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

The assertions made by Senator Brown simply cannot go unanswered. Senator Brown says that the Australian people are not aware that this is happening and that there is some sort of secret conspiracy between the two major parties to slip this through under the noses of the Australian public. Quite frankly, it is an insult to the Australian public to make such an absurd assertion in one of the most democratic institutions in the world—that is, in this parliament—on a day when the broadcasting lights are on and anyone anywhere in Australia who has any interest in this issue and access to a wireless, a transistor radio, a car radio or the internet can hear the debate.

Senator Brown says that it is a conspiracy between the big parties. The big parties are big parties because most of those Australian citizens that you referred to vote for them, for the coalition parties—that is, the Liberal Party and the National Party—or the Australian Labor Party. These people are not silly; they are well informed. We have a vigorous media in this country, including the Australian Broadcasting Corporation, who are represented behind the glass screen at the back of this chamber. We have a vigorous print media, a vigorous electronic media, who report actively and vigorously on the issues that affect the communities and people of this nation. To say that there is some sort of conspiracy between the big parties—parties who happened to have won the hearts and minds of millions of Australians at successive elections and significantly outweigh the relatively few who choose, for their own good reasons, to vote for Senator Brown’s party—is false. That is why you should not insult the intelligence of Australians by suggesting that there is some sort of slight going on.

I think it is also very sad that a senator who has been elected to this place would so comprehensively misrepresent what the law before this chamber and the changes to that law would do, by saying that it is about killing Australians and trying with a rhetorical device to link the actions of this government to what occurred at the Nuremberg trials in the aftermath of World War II and the atrocities committed by Adolf Hitler. They are outrageous linkages. What is outrageous is that Senator Brown would seek to mislead the Australian people in such an obvious way by saying that the legal defence of following orders would be overturned by this legislation, when in fact the absolute opposite is true.

We are here in the parliament trying to put in place the legal framework that exists with police forces. We are trying to put in place clarity around the use of the Australian Defence Force in circumstances that are constitutional. If they were unconstitutional, they would be illegal regardless of this law. Senator Brown is actually right about that. Out of the 10 things he said, he was probably right on one of them. The circumstances that Senator Brown described in which the defence forces would be called out would be illegal regardless of this legislation. That is the constitutional position. You cannot change that. What we are trying to do is put clarity around that by putting a legal framework around it which upholds all of those conventions and which upholds the Australian Constitution.

What does the Australian government seek to do? With the support of the Australian Labor Party, for which we are thankful, we seek to protect Australians. What is at the core of this legislation? The basis of this legislation is that, in the event that a civilian authority has been overwhelmed and critical infrastructure is at risk, potentially through a terrorist threat or any other threat, Australians’ lives would be put at risk. The real reason that the Australian Defence Force would be called up under this law is to save the lives of Australians that would be put at risk because that infrastructure was under attack and the civilian authorities could not defend it. It is constitutional now; it will be constitutional if it ever occurs. God help us if it does. Let us hope it never does but, if it does, it will be constitutional. It will be legal, and nothing in this law will change that. For Senator Brown to seek to do what can only be regarded as very pathetic political point-scoring on such an issue and to misrepresent what we are seeking to do in such a flagrant way is beneath him. I think he is trying to score points in a way that is beneath him and is quite contemptible. He should really think carefully about the way he handles this issue. If he were telling the truth about the intent of this law, it would be a different matter, but what he has said is a misrepresentation of what we are seeking to do and a misleading of the Australian people by doing so.