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

As I repeatedly say whenever reports from the Parliamentary Joint Committee on Intelligence and Security are tabled, I am not a member of the committee and neither is anyone else on the crossbench. I have only had the benefit of reading the report just now. I recommend that anybody who wrestles with the dilemmas that terrorism and how to respond to it present read the report and the speeches that have just been given. Even from what I have just read, there are important aspects within the report as well. The report also deals with some wider issues that relate to this whole process that we need to try and wrestle with in as serious and a sober way as possible.

It certainly appears to me from the outside that the members of the committee take their job seriously. In a political environment, it would not be surprising for a political committee—if the Attorney-General wanted to relist al-Qaeda and Jemaah Islamiah as terrorist organisations—to say: ‘We don’t even need to think about that; of course we do. Let’s send out a press release trumpeting how we are tough on terror by agreeing to it.’ But the committee has taken its job seriously in looking at those requests for listing organisations at face value and taking the opportunity to properly review all of the available and fresh information there is about those two organisations and about the broader process that this listing of organisations represents.

The Democrats are on the record a number of times as having concerns with the whole construction of and framework around the process of listing organisations in the Crimes Act and whether this is the best way of dealing with what we all acknowledge is a genuine threat of violence against Australians and others. In this sort of debate in a politicised context, making statements such as that is prone to leaving you open to being slagged off and smeared by cheap-shot tabloid merchants and a few other people who engage in such tactics. On the government side, Minister Downer springs to mind in particular as one who is always ready to jump forward and slur anybody who raises a question about whether we are following the right path in how we deal with terror. It is good to have members on this very important committee who do not take that approach.

I need to emphasise, as I do each time, that this committee only involves people from the major parties—people from the government party and the party of the alternative government. That means that there is a restriction on the range of views that are present on the committee. For this committee more than any other, that presents a problem because this committee gets access to information that none of the rest of us in this parliament, let alone in the wider community, get access to. That presents a problem. It is a requirement of the law, so it is not much that this chamber can do anything about in this context. But it is something worth raising each time.

It does concern me to hear Senator Ferguson say—and the report confirms—that, in order to enable it to make greater sense of the government’s decision-making process, the committee has repeatedly requested that the government address the listing criteria of ASIO in the statements of reasons they put forward for listing or relisting organisations. The committee has done that in May 2005, in September 2005 and again in this report of October 2006.

According to the report, the government has not responded formally to these recommendations. That is a concern to me and, frankly, it is not good enough. When a committee is clearly engaging in its tasks in a very responsible and considered manner by seeking to have a quite reasonable request for the government to provide and address the criteria for listing in its statements of reasons, for the government to continue to refuse to do that is a sign of a government that is not taking its own responsibilities seriously enough. Having heard Senator Ray’s outline of intelligence agencies and the way intelligence reports and declassified intelligence reports have been used by members of this government, it does not give me great confidence that even this committee is being provided with the full range of information that it requires to make full consideration.

It is an important reminder to all of us engaging in these debates that these are difficult areas. I think it is important for people who would be described as being on the left or the right of the political spectrum—however inadequate those descriptions are—to try to engage in debate in these issues on the basis of facts, substance and reality and to try to examine the best way forward from here. That is something we and the public debate would benefit from significantly. Part of the reason I emphasise that is because of evidence given in the report itself. To give an example, I quote paragraph 2.17, regarding al-Qaeda:

While much of the literature on Al-Qa’ida questioned the solidity of the organisation since the pressure brought to bear on it by the invasion of Afghanistan, all agreed, however, that its value as an ideological inspiration remained strong.

Trying to combat an organisation whose main strength is as an ideological inspiration is very different from combating an organisation whose main strength is to set off bombs around the joint. We need to take that into account more in considering how best to deal with these challenges. It is as much a matter of hearts and minds.

The statement was made, I think by Senator Ferguson, that the committee found that, whilst Jemaah Islamiah is perhaps not as effective in setting off bombs around the joint as people thought it might be and perhaps does not have the resources that people thought it might have, it apparently and unfortunately seems to have few problems in finding recruits. Why is that? Whatever we do with the crimes legislation in Australia or elsewhere, I am not sure that we can address those sorts of things primarily through organisational listings, through the Crimes Act or through anything else. It is a hearts and minds issue and that is where we need to direct more of our attention.

In mentioning al-Qaeda, the committee said that if the role of that organisation:

... is largely one of propaganda, it would seem to the Committee that to ascribe more success to it than it warrants would be dangerous and self-defeating.

In other words, continually trumpeting al-Qaeda as the big global bogeyman when the evidence suggests it is much more enfeebled than is often portrayed is not helpful; it is actually counterproductive to our own interests to blow up these organisations as being much stronger and more effective than they really are. The report quotes from the assessment of the Jane’s Terrorism and Insurgency Centre:

Much of the action against Islamic terrorism has led to more rather than less violence. Intelligence has often been poor, contaminated or obtained under duress, most notably from Abu Ghraib prison in Baghdad and the US base in Guantanamo Bay. Media reports that the US interrogators had desecrated the Koran, though later withdrawn, can be assumed to have compounded the damage already caused by either poorly designed procedures or badly trained personnel.

The concern, and the reason I emphasise those points, is again to say that the Democrats believe that we need to be putting more attention on the impact of our own behaviour, our own failings and, more significantly, the failings of our key ally—a nation that certainly for the last few years we have basically been handcuffed to with regard to how they are operating on some of these issues.

The failings that are identified in Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo Bay in poor training or bad procedures, let alone some of the more egregious allegations that have been raised, do far more damage than any benefit that can come about via mechanisms such as listing organisations through our Crimes Act. The real attention and action should be on our failure to show that we take seriously the issues concerning the sorts of failures that Senator Ray outlined in his speech, which I think are of serious concern. The matters being considered by the committee with respect to listing organisations are important, but it certainly seems to me from information provided to the committee, which is portrayed in its report, that a lot of the action, contest and focus actually needs to be elsewhere because that is where some of the failings are. I seek leave to continue my remarks later.

Leave granted; debate adjourned.