Peter Khalil (Wills, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

On behalf of the Parliamentary Committee on Intelligence and Security, I present the committee's report on its inquiry into the Inspector-General of Intelligence and Security and Other Legislation Amendment (Modernisation) Bill 2022.

Report made a parliamentary paper in accordance with standing order 39(e).

by leave—The committee supports the measures of the bill, which will enhance the oversight of Australia's intelligence agencies by the Inspector-General of Intelligence and Security. During its inquiry the committee has acknowledged the important role of the inspector-general in providing assurance to Australians that intelligence agencies are performing their functions appropriately. At the same time the committee also considered that, while there are other legislative provisions that provide for the inspector-general to share information with the Parliamentary Joint Committee on Intelligence and Security, there are also some legislative barriers to information-sharing that could be improved. Therefore, the committee has recommended that the government consider appropriate legislative amendments to facilitate better information-sharing.

Additionally, the committee carefully considered evidence regarding the eligibility for appointment to the role of Inspector-General of Intelligence and Security. The committee recommends that an individual's eligibility for the appointment to the role of inspector-general should occur after an appropriate period of time, to be determined by government, following that individual's employment in an intelligence agency. The remaining recommendations comprise a minor amendment to align the provisions of the bill with equivalent legislative provisions and to recommend that the Office of National Intelligence develop an employment framework governing staff engaged under its own enabling legislation.

The committee acknowledges the amendments put forward in the bill form only part of the implementation of several recommendations from a series of independent reviews. The committee notes the implementation of remaining recommendations is currently under consideration. The committee looks forward to the opportunity to consider further advice and action in this regard in due course.

On behalf of the committee, I extend my thanks to the deputy chair and the other members of the committee who participated in the inquiry—within a very short time frame, I might add for the record. There was a fair bit of compromise amongst all of us to try and get this done, so I thank the deputy chair and all members of the committee—and the secretariat, of course—for making this possible in such a short time frame; it's quite unique. We had submissions provided and appearances at public hearings in record time, I think. I thank the secretariat for all their hard work on this inquiry and the report. I commend this report to the House.