Bob Brown (Tasmania, Australian Greens) Share this | Hansard source

That is farcical. The government has dumped this legislation, which is a total overreach and an invasion of the rights of Australians, on the Senate and on the people of Australia. There was a very short Senate inquiry, peak national legal and other bodies submitted to that inquiry, and the government says, ‘We’ve got some amendments which pick up a couple of recommendations from that inquiry, but we say to the Labor opposition, “Trust us; we’ll look at others further down the line.”’ What sort of process is that? This is the makings of a gross invasion of the privacy rights of innocent people in Australia. It is not antiterrorist law. I cannot ask the minister, ‘Is this antiterrorist law?’ It would be a waste of time because the minister does not really know. He is here doing the Attorney-General’s bidding.

What we do know is that this is a massive increase in the ability of surveillance agencies, ultimately controlled by the government of the day—this Attorney-General and this Prime Minister—to look into private affairs. We all know that the communications being looked at here can be of the most intimate affairs between individuals who are entirely innocent and not even suspected of anything. It is such loose and degrading legislation that the spy agencies involved—and we go beyond spy agencies, because a number of agencies are now involved—will be able to pry into people’s private business without suspecting them of anything. They will be able to keep records of that and potentially pick people up for some other breach of the law which has nothing to do with what the agency set out to track because of what until now would have been illegal snooping on the privacy of Australians.

Let me give comment here from an article written by Mr George Williams and Mr David Hume. We know what remarkably incisive minds they bring to this legislation. On Friday in the Hobart Mercury they wrote:

Federal Parliament is to … debate next week a law that conjures up modern-day images of Big Brother.

That is this law we are dealing with here now, which the government is saying to the opposition: ‘Trust us. Wait a while. We might ameliorate it a bit with some later amendments.’ That is nonsense. Mr Williams and Mr Hume said:

The Bill will allow the Government to read our private emails, SMSs and other stored communications, without our knowledge.

The power will extend even to innocent people, called B-parties, if they have been unlucky enough to communicate with someone who is suspected of a crime, or of being a threat to national security.

The Government should sometimes be able to monitor the communications of innocent people.

This may be necessary to protect the wider community, where a suspect can only be tracked down through another person.

However, the Bill goes far beyond what can be justified and undermines our right to privacy more than is needed to properly enforce the law.

Our key concerns are that, first, the Government will be able to collect not only the communications between the B-party and the suspect—

that is, the innocent person and the suspect—

but also communications between the B-party and anyone else.

If you are unfortunate enough to communicate with someone suspected of an offence and, therefore, you become a B party, the government may be able to monitor conversations you have ‘with family members, friends, work colleagues, your lawyer, your doctor and so on, no matter what you spoke about’. The article continues:

Your most private and intimate conversations could be pored over, without your knowledge, by people you have never met.

This is Australia 2006 in the Howard era. Messrs Williams and Hume go on to say:

Second, in some circumstances, the Government can use the information it collects even though that information is irrelevant to the original suspect.

For example, if the Government uncovers incriminating information from listening to a B-party’s—

that is, an innocent person’s—

conversations, this can set off a chain reaction, allowing the interception of the incriminated person’s communications or of anyone with whom they communicate.

The Government could use this information to initiate a prosecution, even if it relates only to a minor offence.

Third, the Bill sets a very low threshold for ASIO to be granted a warrant.

As long as ASIO has tried other means of tracking a suspect, it only needs to show that intercepting the B-party’s—

that is, the innocent person’s—

communications is likely to assist in obtaining intelligence related to security.

This is a very wide power, particularly since, once ASIO meets the threshold, it can intercept any communications to or from the B-Party—

that is, the innocent party.

Fourth, the threshold that ASIO must satisfy uses general terms such as likely to assist and relating to security.

This vagueness creates the potential for Government agencies to misuse the power or apply it in an arbitrary fashion.

This arbitrariness extends to another aspect of the Bill. It differentiates between stored communications—

like email and SMS—

and real-time communications—

like telephone conversations.

Under the Bill, it is much easier to access stored communications, apparently because SMS and email are thought to be less private than telephone conversations.

However, now that telephone conversations often occur in public on mobile phones, many people, and particularly young people, reserve their most personal interactions for email and SMS.

These problems have been compounded by the speed with which the Government has sought to push the Bill through Parliament.

Interested parties were given only 10 days to prepare submissions on the 90-page Bill. The Senate Committee responsible for reviewing it has only two weeks to the review the submissions, hear evidence and prepare a report.

That is all over and done, since last Friday, and here is the minister saying, ‘Oh well, we’ll look at those after the bill has passed, if you don’t mind.’ Mr Williams and Mr Hume went on to say:

The dangers of a bad process are especially high because, as just one part of a recent torrent of anti-terrorism legislation, it is easy for bad legislation such as this to slip by unnoticed and unamended.

Protecting our national security and investigating serious crime are important goals.

However, we must be careful that in developing a legal response we do not lose sight of the rights and freedoms we are trying to protect.

We should ensure that, where the Government is to gain intrusive new powers over our privacy, these powers are balanced and go no further than is needed.

They conclude with this:

This Bill for surveillance powers over our emails and SMSs goes too far.

It contains more power than is needed over too broad a range of innocent communications and contains too few safeguards.

The Government should go back to the drawing board to come up with a better proposal.

What a great piece of legislation for the opposition to be supporting!