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

On behalf of the Australian Greens, I indicate that we support Senator Leyonhjelm's amendment for the reasons that he has expressed quite eloquently for a while. The PJCIS was quite literally a boys' club when Mr Clare and Mr Dreyfus substituted on it to more closely observe the bill that they had carriage of on behalf of the opposition. It was a committee comprised entirely of middle-aged white men.

The government, having eliminated the crossbench spot, I would at least pay tribute—and I think Senator Brandis was part of this committee when he was there—to the role that Mr Andrew Wilkie played as somebody who had spent some considerable years as a member of the intelligence community as the crossbench member of the PJCIS. That crossbench spot, which has never been held by the Greens, was eliminated by this government when they came to power. Since then it has operated as something of a closed shop.

I think this parliament, as Senator Leyonhjelm has identified in this amendment, is by far a more appropriate place to hold the debate on the sunsetting of a bill with the gravity of this. Unwinding data retention provisions of a future parliament if one moved to do so, I think, this is a serious conversation that should be held in this parliament. It is certainly going to be, technically and procedurally, potentially quite difficult to do. The PJCIS is not at all the appropriate place to do so. Too frequently it has acted as a captive. I have seen any number of interviews that the present chair of the committee has conducted where he is asked for a rationale of why he has come to one view or another, and he just says, 'Because ASIO said so,' or 'Because the Federal Police want it.'

It is not the role of an oversight committee to simply act as some kind of relay service for demands of the intelligence community or the police. No matter how hard they work or how diligently they carry out their duties, it is the role of that committee principally and of this parliament in general to balance the demands of agencies seeking more powers to conduct their responsibilities and the expectations of the citizenry as a whole, so we do not end up living in a police state. Quite frankly, the PJCIS, in my view, has not always upheld that extraordinarily important responsibility, and I would argue that the shape this bill has arrived in tonight is precisely an example of how that committee has let us down.

Obviously it is a matter of record, but I do not believe this bill should pass into law at all. If we are going to be debating sunset provisions and the fact that at some stage we might expect that this thing is withdrawn from the statute books, the place for that debate to happen is this parliament. We will be supporting the amendment. (Time expired)