Graham Perrett (Moreton, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The coalition government is in its sixth year of office, and over the last several years Labor has always worked cooperatively with the Abbott government, with the Turnbull government and with the Morrison government to make sure that we improve any national security legislation in a bipartisan way. Labor's first priority is always to make sure that Australians are safe. The Labor members of the security committee, which has looked at much of this legislation, led by Senator Penny Wong, are: the member for Isaacs, former Attorney-General and now shadow Attorney-General, Mark Dreyfus; Senator Jenny McAllister; Dr Mike Kelly, whose background is as a colonel and legal officer in the Army; and the very capable deputy chair, Anthony Byrne. The Labor members worked with the coalition to make sure that any legislation serves its purpose of keeping Australians safe but also, obviously, has the appropriate checks and balances, as responsible government does. That committee has worked on over 15 pieces of legislation and has provided over 300 amendments to the proposed legislation—often hastily drafted legislation, bizarrely.

The current piece of legislation that the committee is looking at, the encryption legislation, was first flagged by the former Attorney-General George Brandis 18 months ago. Now, in a flurry of press releases and histrionic media events, the Prime Minister has unpicked that nearly six years of bipartisan work and tried to use wedge politics to make national security a cheap point-scoring exercise. It was heartbreaking for the members of that committee—the hardworking Liberal members as well, I should stress—who had worked so hard to get the best possible legislation that would make Australians as safe as possible in these challenging and dangerous times. There has been no change to Australia's security rating over that time, yet we have recently had this rush of legislation coming into the parliament, and then the Prime Minister doing an extraordinary press conference today where he slurred and slandered and slithered his way through a press conference where he was trying to use the Labor Party as a target. It was quite disappointing.

In relation to the bill that has been rushed into parliament, the Labor Party has worked with the government to make sure that there's better oversight and limitations on the powers in the bill and to provide better safeguards against any potential unintended consequences. Can I say, as a lawyer, that I always baulk at the idea of warrants being issued without judicial oversight. I always prefer that the rule of law is considered. I know it's enshrined in the US constitution, the idea that people just can't come in and seize and search and take stuff away. We, in Australia, should protect those things. Our copy of the Magna Carta down on level 1 in this building enshrines the idea that we have a judicial process and that individuals have some protections against the power of the state.

Obviously we need to balance that with the interests of making sure that terrorists, paedophiles or criminals are caught and the full force of the law is brought down on them. But we can't throw away the very things that make Australia great—the freedoms and the rule of law that we value so much. Misinformation is flowing about. I'm getting emails in my office. I want to put the record straight. There's nothing in the amended encryption bill that allows an agency to force a communications provider to do anything that would otherwise require a warrant under existing legislation. The intelligence agencies and the like would need to obtain a warrant to view content or to intercept the communication. Importantly, the Parliamentary Joint Committee on Intelligence and Security will continue to scrutinise this bill into 2019. That process will allow any outstanding concerns to be worked on and further amendments to be considered calmly in the new year.

Over the past month, in fact if we look back at the last 18 months, the government has sought to trash the long-standing bipartisan process and has tried to politicise national security for its own short-term ends. The government's job is not to play politics with the safety of Australians. There's nothing more important than keeping Australians safe.