Mark Bishop (WA, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I present the report of the Foreign Affairs, Defence and Trade Legislation Committee on the Defence Amendment (Parliamentary Approval of Overseas Service) Bill 2008 [No. 2], together with submissions received by the committee.

Ordered that the report be printed.

I seek leave to make some commentary for five minutes on the bill as presented.

Leave granted.

It is unusual to be able to speak to a bill as presented to the parliament at this stage on the basis that normally discussion on bills occurs at either the second reading stage or the in-committee stage. The reason that I have made the request today is that this bill, having been brought to a Senate committee by the Greens, is essentially the bill of a minor party and, subject to later decision by government, is unlikely to proceed, so this would be the only opportunity to speak to the bill. I wish to speak for only five minutes to make a few remarks about the background to the inquiry.

The purpose of the bill, as it identifies itself, seeks to authorise members of the Australian Defence Force to serve within the territorial limits of Australia but they may not serve beyond these limits except in accordance with a resolution authorising such service passed and carried by each house of the Australian Parliament. Essentially, the bill seeks to alter the longstanding practice of this country whereby the executive arm of the government, through a national security subcommittee of cabinet, as I understand it, authorises the dispatch of troops of Australia to either warlike or non-warlike service, certainly being service outside the territorial limits of Australia. So the question before the committee was not whether parliament should debate or engage in discussion in its various forms on the merits or otherwise. The question before the committee, in its examination of the bill, was whether the bill provided a credible alternative to the practice that has developed in this country since Federation of the executive arm of government making the decision to commit troops overseas, along with the usual discussion in the community and often with, as of late, discussion in both houses of the parliament.

The committee, in taking that tack, was primarily concerned about how the provisions of the bill would operate in practice and it examined and analysed the bill from that perspective. The report of the committee outlines that there is extensive background to this particular bill going back something of the order of 25 years. It is the third or fourth time that such a bill, if not almost certainly identical in substance then certainly very similar in substance to this bill, has been brought to the parliament by either the Greens or minority party senators of different persuasions over the years. The content of the bill has been regularly examined by ministers and shadow ministers alike and on each occasion it has been examined by relevant committees of the parliament and there has been extensive discussion in the wider community. So the content of the bill is well known.

I offer a few brief comments in passing. There was something in the order of 30 or 31 submissions only to the bill. Almost 11 or 12 of those were pages of one submission only which indicated support for the bill. In that context the committee had written to hundreds and hundreds of bodies seeking submissions and to have had such a poor response, albeit all of those who did take the trouble to respond provided worthy submissions, made it clear that perhaps we did not get the widespread debate within the committee and within the wider community that might have been sought by those who were interested in the passage of the bill.

The committee has identified a number of deficiencies in the bill that need to be attended to by those who are interested in this debate if the bill is going to be brought forward this time or some time in the future for passage. Firstly, there is the treatment of classified material and, secondly, the constraint on the ability of Defence to mobilise its forces safely and effectively is so limited. There are serious problems with definitions within the bill and inconsistencies between the explanatory memorandum and the bill itself. Because of those inconsistencies, clearly the bill had the potential to capture routine or non-warlike military activities including activities such as peacekeeping, capacity building in other countries, humanitarian assistance, antipiracy, the rescue or extraction of Australian citizens from threatening situations overseas, covert operations such as those involving submarines and responses to maritime incidents such as harassment, sabotage and the like. Those sorts of definitional deficiencies distract from the—(Time expired)