Scott Ludlam (WA, Australian Greens) Share this | Hansard source

As senators would be aware, I have foreshadowed an amendment and it has been circulated in the chamber. I think everybody has got it. But I would like to put a couple of questions quickly to the minister at the table before I move that amendment. Senator Collins, I would like to pick you up on the topic that you put to us right at the end of your comments—and thanks for directly addressing some of the issues that I raised in my speech. But let us cut to the chase. If this bill were about intelligence agencies sharing intercepts and intelligence with each other, I probably would not have spoken at such great length. I think that is entirely uncontroversial and reasonable. Intelligence agencies working in silos has been quite frequently cited in the United States context as contributing to the attacks on New York City and the Pentagon—because people were not sharing the intelligence that they had. So I do not object to—and I did not try to raise any kind of controversy about this at any time in my speech—our intelligence and security agencies talking to each other within the boundaries of their act. But my reading—I should say really the reading of the Law Council and some of the other folk who have submitted on this—is that schedule 6, item 12, of the bill quite substantially reworks the kinds of agencies that ASIO will be able to share intelligence with. My reading of page 26 of the bill is that ASIO can share information with whomever it likes, as long as there is some justification provided to the agencies and through the minister. Would this bill and that specific amendment to schedule 6, item 12, allow ASIO to share information with agencies such as the tax office, Centrelink, ASIC or anybody? Maybe that is just a yes or no.