Anthony Byrne (Holt, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

On behalf of the Parliamentary Joint Committee on Intelligence and Security, I present the Annual report of committee activities 2011-2012.

Reviewing administration and expenditure on an annual basis is one of the primary functions of the committee. Section 29 of the Intelligence Services Act stipulates that the committee has an obligation to review the administration and expenditure, including the annual financial statements, of the Australian intelligence community (AIC).

On 18 June 2012 the committee tabled its Review of administration and expenditure No. 9, 2009-2010.

This review examined a wide range of aspects of the administration and expenditure of the six intelligence and security agencies, including the financial statements for each agency, their human resource management, training, recruitment and accommodation. In addition the review looked at issues of interoperability between members of the AIC.

Submissions were sought from each of the six intelligence and security agencies, from the Australian National Audit Office (ANAO) and from the Inspector-General of Intelligence and Security (IGIS).

The committee also received five submissions from members of the public or public organisations which included:

These submissions all dealt with ASIO security assessments of refugees.

On 25 March 2011 the committee held a private hearing at which ASIO, ASIS, DSD, DIGO, ONA and DIO appeared before the committee. On 16 June 2011 the committee held a public hearing—its first since July 2006—and heard from representatives of the Refugee Council of Australia, RISE (Refugees, Survivors and Ex-Detainees), the Asylum Seeker Resource Centre and ASIO in relation to visa security assessments.

The committee took very seriously the concerns put before it by various refugee and asylum seeker advocacy groups but it also recognised that the job of ASIO is a very difficult one. Therefore, the committee welcomed the efforts, introduced by ASIO on 1 March 2011, to streamline the process of security assessments in an attempt to clear the backlog and to process future assessments in less time. The committee was satisfied that the current regime for visa security assessments is the correct one and noted that the IGIS has stated that ASIO is doing its job in a 'proper and legal manner'.

Overall, the committee was satisfied that the administration and expenditure of the six intelligence and security agencies is sound, although I would draw members' attention to section 1.32 of the report about the committee's 'concerns raised in relation to the efficiency dividend's impact on agencies' during the review. One thing about this committee is that we have a very close working relationship with the intelligence agencies, and I am here to tell this chamber that, if this committee feels the efficiency dividend starts affecting the operability of the intelligence agencies in discharging their duties, then it will bring it to the parliament's attention. So we will be having further reports, reviews of administration and expenditure Nos 9 and 10. But I just wanted to flag that particularly crucial point.

There were two reports on the listing of organisations as terrorist organisations that were tabled in the period under review. The two reports dealt with 11 organisations, comprising 10 relistings and one initial listing.

The reports were:

The committee did not recommend disallowance of any of the regulations in relation to the 11 organisations.

I would also like to thank the very hardworking secretariat—Jerome Brown, Robert Little, Jessica Butler and Sonya Gaspar—and my deputy chair, the member for Berowra, sitting over there. It is wonderful having the former Attorney-General for his counsel, wisdom and advice on these matters. It is a bipartisan committee. It works very hard to be a bipartisan committee to work in the national interest.

The other thing I would like to say is in terms of various assertions about the committee that I have heard. The committee discharges its duty very carefully. It does so, as I said, in a bipartisan manner, balancing national security interests and privacy interests at the same time. It will continue to do so in any subject matter that it is charged with looking at.

So I thank the secretariat; I thank all of the committee members. I look forward to hearing the deputy chair's contribution on this particular report.

In accordance with standing order 39(f) the report was made a parliamentary paper.

Philip Ruddock (Berowra, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I thank the chair for his very generous comments. I am not sure whether he had been party to my thinking, because I did in fact plan to broaden my comments a little in the context of some of the points he was making in relation to a report that might seem somewhat anodyne. I add to his comments my thanks to our professional staff and I ask members, in reading this report of the Parliamentary Joint Committee on Intelligence and Security entitled Annual report of committee activities 2011-2012 to have regard to a recent statement by the Prime Minister on Australia's national security beyond the 9/11 decade. In reading the speech, what was of concern to me were the suggestions that in the decade since 9/11 the situation and risks that we face are somewhat different. There was an emphasis in that speech about the era in which the behaviour of states, not non-state actors, will be in the main part of our national security thinking. It goes on to say that the national security decade was a time of a rapid ramp-up of resources. Now, inevitably, we are in a period of consolidation. I am interested that we also have the member for Melbourne Ports, because he is familiar with some of the arguments that I am now going to raise.

I do not think we are in a position to look at these issues in relation to national security on which we are reporting, unaware of some of the events that are occurring internationally. The matters on which I will comment are not matters that I am privy to. They are matters that you will read about in the newspapers. I was just looking at some of them as I thought about what I might say today about Australians abroad and some tragic events more recently in Bulgaria. I read about what is happening in Syria and the reports of Australians abroad engaged in activities in that region. In some cases their work is said to be humanitarian, but in others the reporting suggests that they are active participants. These are people who can come back to Australia after they have been trained in organisations that ought to be of considerable concern to us.

And so I am glad that the chair mentioned paragraph 132, because it raises concerns that the committee had about the impact of the efficiency dividend on agencies. I do not think that it is appropriate, in the context of the comments that have been made about national security, that these observations by the committee that has responsibility for looking at these issues should be ignored. This ought not to be a period of consolidation that sees a contraction in the expenditure available to national security agencies, if that is the government's intention. I think that observation is quite pertinent.

In relation to the other matter that the chair spoke of—in relation to the concerns that were raised about security assessments of refugees—I do not think that people should be unaware of the way in which the refugee convention says decisions should be made. We do not have to accept people as refugees if they are of security risk. Yet findings have been made by the government that people were refugees before the security assessments took place. We would not be asking this question in this report if the government had been rigorous about ensuring that no decisions were made on refugee status before the security assessments had been made, and it was a major error. The committee report does not bring it out, but I think it is pertinent that people should know we are only being asked to look at this decision because of flawed decision making initially.