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

I congratulate Senator Stott Despoja for that summary of the outrageous aspects of this legislation. Here we are in the Senate with seven senators in attendance dealing with a piece of legislation which egregiously allows snooping into the private affairs of Australians in a way which is unprecedented in the history of this parliament, certainly in peacetime. This Telecommunications (Interception) Amendment Bill 2006 goes way beyond the pale and way beyond what is required for government agencies to effectively check the threat of terrorism.

There is a pattern of misbehaviour by the government which means that almost any incursion on civil liberties can be brought into this parliament. If it has a whiff of terrorism about it—and it does not even have to be stated—the government, with an opposition that is more and more willing and compliant, can have that legislation go through with less and less attention by the media and less and less knowledge by the Australian public of how rapidly time-honoured values in this great democracy of ours are being eroded. We are seeing the rights and prohibitions on the government’s ability to intrude itself into the freedoms of individuals being eroded—and I welcome the minister to the chamber.

This legislation does not have the word ‘terrorism’ in its title but there is no doubt that it is a product of the fear tactic used by the Howard government on a broad scale. It is another one of those things that has come from Attorney-General Ruddock’s thinking. He came into the ministry saying he had in mind new legislation to deal with terrorism as he would have it and, ipso facto, to curb the rights and freedoms of Australians at large. This legislation does that more than perhaps any of the other pieces of legislation we have seen since his ascent to the ministry, to the Attorney-Generalship. In particular, it allows warrants to be issued for a whole range of perceived crimes to allow the interception of communications between Australians. That includes, in this age of cyberspace, stored communications—stored information—that people or entities may have. It does not require that the person or persons that are suspect, and for whom the interception of private information is allowed, be involved in potential terrorism or indeed serious violent crime.

This snoop legislation allows the Howard government to intrude into the telecommunications of people suspected of tax evasion, quarantine breaches and a whole range of matters including, under the new sedition offences, people who might be suspected of urging the overthrow of the Howard government itself. We remember how recently it was that large sections of the community, including the media, were galvanised into fruitless action against the government increasing the penalties for people that could be perceived to be threatening its overthrow. Now we have the government not only having established much more draconian laws for people perceived to be planning a violent overthrow or overthrow of the government—and you can imagine the imagination that goes into information received by agencies of the government on that score—but also, under this legislation, allowing the telecommunications of people who, so far as the agency knows, are thought to be entirely innocent of any such potential to evade taxes or quarantine, for example, to be intercepted. Those communications will be, effectively, processed by and for the government in the name, ostensibly, of the public interest. But that is against the public interest, if you take into account the fact that this country is not a dictatorship but a long established and proud democracy based on the principle of the right of the individual to her or his privacy against unnecessary government intrusion.

This bill is all about the government taking unto itself a whole range of opportunities to intrude into the privacy of average, innocent Australians and other Australians who are suspected of a range of potential criminal behaviours which may not in any way involve violence to persons let alone to the government or to good order in terms of the physical safety of our community. It is quite outrageous, but the government is getting away with it because this is an era of fear. JFK, of course, said we have nothing to fear but fear itself. Now the government has brought in an era in which that dictum is being shown for what it is. We have a great deal to fear from this Howard promoted period of fear. Legislation like this comes before the parliament and the Senate without any proper public debate and ignoring the advice of many important legal thinkers, civil libertarians, philosophers and people concerned for the ethics of this great nation of ours.

Let me quote from one section of the report by the committee to do with the interception of telecommunications of citizens who are known or thought to be entirely innocent of any crime other than that they may be, for example, in phone contact with someone who is thought, potentially, to be implicated. The Gilbert and Tobin Centre of Public Law said:

We believe ... that the Bill abrogates the right to privacy substantially more than is necessary to achieve the Bill’s security purposes. It is important that legislation does not abrogate rights more than is necessary and incidental to achieving the purpose of the legislation. Where legislation does disproportionately abrogate rights, it may have adverse, unintended effects.

It certainly may have. For example, it would give opportunity to government agencies right through to ministers to intrude upon the rights of innocent Australians in a way that is totally contrary to our history and this nation’s proud traditions. The Law Council of Australia said:

Schedule 2 of the Bill if enacted allows certain law enforcement agencies and ASIO to intercept telecommunications of a person who has no knowledge or involvement in a crime, but who may be in contact with someone who does. In other words, people suspected of nothing will be under surveillance ... This is the first time ever in Australia’s history that law enforcement agencies will be given power to intercept telecommunications of people who are not suspects who are innocent people.

Let me repeat that, because this is coming from the Law Council of Australia:

This is the first time ever in Australia’s history that law enforcement agencies will be given power to intercept telecommunications of people who are not suspects who are innocent people.

A pity the chief law officer of this country, the Attorney-General, does not listen to the Law Council of Australia, but in the arrogance of this government—and it is a dangerous arrogance—has taken unto himself to put up legislation like this effectively unaltered by any public submission. Senator Stott Despoja quoted from the New South Wales Council of Civil Liberties. Mr Cameron Murphy from that council had something to say about the Attorney-General’s legislation, which we are going to see put through this Senate a little later this evening—if it is convenient to the government; if not tomorrow—by the sheer weight of numbers, regardless of what debate takes place here and regardless of the warnings from people outside this place who have far more regard, I submit to you, Madam Acting Deputy President, than the Attorney-General or the Prime Minister of the day for this nation’s great traditions.

Let me remark on comments by Senator Milne earlier this afternoon in a debate where she pointed out that it is this very government that purports to uphold the traditions of Australia that uses every opportunity to aggrandise itself before the flag, in front of the symbolism of this country, in this parliament wherever it can, ripping down the great traditions of this country, treading them into the ground—not least the rights of individuals. One would expect a conservative coalition, a government largely made up of members who have the word ‘liberal’ in their job description, to trample time-honoured rights—in particular to immunity from government snooping, which is not in the national interest—into the dust.

Mr Murphy said on behalf of the New South Wales Council of Civil Liberties:

We can accept that, if someone is a suspect in a criminal investigation, it is a matter of balancing the interests of the public in ensuring that that suspected offence is investigated and that the person is prosecuted and dealt with under the law. In this amendment, we are dealing with something that goes much further than that. We are talking about innocent B-parties—

that is, innocent people—

people who are not themselves suspected of any offence. The whole regime of B-party warrants shifts the focus of the investigation from someone who is a suspect to an investigation surrounding the innocent B-party on the off-chance that a suspect might contact them and there might be useful information gleaned that way.

If you can argue that you should intervene on the privacy of somebody who might know somebody who might be suspected of a tax evasion, then you can argue that somebody who might know that somebody who knows that somebody might themselves be investigated. Where do we end up here? It is a very logical progression that nobody is going to be safe from their privacy being intruded upon, invaded, unknown to them, as they go about their innocent life in this democratic nation of ours, by an increasing number of government agencies with less regard to the wellbeing of the country and greater regard to the politics of the government of the day. It is very dangerous legislation. Were it to be conscribed to would-be terrorists and murderers, I would have no difficulty with that. But this is nothing of the sort. This is a broad-reaching intrusion into the private lives of Australians to foster the ever-increasing size of government agencies which this government has promoted and is paying for out of the taxpayers’ pockets in an age of fear.

I saw an essayist on the weekend—I might get that and read it to the committee a little later tonight—talking about the much healthier role government would have if it explained to us all that we live in an age of insecurity and danger. We have to accept a proportion of that and we have to balance keeping our freedoms with that danger, but we do not have a public debate at that level. The fact that there are only two government representatives in this chamber at the moment shows that the government is not going to engage in that sort of debate. It has the numbers. The executive, the Prime Minister’s office, in this case along with the Attorney-General, has control of the parliament, effectively. There is nobody in the House or in the Senate in the coalition who is going to stand up for what were considered until tonight basic human rights in this country.

Nobody is going to stand up against this gross intrusion on the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights—Australians are losing out here to international rights recognised right around the world—and make a stand in favour of the individual. No, this is a Liberal government which believes in the all-important ability to legislate for the collective—that being itself—against the interests of the public. It is an extraordinary turnaround in the way we would expect a government to behave but, then again, this is a government that tramples all over states’ rights after a century of conservatives arguing for states’ right. Here we have a government that is trampling all over individual liberties in this country after a century of arguing that it was the champion of civil liberties. That is now left to the Democrats and the Greens in this place because the opposition, the Labor Party—guess what?—is going to go over and support the government on this legislation.

I will be moving some pretty direct amendments on behalf of the Australian Greens. They do not cover the worries, the anxieties, that people have brought to the Senate committee and that other people obviously would have if they knew about this legislation, but they at least test it out. One of the questions I would like the Attorney’s representative in this chamber, the Minister for Justice and Customs, to explain to us—and I will be pursuing it somewhat in the committee stage—is to what degree, for example, Federal Court judges or members of parliament are going to come under secret eavesdropping by government agencies at the behest of the Attorney-General under this legislation.

I have, as part of the amendments here, a prohibition on Federal Court judges, High Court judges and federal and state members of parliament being listened in to under the extraordinary depth, breadth and reach of this legislation. People listening to this would say—and I would be one of them—immediately: ‘Why should they be protected in a way that other citizens aren’t?’ I agree entirely; I think other citizens should be protected. But I would like to know—and I will be questioning the minister on this—what protection members of parliament, and indeed High Court judges and Federal Court judges, have. Are we crossing the line here between the separation of powers? Does this make judges vulnerable to political snooping? Potentially it does. Does it mean that members of parliament will not have the time-honoured protection from snooping by government ministers’ fiat that they have had in the past?

There are other questions that will be asked. The first amendment I will be making will be to ensure that the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and Australia’s other obligations to democracy, to the freedoms and rights which we espouse and that we are going overseas to protect, be protected here in Australia.