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

It is certainly fair to say, Senator Lambie, that the list is created by government employees because all the officers of ASIO are government employees and, I suppose, politicians in the sense that the Attorney-General as the designated minister has to declare an organisation to be a declared terrorist organisation, and he is a politician, and the declaration does not take effect until the Attorney-General does make such a declaration. And I do this from time to time on the advice of ASIO.

So they are certainly not declared by judges and judicial officers. That is not the function of judges. The function of judges is to resolve disputes—either civil disputes between parties or criminal prosecutions between the Crown and an accused person. The essence of the judicial function is to resolve disputes, and the kinds of decisions that judges and courts make are decisions about the just resolution of disputes. Decisions of this character are not about the resolution of a dispute between citizens; they are about whether or not certain statutory criteria are satisfied by the conduct of a particular organisation so that they should be assessed to be and then declared to be a terrorist organisation.