Andrew Hastie (Canning, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

On behalf of the Parliamentary Joint Committee on Intelligence and Security, I present advisory reports on the Counter-Terrorism Legislation Amendment Bill (No. 1) 2018 and the National Security Legislation Amendment (Espionage and Foreign Interference) Bill 2017.

Reports made parliamentary papers in accordance with standing order 39(e).

by leave—I am pleased to present the committee's report for its review of the National Security Legislation Amendment (Espionage and Foreign Interference) Bill 2017.

The Prime Minister introduced the bill into the House on 7 December 2017 and referred it to the committee for inquiry and report.

The bill repeals existing criminal offences and introduces a range of new offences into the Criminal Code in relation to espionage, foreign interference, theft of trade secrets, sabotage of public infrastructure, and secrecy of Commonwealth information.

The bill also amends a range of existing offences, including those in relation to treason, treachery, and other threats to security.

The significant and unprecedented new measures in the bill required careful consideration, and the committee was pleased to undertake the inquiry.

During its inquiry, the committee received compelling evidence that Australia is facing an unprecedented threat from espionage and foreign interference, and that current laws are not adequate to deal with this threat.

The Director-General of Security, in strongly supporting the bill, advised the committee that, 'the current criminal offences are inadequate to deal with the foreign intelligence threat that we now face' and described existing offences as 'outdated and deficient' and 'inadequate or unworkable'.

As a result, ASIO assessed that the 'net effect is that our nation's freedom of decision-making and core interests are not adequately protected by the rule of law'.

Unchecked, espionage has the potential to significantly reduce Australia's long-term security, and foreign interference could undermine our democracy and threaten the rights and freedoms of our people.

Economic espionage also has the potential to substantially diminish Australia's economic wellbeing and international competitiveness. At stake is our sovereignty, security and prosperity.

The committee has therefore accepted that there is a pressing need to strengthen and modernise current espionage and foreign interference laws.

In conducting its review, the committee received 51 written submissions and 20 supplementary submissions from a range of organisations and individuals.

The committee held five public and two private hearings, and received two classified briefings.

Many participants in the inquiry supported strengthened measures to deal with the threat posed by increased espionage and foreign interference activities in Australia.

Submitters also called for caution to ensure that innocuous or beneficial conduct is not caught up in the proposed new offences, and that sections of the Australian community are not adversely affected.

The committee considers that laws need to be effective at achieving their stated aims, at the same time as minimising any limitations on the personal liberty of Australians and a flourishing civil society.

Taking into account evidence received from participants in the inquiry, the committee has made a range of recommendations aimed at ensuring the bill is:

The committee has made 60 recommendations in total—the most important being that the bill be passed through both the House and the Senate.

On 5 March 2018, the Attorney-General provided the committee with a number of proposed government amendments, primarily to narrow the scope of the secrecy offences in the bill.

These proposed amendments have been taken into account—and supported—by the committee.

Following implementation of the recommendations in the report, the committee has recommended that the bill be passed. I'd like to personally thank the opposition members of the PJCIS, particularly the deputy chair, the member for Holt, and also the member for Isaacs, who worked in the national interest to deliver a bipartisan report. When we have such strong collaboration, it makes the passage of these bills all the more sweeter, so I acknowledge the work that they did on the committee.

The Counter-Terrorism Legislation Amendment (No. 1) 2018 was introduced on 24 May this year.

In reviewing the bill, the committee considered the proposed amendments to be consistent with recommendations made by the committee earlier this year following its review of police stop, search and seizure powers, the control order regime, the preventative detention order regime and the declared area provisions.

The committee welcomed the acceptance of its recommendations that the counterterrorism powers be extended by a further three years, with reviews by this committee prior to the new sunset date.

These future reviews will be an opportunity to examine the impact of amendments to the control order regime and declared area provisions.

They will also provide an opportunity to assess the efficacy of the regimes and, accordingly, the continued need for these powers in the context of the security environment at that time.

The committee noted that, while the bill implements one recommendation from the committee's report into ASIO's questioning and detention powers, the remainder of that report—including the committee's recommendation for repeal of the questioning and detention warrant power—is still being considered by the government.

The committee supports the amendments as proposed and recommends that the bill be passed.

I commend both reports to the House.

Mark Dreyfus (Isaacs, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Attorney General) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

by leave—I thank the chair of the Parliamentary Joint Committee on Intelligence and Security for those short statements in tabling the committee's report on the National Security Legislation Amendment (Espionage and Foreign Interference) Bill 2017 and also the committee's report on a range of powers—namely, the control order power; the declared areas power; the stop, search and seizure power; and the preventative detention order power—which is the subject of the Counter-Terrorism Legislation Amendment Bill (No. 1) 2018; that is the title of the report.

There are two matters I wish to draw to the attention of the House. The first is that, in relation to this second bill, the government has accepted the recommendation of the Parliamentary Joint Committee on Intelligence and Security, which is that these extraordinary powers—the control order power; the declared areas power; the stop, search and seizure power; and the preventative detention order power—should all be treated as just that: extraordinary powers that should not be regarded as at any point going permanently into the Australian statute book. To that end, the committee recommended that a further sunset period of three years be extended to them. The government has accepted that recommendation.

There's one other matter of particular significance in this bill, which the committee has commented on and the chair has already mentioned in his remarks, and that is that two other powers, which are only peripherally the subject of this bill—namely, the questioning and detention warrant power and the questioning warrant power—are to be extended for one year. That's because the government has yet to respond in a formal sense to the committee's separate report on the questioning and detention warrant power and the questioning warrant power. That report recommended that the questioning and detention warrant power be repealed and that the questioning warrant power be retained but substantially amended. While it is considering its response to that report the government has decided that, because both those provisions sunset in September this year, it's appropriate that they be extended for a period of one year.

In particular, I would draw the attention of the House to the fact that, as has been noted, this recommendation of the Parliamentary Joint Committee on Intelligence and Security for repeal of the questioning and detention warrant power marks the first time since 2002, when this parliament legislated a whole range of extraordinary powers being given to our police and our security agencies, that a power would be repealed. As the committee has noted, because this bill does not provide a complete response, the committee and this parliament are awaiting the government's response to that recommendation. I have every confidence that the government will accept the recommendation of the Parliamentary Joint Committee on Intelligence and Security for repeal, for the first time, of an extraordinary power granted to, in this case, ASIO. It's a recommendation that follows an identical recommendation made by two reports of two separate independent national security legislation monitors. I thank the House.