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

On behalf of the Parliamentary Joint Committee on Intelligence and Security, I present the committee's report entitled Advisory report on item 250 of the National Anti-Corruption Commission (Consequential and Transitional Provisions) Bill 2022.

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

by leave—On behalf of the Parliamentary Joint Committee on Intelligence and Security, I present this report. It's a report that considers item 250 of the National Anti-Corruption Commission (Consequential and Transitional Provisions) Bill 2022, which was passed into law in December 2022. Item 250 amended paragraph 110A(1) of the Telecommunications (Interception and Access) Act 1979, allowing the National Anti-Corruption Commission, the NACC, access to stored communications and telecommunications data. The committee made seven recommendations in relation to the reform of Australia's electronic surveillance framework, parliamentary privilege and security of information.

The committee noted that item 250 gives a wide range of covert powers to the NACC and considered the effect of the use of these powers on parliamentary privilege. The committee recommended the government ensure the protection of parliamentary privilege in relation to the use of covert powers in its reform of Australia's electronic surveillance framework. Further, the committee considered that the Telecommunications (Interception and Access) Act should be expressly amended to ensure that the provisions of that act do not abrogate parliamentary privilege.

In addition, the committee recommended that, given the sensitivity of information to be collected and stored by the NACC, it should be required to comply with the Essential Eight Maturity Model to maturity level 3, as recommended by the Australian Cyber Security Centre. Finally, the committee recommended that employees at the NACC hold a security clearance of at least negative vetting level 1, with increased requirements up to positive vetting depending on their access to sensitive information.

On behalf of the committee, I extend my thanks to those who participated in the inquiry as witnesses and stakeholders and made submissions. For providing those submissions and appearing at public hearings, we thank them. I also thank the deputy chair and all the committee members for the hard work that they put in and, of course, as always, the secretariat for their work on this particular inquiry and this report. I commend this report to the House.