Ian Campbell (WA, Liberal Party, Minister for the Environment and Heritage) Share this | Hansard source

I thank Senator Bartlett for moving this amendment. I am sure that all senators would share his views in relation to abhorrence of torture. Probably one of the great experiences I had in the summer adjournment of the parliament was the privilege I had of meeting United States Senator John McCain on 2 January in Sydney. It was a great opportunity and, knowing that I was to meet the Republican US senator from Arizona, I took the opportunity to read his biographical work on not only his own life up to about the time of his release from being a prisoner of war during the Vietnam War but also on his father, Admiral McCain, and his grandfather, Admiral McCain. The book, quite elegantly, is called Faith of My Fathers. I recommend it to Senator Bartlett and any other good senators who want to read of the first phase of an incredibly important American life and of someone who is touted as a potential Republican candidate for the next presidency.

He is an awesome character whom it was a great privilege to meet, not to exaggerate too much. But his importance in the context of this debate is that Senator McCain has been a leader of political activity in the United States to ensure that that country upholds all of its conventions and policies in relation to its abhorrence of torture. He has also had particular personal experience, having been subjected to endless years of torture as a prisoner of war during the Vietnam War. The book goes through the impact of that, and anyone who reads that story could not be other than affected and would share the passion that Senator Bartlett has in relation to this issue.

If the government thought that accepting these amendments would in fact add anything to or reinforce in any way the significant layers of not only international law but Australia’s commitment to all of the relevant international conventions that prohibit torture—and which are in fact domestic law that, in the case of this particular statute, is built in through the Jervis Bay territory criminal laws which contain all of the relevant offences appertaining to torture and specifically assault and malicious wounding—we would have no hesitation in doing so. But I am assured by the best advice available to the Commonwealth that the legal framework that is in place achieves everything that Senator Bartlett quite properly wants us to achieve and that these are entirely redundant or unnecessary, although the motivation behind them is absolutely correct.