Andrew Bartlett (Queensland, Australian Democrats) Share this | Hansard source

I would hope that government senators themselves are able to prove they are not ventriloquists’ dummies by showing some capability for reason and individual thought in relation to this amendment. They would be following the advice of their own Liberal members on the Parliamentary Joint Committee on Intelligence and Security in supporting this amendment, which is totally consistent with the extremely moderate recommendation put forward by the committee.

To reaffirm the Democrats’ support for this amendment I will make one further point. Senator Ray certainly knows—I have mentioned it a number of times—that the committee that oversees ASIO, the intelligence committee, does not have representation from the crossbenches. He has explained his view about why that is reasonable, and he has a fair point: it is in the legislation. That certainly explains why it is there but not why it is justifiably in the legislation or elsewhere. He has put forward a view, and he has a reasonable point, a defensible position, with regard to that. Nonetheless, it is appropriate to point out that it is a committee that does not have non-major-party representation.

As was pointed out, ASIO in effect cannot really be scrutinised to any great degree by any of the other committees. I have been on one or two committees where we have had ASIO before us for various matters and, really, it is not worth the bother. Basically they just sit there and say, ‘We cannot comment on that for operational reasons’. You ask 20 questions and you get that answer. It pretty much wastes everybody’s time and everyone feels frustrated and irritated. So that is the only committee that can really scrutinise ASIO in any significant way. I have to take them on faith that they do it in a significant way because we do not know as we are not on it and most of what they do when they scrutinise is behind closed doors—but I am sure they do a good job with regard to that.