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

I asked the minister a moment ago about the coercive powers of the Australian Crime Commission. I asked him whether it is true that the powers used there—which are normally kept for surveillance and information gathering on international criminals and were specifically forbidden to be used against Australian citizens because they set aside all sorts of important provisions of the law—will now be used against people in the Indigenous community. The Australian Crime Commission has a range of special coercive powers similar to a royal commission—for example, the capacity to compel attendance at examinations, the production of documents and the answering of questions. It also has an intelligence-gathering capacity and a range of investigative powers common to law enforcement agencies, such as the power to tap phones, to use surveillance devices and to participate in controlled operations and, moreover, is able to coerce people to answer questions and to produce information and property in a way which is outside the usual law of this country. What I want to find out from the minister is whether or not it is true that these Star Chamber powers of the Australian Crime Commission may now be used against individual Indigenous Australians and communities but not against individual non-Indigenous Australians and communities.