Nick Xenophon (SA, Independent) Share this | Hansard source

I am grateful to the Attorney-General for his response, but I want to go back earlier to the issue of the PJCIS—the Parliamentary Joint Committee on Intelligence and Security. Reference was made to my friend and fellow independent Andrew Wilkie, the member for Denison. I want to put on the record that there is a big difference between the PJCIS and the United States Senate Select Committee on Intelligence. In the United States, the members of the Intelligence Committee are briefed on operational details. My understanding is that the PJCIS is banned from anything other than administration and the financing of agencies. It is much more circumscribed in terms of what it can look at than in the United States. So I worry that the charter of the PJCIS, compared to the United States committee, is much more limited. I will not labour the fact but I think that that distinction needs to be made.

My final question—and I am grateful to the Attorney for his response—is: when you have obtained the whole haystack, does the fact that there is all this additional information in any way fetter the work of intelligence agencies, in that they are looking at that rather than focusing on risk assessment?

I take issue in relation to Man Haron Manis. He was on a watch list and he dropped off that watch list; and I know the Attorney has acknowledged that. I am not privy to the information, of course, that others would be, other than what I read in the media about this, but I still cannot understand to this day why that man, both madman and terrorist, was on the streets, given his extensive history. The issue is one of assessment by intelligence agencies. Whilst he was not regarded as a terrorist threat at the time of the Martin Place siege and the tragedy that unfolded, that it resulted in, I wonder whether that raises the issue of a failure of our intelligence services to appropriately assess him as a terrorist threat and the fact that, in my view and, I think, the view of many others, this man, with his extensive history, should not have been on the streets.