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

What the Attorney-General is doing in deciding to behave like a child in the course of this debate is preventing us from having the kind of dialogue you normally get in the committee stage of the bill. Some of these questions, I suspect—those of Senator Wright or myself or others—could be resolved on the spot and we could just move on. The problem with Senator Brandis just sitting there mute, instead of providing us with answers, is that we do not know for which of the issues we are chasing the government has a measured and considered response, and for which it does not. I would like to record the profound contempt with which this chamber is being treated. This is not the way in which committee debates are meant to proceed. I suspect, also, that as a result this debate is going to take a lot longer than if we were getting sensible answers to questions as they were being put. I have never come across a minister who treated the rest of us with this kind of contempt.

The questions I am interested in are those that relate to collaboration between ASIS and the ADF. I know Senator Wright has concentrated largely on the control order regime and other elements in the Attorney-General's portfolio, but one of the things Senator Wright indicated in her second reading contribution is the possibility that increased cooperation between ASIS and the ADF may in fact lead to the targeted killings of Australian citizens fighting in Iraq and Syria. It may be that is not remotely the government's intention. Even calling it an allegation is pretty strong, because we simply do not know if that is what the Australian government intends to enable with this bill. Our intelligence services are prevented from this by law at the moment—as section 6.4 of the Intelligence Services Act states quite explicitly:

In performing its functions, ASIS must not plan for, or undertake, activities that involve:

(a) paramilitary activities; or

(b) violence against the person; or

(c) the use of weapons.

If it is the case that this amendment is a backdoor allowing ASIS to directly contravene section 6(4) of the Intelligence Services Act, or to be complicit in the targeted killing of Australian citizens who have not been charged or convicted of any criminal offence, that takes us into uncharted territory.

Senator Brandis, you may thoroughly repudiate that. I am not even putting it to you as an allegation; it is genuinely a question. I am interested to know: is it the intention, in allowing this closer collaboration between ASIS and the ADF—which is sensible on its face—to allow either ASIS or the ADF to specifically seek out Australian nationals fighting in overseas theatres of war and target them for killing or capture? Is that the Australian government's intention? If it is not, Senator Brandis, and you are able to set our minds at rest, I will not continue with the rest of this line of questioning. If you are intending on sitting there for the rest of the afternoon and not providing us with answers, then I am going to continue this line of questioning. You could choose to set this to rest if it is simply not Australian government policy to proceed that way.

I will put the question directly; I think you know where this is heading. Is it the intention of these amendments to allow the targeting of Australian nationals fighting in overseas theatres of war or is that not the case?