Andrew Wallace (Fisher, Liberal National Party) Share this | Hansard source

I rise in support of this cognate debate in relation to the Defence Trade Controls Amendment Bill and the Defence Amendment (Safeguarding Australia's Military Secrets) Bill. After doing a little bit of research, I discovered that the genesis of the safeguarding Australia's military secrets bill goes back more that a hundred years, probably much further than that. I would hazard a guess that protecting one's military secrets goes back as far as the military profession itself. In what is now known as the Sempill Mission, which dates back to the 1920s, British aviators trained Imperial Japanese Army aviators on how to conduct naval warfare on aircraft carriers. That instruction of Japanese aviators obviously had a very significant empowering impact upon the Imperial Japanese Navy, which led to the Pearl Harbor attacks on 7 December 1941. So it's very important that we learn the lessons from that unfortunate incident.

The first we heard of a modern day version of such an incident was back in October 2022, when it was alleged that some 30 Royal Air Force pilots were conducting training for the Chinese People's Liberation Army Air Force. That sent shockwaves throughout the Western world. It wasn't just RAF pilots; it was also Royal Navy pilots and Royal Army pilots training Chinese pilots. I want to take issue with a comment in which the member for Solomon indicated that this dates back to a time when the current Leader of the Opposition was the defence minister. At the very earliest, the first time this was made public in England was in October 2022. I am disappointed that the member for Solomon has tried to besmirch the opposition leader on that point, but I digress a little bit.

The SAMS bill, as I'll call it, came before the Parliamentary Joint Committee on Intelligence and Security and was treated with some haste. That is something that I, as the deputy chair of the PJCIS, do not like doing. I don't like conducting business in a hasty fashion—pardon the pun—because rushed legislation often leads to errors, unforeseen circumstances and unforeseen problems. But in this case both the SAMS bill and the Defence Trade Controls Amendment Bill need to be rushed through the Australian parliament to be done and dusted by the end of March. Why? There are pressing matters that require us to pass this legislation to satisfy US and UK legislation. They have passed legislation, through both the UK parliament and the US Congress, which effectively requires us, as part of the AUKUS arrangement, to get these bills through expeditiously. As I say, it's not something that we like doing, but it's something that we needed to do.

As you may have gathered from my initial comments about the SAMS bill, it is incredibly important that we protect the training, tactics and techniques of the Australian Defence Force. That isn't just restricted to pilots. There are many tactics, techniques and procedures of numerous roles within the ADF that we would not want passed on to adversaries, whether it be those of our special forces in the Army, submariners in the Navy or fighter pilots in the Air Force. So we need to ensure that our legislation properly equips the Australian government to prevent that exchange of information to foreign governments and militaries. It is as old as the history or the profession of a soldier to re-engineer how an adversary does something—to try and improve upon it yourself—and that's why we need to be very careful that we don't arm our adversaries with that vital information.

I want to acknowledge at this stage the great work that was done by former prime minister Scott Morrison, the former defence minister and now Leader of the Opposition, and Senator Reynolds in putting and stitching the AUKUS deal together, because we would not be here talking about these two bills but for AUKUS. AUKUS provides an avenue for us to be able to secure the crown jewels of defence—namely, the nuclear propulsion of a submarine, which has not been provided to any other country other than the UK since the 1950s. So that nuclear propulsion technology is regarded as the crown jewels, and there are many countries that would love to be able to get information about how that propulsion is designed and operated. That's just to put that into context—we would not be here today talking about these two bills but for the AUKUS deal landed by the former prime minister.

This is a some $270 billion program that will set Australia up with very significant defensive capabilities, and these nuclear propelled submarines give us the competitive edge that we may need. Hopefully, we'll never need it. No-one wants to enter a conflict, but, if we are to deter our adversaries from starting a conflict, this is how we do it. We ensure that our men and women of the ADF have the appropriate tools, skills and equipment to deter aggression by our competitors.

The SAMS bill does not outlaw a former ADF member going and working overseas. What it does do is require that former ADF member, or an Australian citizen or resident, to get an authorisation from the defence minister to enable them to go and work overseas. That should not be considered to be an extraordinary thing. There will be an opportunity for the defence minister to carve certain countries out by regulatory instrument—you might think, ultimately, that will be Five Eyes countries—and there will be instances where certain professions within the ADF might also be carved out by instrument. No-one's suggesting that a cook might provide certain information to an adversary that would be deleterious—unless you're Steven Seagal, of course! I will look at the defence boffins and see if they know who Steven Seagal is. It's probably an age thing. But I digress.

The SAMS bill will enable Australian former ADF members to be able to work overseas and work with foreign militaries and governments provided they get the appropriate authorisation from the defence minister. There will be a number of exemptions that will be provided. There will be certain things that the defence minister or the department will look at—namely, how long it has been since person has been in a particular role. It may be the case that, in some instances, it doesn't matter how long you have been out of the ADF you will not get an authorisation to, for instance, work for or in China. Submariners would come to mind as a trade or a profession where we wouldn't want that knowledge passed on. But for someone who perhaps worked in signals 10 or 15 years ago that may be something where we would regard those skills as having expired or the value of which expires over time.

The bill itself is very commendable. The PJCIS committee examined the bill. We made a number of recommendations to the government. I am hopeful that the government has accepted those recommendations, because it's very common for a government to accept the recommendations of the PJCIS. One of them in particular was this. When the bill came before the committee, it made no reference to banning a former ADF member from providing services to a militia. We all know that in some cases it's very hard to tell the difference between a government military, or a military that is the tool of a sovereign government, and militia forces. So the committee recommended that the bill be amended to reflect that.

The urgency for these bills, as I indicated earlier, is that the government has indicated that, since the United States Congress passed the National Defense Authorization Act in December 2023, the timetable for passing these bills needs to be accelerated. Australia cannot be left behind in relation to AUKUS. This is an arrangement that benefits not just Australia; it is an arrangement through which we will, through the other pillars, have a mutually beneficial arrangement. I think we are kidding ourselves if we don't understand that AUKUS is a huge win for the Australian people, because that is exactly what it is. We don't want to be in a position where Australia holds things up. If the US Congress and the UK parliament have done what they need to do, we don't want to be the laggard. Indeed, the NDAA requires the US Congress, with the certification of the US president, to be satisfied with Australia's progress in implementing security and export frameworks within 120 days of the NDAA's enactment. The first certification date is 20 April 2024. That is in less than one month. So naturally the government seeks to expedite the passage of the SAMS and the DTCA through both chambers by the end of the March sitting fortnight.

I just want to say, if there are any members from the defence department in the chamber today, these bills—SAMS, in particular—will be scrutinised by the new defence committee. We don't want to see inordinate delays of authorisations. This is critical because small, medium and large businesses rely upon timely authorisations under this act. The new committee will scrutinise the defence department's expeditious handling of these authorisations very closely. (Time expired)

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