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

by leave—Coalition members of the committee support the listing of Ansar Allah, otherwise known as the Houthis, as a terrorist organisation under the Criminal Code, noting that the opposition first raised this with the government on 9 January 2024, calling on the government to consider listing the Houthis as a terrorist organisation in Australia. The coalition is deeply alarmed at the significant delays in ministerial consideration of this terrorist listing. It took at least 49 days for the decision-making process to list Ansar Allah to be bounced between the Minister for Home Affairs and the Attorney-General, and it took another 28 days for the Prime Minister to write to first ministers in relation to the decision to list. Overall, it took 126 days for the Houthis to be finally proscribed as a terrorist organisation after the initial recommendation of the Department of Home Affairs.

By contrast, for the 2021 listing of Hizballah and the Base, it took only one day for the then Minister for Home Affairs—that would be you, Madam Deputy Speaker Andrews—to consider and approve the listing of those two organisations and they wrote to first ministers on behalf of the Prime Minister on the same day. Similarly, for the 2021 relisting of Al-Shabaab, Hamas's Izz al-Din al-Qassam Brigades, the Kurdistan Workers Party, Lashkar-e-Tayyiba and Palestinian Islamic Jihad it also took only six days for the then minister, Deputy Speaker Andrews, to consider and approve the relistings and they wrote to the first ministers on the same day.

The bureaucratic delays evident in this terrorist listing process are very clearly a symptom of the Albanese government's dismantling of the Home Affairs portfolio. It started when it came into office with its machinery-of-government changes. This has resulted in the terrorist listing process being duplicated by two ministers rather than being handled by just one minister as was the case under the coalition. This has clearly created friction and confusion in the government as to which minister is chiefly responsible for national security policy.

That confusion will be further amplified by the Prime Minister's decision to also relocate ASIO, in addition to the AFP and the ACIC, from Home Affairs to the Attorney-General's portfolio despite ostensibly leaving policy responsibility for national security with the Minister for Home Affairs. The coalition is deeply concerned by the government's unnecessary and harmful unwinding of the national security architecture that has served our country extraordinarily well since the establishment of the Department of Home Affairs, especially given the government never told the Australian public prior to coming into office that it would seek to unwind the Home Affairs portfolio. The unwinding of the Home Affairs portfolio could not have come at a more unfortunate time, with ASIO making the decision on 5 August 2024 to raise the terrorism threat level to 'probable' for the first time in years.

The listing of terrorist organisations is a serious business. It is one of the principal tools in the counterterrorism toolkit available to the government to protect the Australian public from harm. It enables the government to prosecute any person who finances, associates with, trains with or otherwise supports a listed terrorist organisation. It also enlivens the prohibited hate symbols legislation which makes it a criminal offence for any person to publicly display a symbol associated with a terrorist organisation in certain circumstances.

The coalition committee members are deeply troubled by the fact that it took over 126 days to formally list the Houthis after it was first recommended by the department. This underlines the unnecessary duplication and confusion that has arisen as a result of the government's machinery-of-government changes. The government should immediately restore the Home Affairs portfolio to streamline the terrorist-listing process and reverse the damage done to our national security architecture. If the government chooses not to do so, the coalition will restore the Home Affairs portfolio to its proven and successful settings.

Finally, I want to deal with the current government's failure to take any action in listing the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps as a terrorist group. Australia's inaction is at odds with our Five Eyes partners—the United States, which listed the IRGC in 2019, and, most recently, Canada, which announced its listing of the IRGC in June 2024. As the Canadian government has pointed out, the IRGC supports the terrorist activities of Hamas and Hizballah, and the IRGC is widely reported to be a principal financier and military trainer of the Houthis. Coalition members of the committee reiterate the offer of support from the opposition to list the IRGC, including by legislative amendment to the Criminal Code if that is necessary.

It's rare that I get to my feet as the Deputy Chair of the Parliamentary Joint Committee on Intelligence and Security. It's rare that I do that because national security is beyond and should be beyond politics. But, where there are instances where the coalition members on the committee feel that the government is not doing what it should be doing to keep Australians safe, it is my duty as the deputy chair to stand up on behalf of all coalition members and make a point that the government is failing on these points in relation to the listing of terrorist organisations, and it needs to smarten up its act.

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