George Brandis (Queensland, Liberal Party, Attorney-General) Share this | Hansard source

They will only be used where appropriate. Because of the way in which these powers have been expressed in the act—and this is a continuation, with some refinements, of course, of powers that were first legislated in 2005—it is obvious, to anyone who is capable of reading the act, the way in which the capacity to obtain a control order or a preventive detention order, the tests that must be satisfied, the caveats and the red lines, as it were, in the legislation which prevent the obtaining of orders of this kind except in very unusual circumstances, are actually written into the law. So this is not a matter of executive discretion, Senator Wright. You have read the relevant provisions of the Commonwealth Criminal Code, I am sure, so you would have seen for yourself how many safeguards are built in, how high the thresholds are, how limited the circumstances are in which orders of this kind are obtained, how rigorous the accountability mechanisms are—in particular, the need to go back to the issuing officer in a very short span of time—and the limitations on the renewal of orders of this kind, and so forth. I suppose, therefore, the immediate answer to your question is: it is there for you to see in the act for yourself.

However, let me take the opportunity of your question, Senator Wright, to remind you, or to acquaint you with the fact that the government has taken an enormous amount of time and effort to meet with community groups most immediately affected. These groups are not directed at any particular community; they are laws of general application. But it is a sad fact, as we all know, that at the moment the threat of foreign fighters is inspired by those young men and women who are ensnared by ISIL and Jabhat al-Nusra and other organisations, and that, in the name of the Islamic faith—although it is a claim that the mainstream of practitioners of the Islamic faith, of course, utterly reject—are encouraged to go to Iraq and Syria to fight in wars being conducted by ISIL. ISIL is a barbaric death cult which is at war with a Muslim nation—the nation of Iraq.

I and my colleague Senator Concetta Fierravanti-Wells, who has particular portfolio responsibility for multicultural affairs, have had many meetings—some of which the Prime Minister has participated in himself—with leaders of the Islamic community. At those meetings, I have engaged in very frank discussions with the leaders of that community in the preparation of this bill. I have said to them, in Canberra, in Sydney, in Brisbane and in Melbourne, 'We want to engage you in the preparation of this bill, because the main beneficiaries of this bill at the moment, at this bank and shoal of time in our nation's history, are you, because it is your communities, primarily, that are the victims of those who would prey upon them.' As I have said many, many times, we see the Islamic communities of Australia as our partners in shaping legislation to protect their communities from predators, to save their young men and also, in some cases, their young women from being ensnared by these false siren voices.

We are discussing at the moment the sunset clause. Can I tell you, Senator Wright, that in an early iteration of this bill there was not a sunset clause. At an early iteration of the bill, the government was provisionally of the view—for the purposes of the discussion—that perhaps these unusual measures in all the circumstances did need to be made a permanent feature of our law. I remember very clearly the meeting in Melbourne that I attended with Senator Fierravanti-Wells at which there was a long discussion about the removal of the sunset clause in an early draft of the bill. Members of the Islamic community said to me, 'Attorney-General, the removal of the sunset clause is a big issue for us. We believe that it would send a very, very strong signal to this community if the government were to reinstate the sunset clause.' I can tell you, Senator Wright, that it was as a direct result of the argument that it was put to the government by leaders of the Islamic community at that particular meeting, and then at another meeting about a week later in Brisbane, that I took the view that I ought to take that suggestion on board. So I inserted the sunset clause.

As we know, the sunset clause has now been foreshortened as a result of a recommendation of the PJCIS. I do not know how you could have a better example of the government engaging with a community with a particular interest in this legislation, listening to its concerns, embracing its concerns and acting to give effect to its concerns than by the decision that I made, on the specific advice of those community leaders, to keep the sunset provision in operation.