David Feeney (Victoria, Australian Labor Party, Parliamentary Secretary for Defence) Share this | Hansard source

I want to speak to Senator Ludlum's point about the timing and how this matter came to be before us. Discussions with the university sector on the issue of publication commenced on 10 July 22. The proposal to introduce a publication offence with the ability to apply for permits was formally raised in Defence's submission to the Senate on 8 August 2012. Subsequent to the Senate committee's preliminary report, Mr Ken Peacock AM and Mr Alex Zelinsky raised this issue in all of their consultations. The result was their recommendation to remove the associated permit framework and to simply have an offence relating to publication. This made it clearer that the legislation is not attempting to introduce a regime that requires all publications to be reviewed for a permit and that it would be quite rare that a publication would have the level of detail that would meet the high threshold of concern. The publication issue was formally raised and discussed at the roundtable meetings chaired by Professor Chubb.

Researchers and institutions have previously grappled with the balance between national security interests and the public good of disclosing the outcomes, and some examples of that were noted by attendees. During roundtable discussions it was noted by some research organisations that the legislation would in fact help to provide a framework for institutions when considering these sorts of issues when publishing. The issue did not feature heavily in the final roundtable discussion because the focus by then was on the scope of the controls. The narrow scope of the controls consequently narrows the effect on publication. The reduced scope of the controls in the institutional assessment model was broadly supported by roundtable attendees, I am advised, with the exception of one party.