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

What a poor response from the Labor Party as it moves on to support this Howard government legislation, which breaches a century of protection of privacy as expected by Australian citizens. One would have thought that the Labor Party in opposition would be in here to question the government about where the lines are drawn on this snooping and invasion on innocent Australians, which is now so open for exploitation under this legislation. But, no, it gets into that attack on the Greens, who are doing its job for it. I am not going to resile from this responsibility for opposition for one minute, not at all.

The Labor Party cavils with the amendments that the Greens have put forward, but there is no other way of tackling this government apart from seeking to see where the boundaries are. I have no concern about politicians and judges being treated as every other citizen. What I am saying is that other citizens should not have their privacy invaded, as under this legislation, without enormous restraint put on that legislation. The restraint is not there and the Labor Party says, ‘Okay’. As is so typical, this Beazley opposition wants to align itself with the Howard government time and time again on matters to do with security simply because it is frightened of being pointed to as being soft, when in fact it should have the gumption to be strong on standing up for the hard-fought-for rights that are essential to a functioning democracy. Those rights are under attack and are being rapidly eroded. We have to ask ourselves in this country: is it not time for a bill of rights? We have to ask ourselves: where is the Labor Party nationally on that matter? It never introduced one during its 13 years of office before the Howard government came to power, and it is not about to introduce one now.

The reality is that we do need safeguards for ordinary citizens. I am not talking about criminals here; I am talking about ordinary citizens, law-abiding, innocent citizens. There is extraordinary reach to legislation aimed at drug runners, terrorists and massive tax evaders. Let us hope that includes those who take their assets offshore to escape paying tax—some of the big friends of the government are included there. Ordinary citizens should not be treated in the same way.

What we are learning here is—and I think this is new territory—that politicians and High Court judges can be snooped on now by not just ASIO but a growing range of instrumentalities with fewer and fewer restrictions and guidelines and with less and less prohibition on them crossing the line into gratuitous, unnecessary and destructive invasion of innocent citizens’ privacy. That is what the Labor Party should be standing up for. That is what it is failing to stand up for as it votes for this legislation. It might hurt about that. It might want to point the finger at the Greens and say: ‘You’re falling into the trap of being exposed to government criticism. We would never do that.’

We are here to provide the opposition for the citizens of this country because their families, their workplaces, all their communications, their mobile phones, their SMSs and their computers are now open to invasion. I am talking about innocent Australians. We are here to defend their right not to have their intimate communications passed around in the backrooms of intelligence agencies, tax agencies, police agencies, quarantine agencies and a whole stack of other agencies under this legislation. Labor might not care about that or be too fussed about this enormous erosion that is occurring with this legislation in regard to people’s right to privacy, but we do.

I put up this amendment knowing it was going to fail. It is a blunt instrument. The minister says, ‘Senator Brown, you weren’t at the one-day inquiry into this matter.’ No, I was not, because I was representing my constituency, in the inevitable competition for time you have as a seven-day a week, seven-night a week senator. I was defending my constituency’s interests elsewhere. It is terrible when you only get a one-day inquiry in one city on a matter like this that affects all Australians. That is part of the attitude of this high-handed government and this minister—they say they will have an inquiry, and it is in fact a farce. It is not like the Senate inquiries of the past. This is the age of Senate sidelining by the government.

That inquiry did enable some light to be shed on this bill, but it was almost wall-to-wall critical. The minister might like to get up and say, ‘Who came to the inquiry to defend it?’ The users of the bill did. But I challenge the minister to get up and say, ‘Which community organisations of this great country of Australia defended this legislation?’ The answer to that is none, not one, not a solitary organisation representing civil society against the incursion by this legislation on the rights to privacy of Australians.