Lisa Singh (Tasmania, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary to the Shadow Attorney General) Share this | Hansard source

In speaking to this MPI today I would like to first acknowledge and recognise Senator Ludlam and the work he has done in prosecuting this issue for some time now, and also recognise the work of Senator Stephens, who was on that parliamentary Joint Committee on Intelligence and Security and the particular inquiry in question into the potential reform of national security legislation. Senator Stephens alluded to that particular inquiry earlier today and went into some detail as to the work that was carried out over an extensive period. It was broad-ranging in its look at the issues which pertain particularly to this MPI—that is, in relation to indiscriminate data collection.

Indiscriminate data collection is of concern to all Australians and rightly so, because at the end of the day we have to get the balance right when we are talking about privacy and security. That is what is really at the heart of this. That is what the Australian people want to know. They want to know that their civil liberties are maintained while at the same time they are protected by those security agencies that uphold our national interest in this country.

That is where it comes back to the importance of the integrity of the rule of law. If the rule of law is upheld no-one really has anything to worry about, but that is what it really comes down to. We are a democratic nation. We operate under the rule of law in this country. We as parliamentarians legislate to protect the Australian people, but in doing so we have to ensure that the rule of law is upheld while striking the right balance between the privacy and the safety of the Australian public. Therein lies the challenge.

Labor has a long history of establishing privacy legislation, introducing the Privacy Act in 1988, and we stand very much by our commitment to protect the privacy of Australians. We stand by our commitment to do that, which started to be further broadened when the then Attorney-General Nicola Roxon made a commitment to send some of this work to that parliamentary inquiry—the parliamentary Joint Committee on Intelligence and Security—to look at that inquiry into potential forms of national secretary legislation.

It did look at a wide range of areas in relation to changes to the Telecommunications (Interception and Access) Act, including the interception of metadata. I have been looking at some of the recommendations. There are some 43 recommendations that came out of that joint committee but some of them particularly—and Senator Stephens alluded to some of them earlier—talked about the proportionality of the investigative need and the privacy intrusion. That is where it comes back to—that balance of ensuring privacy and security—and finding an equal path in our rule of law.

Of course, as a democracy, Australia participates in data collection. We all know that. We have all known that for a long time. It happens through our network of intelligence agencies. In relation to that kind of national security framework of networks—which of course encompass all the security agencies as well as federal, state and territory governments—it has very well defined responsibilities and authority within the rule of law in Australia. What is critical is for the agencies to work within their authority to ensure that civil rights are not encroached upon and, with our proud history in Australia of freedoms, the importance of maintaining those boundaries can never be underestimated.

But if there is to be investigation or deliberation about an inquiry into that national framework, then we need to ensure that it would balance privacy and national security. That is a discussion that Labor would be happy to have, as my colleague the shadow Attorney-General Mark Dreyfus has said, and I do not think that debate really has occurred yet. It is a debate that is worth having. And that is what is really at the heart of all of this—striking that right balance. It is what is important to the Australian public. People want to be reassured that the work carried out by our intelligence agencies is done according to the rule of law and is done in accordance with the national interest. That is what governments need now to provide to the Australian people.

Among other things there is, as I said, a report with 43 recommendations on the table for Senator Brandis to take up now as Attorney-General, now in government, and to do something with. A lot of the work in this area has already been done so it really is up to the new government to work out what it is going to do and to provide that reassurance to the Senate and to the Australian people. The sooner that happens the better. In the meantime, let us have the debate, let us have that discussion about our national security framework and about some of the areas that this particular MPI has discussed—one of those being metadata access.

We know that metadata access is there. We have our privacy of communications protected by the Telecommunications (Interception and Access) Act, which prohibits the listening to, copying or recording of a communication as it passes over an Australian telecommunications system. As Senator Xenophon says, that act needs to be looked at. Yes, that act does need to be looked at and that is exactly what that joint committee did. It looked at it to ensure that the adequate safeguards are in place. Again, that is where I draw back to the work that was done by that committee.

Of course, we know that metadata is collected. That has been out there well and truly for a while now, maybe even before what has been highlighted in the media in recent days. But in doing that, national security agencies as well as police will know that to go further they must obtain an independently issued warrant for the investigation of really serious offences. Why is that the case? Because it is an invasive activity. It is invasive of privacy. But, if it is a serious offence, a warrant is issued and the outcome can be for the national interest.

An obvious example is what happened in relation to the metadata that was collected by such agencies to track down the murderer of Jill Meagher. It was a good example—a horrible example—of where metadata has been used in the public interest and to ensure such serious offences are dealt with. There are probably many other examples of metadata in Australia but we need to get back to what this is really all about, and that is striking that right balance—the right to privacy and the right of public interest to be protected. It is about striking a balance between those two key things and for the government to act on the outcomes of the inquiry.