Robert Ray (Victoria, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

To assist the committee, my specific questions are: firstly, what resources were involved in the joint intelligence committee review by ASIO, Attorney-General’s and the Federal Police? If the ‘resource intensive’ argument is to be sustained, this committee at least deserves to know what it cost. So tell us what it cost in money, staff hours, intellectual capacity, psychic’s salary or whatever else you like. I would like to know. Secondly, with regard to the argument that it could interfere with operational priorities: has this occurred? I am not asking for the specifics, but has it occurred? Who has asked the question and who has checked whether this is not just some bogus, silly argument put forward and that it does exist in reality?

Thirdly, why was it good enough three years ago to have a sunset clause of three years but now it is 10 years? What has changed in the three years? Was it mere opportunism and lack of principle that meant that three years ago the current government adopted three years, or is it that with a Senate majority and the hubris that follows they believe they can do whatever they like and the principles that they stood for before are no longer extant, as they say in the classics? Do they no longer exist because the government say, ‘We do not actually want a sunset clause, so we will chuck in 10 years and that is off our plate for 10 years’? I hope that is not the case. I hope the commitment to a sunset clause three years ago by the coalition government was genuinely held and was offered and accepted in negotiations on the basis that it was a sound principle. If that was the case, why does the sound principle no longer apply?

Senator Faulkner made a very valid point. We have reviewed the questioning regime. We have affirmed that we believe it is in accord with the legislation—not just the letter of the legislation but the spirit of the legislation. We have had no chance yet to assess whether the detention regime will work, and will work properly, because, fortunately, no-one has been detained. But if in the next few years people have been, to say that we will only review that regime 10 years hence does not seem to be very sensible to me.