Penny Wright (SA, Australian Greens) Share this | Hansard source

Thank you, Attorney-General. It is interesting that you have often waxed eloquent about the importance of the role and, indeed, you have often claimed credit for being one of the people who moved to have the role introduced after the initial tranche of national security legislation was introduced during the Howard government. But, with respect, you cannot have it all ways. We have to actually look at not the talk but the walk. We have had this office vacant for seven months. Prior to that, you acknowledge that, in fact, your government was going to abolish the position. Given the importance that you put on the role, you will be very pleased to hear that I will be introducing a private senator's bill to require that the role be filled with alacrity in the future and that, indeed, the reports of the Independent National Security Legislation Monitor be responded to by governments within a timely period. I agree with you that it has been somewhat scandalous that report after report has not been heeded, as you say. With respect, I would suggest that it is now an opportunity for your government to take those previous reports seriously and to heed them now. Certainly, one of the major concerns that was consistently raised by the Independent National Security Legislation Monitor was with the control order regime—and we will come back to that in some questions that I have for you later. As much as it is nice to hear that soon we may have someone within that office, what kind of heed has the government paid to the previous discussion of the control order regime by the INSLM? And how can you point to that being reflected in the legislation that we are considering today?