clearances—the highest level clearances. These agencies include the Australian Government Security Vetting Agency; the Australian Security Intelligence Organisation, ASIO; ONI; and the Australian Secret Intelligence Service, ASIS. Having multiple agencies conducting our security vetting processes leads to some inefficiencies, and this bill will really help us to conduct security vetting processes in a much more efficient way.

The amendments will strengthen our security environment by establishing—and this is the significant change—a new national TOP SECRET-Privileged Access Authority within ASIO, the TS-PA Authority. This TS-PA Authority and the TS-PA security clearances issued by ASIO will begin to start replacing the pre-existing positive vetting security clearances. The TS-PA Authority will be responsible for issuing Australia's new highest level of security clearance, which will be known as TS-PA, TOP SECRET-Privileged Access, clearance. As I said, it will replace TSPV over time as people drop off. Or, when they get to a point where they need to renew their clearances, they'll go through the new process. New members of the intelligence and security community coming in will go through the new processes.

The TS-PA establishes stronger mandatory minimum security clearance requirements, as it is underpinned by the new TS-PA standard. That new standard reflects contemporary psychological and insider threat research, which is quite important. There's been significant change, particularly over the last decade, in this space.

I think the other point to make is that the centralisation of the highest level of clearance in ASIO not only strengthens our security environment but also enables ASIO to leverage its expertise and existing holdings to thoroughly assess an individual's suitability when conducting those clearance checks, because ASIO does have access to the most current information about the security threats that Australia is facing. That's its job. If people are seeking to cause harm in Australia, to Australia or to our interests, or if a foreign government or foreign intelligence service is attempting to steal our secrets, plant foreign spies or recruit from within, ASIO is best placed to manage these threats and does so. There's a tie-in there, obviously, to a better understanding about how important those clearances are and the processes of providing someone with a clearance.

The reforms will also enable ASIO and security clearance sponsors to share information about whether someone is suitable to hold a security clearance. That information sharing breaks down silos and is a very important element of these reforms. As I mentioned, this all does lead to creating greater efficiency because you'll have this single repository of information about security clearance holders, you'll remove duplication and you'll have a much more effective process. It means that sponsors can focus on responsibly managing their clearance holders as well. The reforms allow interoperability and burden sharing, because we do need fewer barriers as we deliver critical national security capabilities during this period.

The bill also includes elements to improve accountability and oversight, and these are really important elements of due process that we place a high degree of importance on. I said earlier that this is about getting the balance right between individuals' rights and public security. This bill creates a stronger review framework related to security clearance decisions and assessments that individuals face. It means that if someone is impacted by an adverse or prejudicial decision, in their view, they will have rights of review, including access to internal and external merits review processes. This is really important to ensure procedural fairness and the right to challenge adverse findings.

It should also be noted that a quality assurance office will be based in the Office of National Intelligence, and it will be established as another layer of quality assurance and ensure consistency of clearances issued by ASIO. Of course, ASIO will continue to be overseen in the work that it does with respect to the TS-PA authority by the Inspector-General of Intelligence and Security, adding another layer of oversight and ensuring accountability and transparency where possible.

This bill, I think, is emblematic of the fact that the Labor government takes national security very seriously and is doing the real work to ensure that we protect our national interests. This bill ensures that security clearance processes are robust, fair and going to be effective. It ensures that the national security interests of Australia are continually upheld. But it also, and importantly, as I've mentioned, continues to protect the rights and privacy of individuals who are undergoing those processes as well, and I think it gets that balance right. This is the perennial challenge in lawmaking, as we all know in this place—getting that balance right between an individual's rights, when it comes to certain legislation, and the importance of public security. Getting that balance right is often a very difficult challenge, but I think that the reforms of this bill do get that balance right, and they ensure that we remain committed to protecting our most privileged information, our capabilities and our secrets.

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