Murray Watt (Queensland, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I rise to speak on the Parliamentary Joint Committee on Intelligence and Security Amendment Bill 2015. I note that this is not the first time that this bill has been debated in this place. It was restored to the Notice Paper after being introduced and debated in 2015. I want to acknowledge the contribution that other senators made to the debate of this bill in the last parliament. I also want to acknowledge the work of former senator John Faulkner in initiating the drafting of and consultation on this bill. Mr Faulkner's expertise and pursuit of the noble aims of this bill are well known. It is a pleasure and a privilege to speak on this bill, and in doing so I hope to help bring to fruition the task that former senator Faulkner set himself in bringing about these important reforms to the monitoring of the Australian intelligence community.

This bill seeks to give this parliament a stronger mechanism of oversight over Australia's intelligence and security agencies to ensure that, while their powers are necessarily increased to keep up with the demands of current security threats, their accountability to this parliament is not diminished. As former Senator Faulkner explained:

Parliament must strike a balance between our security imperatives and our liberties and freedoms. (The) Key to achieving this balance is strong and effective accountability. Enhanced powers demand enhanced safeguards. Public trust and confidence in our security and intelligence agencies can only be assured through strong and rigorous oversight and scrutiny.

Since the terror attacks that occurred on American soil on 11 September, 2001 our modern world has unfortunately lived in an age where terror attacks not only are real and possible but seem to becoming more frequent. I well remember 11 September 2001. As a young lawyer, I was working in Townsville in North Queensland at the time, working on an unfair dismissal case. We managed in the afternoon of 11 September to secure our client a very good result, and so I went to the pub and celebrated with some friends of mine who lived in Townsville at the time. The night got quite late, and I remember the TV screens at Molly Malones, where we were celebrating, had all of sudden flicked across to what seemed to be pretty crazy events of planes crashing into buildings in New York. It brought a very sober end to the night. I remember on the way home from that, talking to one of my friends and saying, 'That was pretty serious, wasn't it?' And we agreed it was. Of course, the world has gone on to see how serious these kinds of events have become ever since.

Since that time, countries like Australia, which value democracy and human rights, have watched in horror as terrorist incidents have unfolded around the world. These incidents have caused us to fear attacks on us, whether it be when we are travelling overseas or even potentially at home. One of the most unfortunate aspects of this, apart from the terrible loss of human life that occurs in these attacks, is that terrorist attacks have been leapt upon by some politicians both in Australia and overseas as reasons to become suspicious of particular communities and to attempt to divide us. That is extremely sad to see.

These terrorist threats are not far off foreign problems that stop beyond Australia's borders. Just this week, as other speakers have noted, we paused to remember the anniversary of the Bali bombings, where terrorists attacked crowded nightspots in Kuta Beach and 88 Australians lost their lives. Unfortunately, since 2001, as I say, these attacks have become more frequent, yet they are no less shocking or ruthless in their execution. Just this year we witnessed horrific attacks take place in Nice, in France, in Brussels, in Istanbul and among many other places around the world. Australians, when overseas in these sorts of places, do face real threats and, unfortunately, there have been similar incidents on Australian soil, albeit nowhere near as destructive as what we have seen overseas. So these threats are real, and it is the responsibility of this parliament to protect our country and to protect our people. Parliament is therefore tasked with enacting strong laws and ensuring that our intelligence and security organisations are given the necessary powers and resources that they need to ensure the security and safety of our citizens.

There really is no greater responsibility for our parliament to uphold and there really is nothing more precious to protect than our democracy and our human rights. But protecting our country and protecting our citizens to the utmost degree does create an uneasy balance between keeping our country secure and valuing the human rights and freedoms that our democracy guarantees. There is nothing more counter-productive that we could do in attempting to prevent terrorists who are trying to send a message about our way of life and there is nothing more destructive and nothing more counter-productive that we could do than to overreach in our response to those incidents in the powers that we give our intelligence agencies to monitor our people and any other restrictions that we place on Australian citizens in order to secure our safety. If all we do is overreach and introduce draconian measures that restrict our population's freedoms and human rights then, in a sense, we have achieved what the terrorists themselves are seeking to achieve. So we do need to be extremely careful whenever we are considering increasing security precautions. This is because, as well as protecting our lives, this parliament's task is to provide protection to citizens which allow them to exercise their civil rights and liberties. In doing so, this parliament must act as a check and balance against the state itself. Parliament must also ensure that the public have full trust and confidence in our intelligence and security organisations and, as a result, that they have full trust and confidence in each Australian's ability to participate fully in an open and free democracy. So we must find a way to strike that balance—the right balance between creating laws that provide protection to Australians from terrorist threats but do not stifle core freedoms to the point where people have no protection from the state or its intelligence agencies.

Today there are six intelligence agencies in the Australian intelligence community. These agencies are the keepers of strong powers, which include intelligence gathering and analysis. Four of these agencies undertake collection: ASIO, the Australian Security Intelligence Organisation, which is responsible to the Attorney-General; ASIS, the Australian Secret Intelligence Service, which collects foreign intelligence from human sources and is responsible to the Minister for Foreign Affairs; the ASD, the Australian Signals Directorate, formerly the DSD, which collects foreign signals intelligence, largely outside Australia. The ASD was given a legislative footing in 2001 and is responsible to the Minister for Defence. The AGO, the Australian Geospatial Organisation, collects geospatial intelligence from satellite imagery and other sources and is responsible to the Minister for Defence.

The other two agencies in the Australian intelligence community are analytical agencies. Firstly, the DIO, or the Defence Intelligence Organisation, which analyses the intelligence obtained by the Defence collection agencies and its overseas partners. And, secondly, the ONA, or the Office of National Assessments, which is established under its own act of parliament and is statutorily independent.

Australia is very fortunate to have agencies like these that work incredibly hard to meet their responsibilities professionally, thoroughly and with the utmost respect for our laws and security. I acknowledge the work and commitment of those agencies and note that this bill does not seek to diminish the powers or ability of those agencies to perform the important work they do.

In recent times the parliament has enacted laws that increase powers granted to these agencies, and this bill does not seek to curtail those powers. However, as former Senator Faulkner said: 'Enhanced powers demand enhanced safeguards.' Currently, a range of mechanisms are available to scrutinise the Australian intelligence community. At the heart of these arrangements are the three pillars of oversight: ministerial responsibility, the Parliamentary Joint Committee on Intelligence and Security and the Inspector-General of Intelligence and Security.

The Parliamentary Joint Committee on Intelligence and Security is enshrined in the Intelligence Services Act 2001. That committee has a very important role. Its functions include: (a) to review the administration and expenditure of ASIO, ASIS, AGO, DIO, ASD and ONA, including the annual financial statements of those agencies; (b) to review any matter in relation to those agencies referred to the committee by the responsible minister or a resolution of either house of the parliament—and also their functions; and (c) to report the committee's comments and recommendations to each house of the parliament and to the responsible minister.

There are a number of restrictions on the committee's ability to review the actual intelligence gathered and/or assessments made by the agencies. As my colleagues in this chamber have mentioned today, this committee has been incredibly successful and is a very good example of bipartisanship, because we know that the protection of national security is a job for all parliamentarians.

What does this bill seek to do? At a time when the community is looking to the government and to the parliament to ensure that intelligence and security agencies have the powers they need, it is very important that the membership and functions of that parliamentary joint committee enable it to provide effective oversight.

The purpose of this bill is to ensure that the adequacy and effectiveness of parliamentary oversight of intelligence and security agencies is in keeping with the development of the enhanced and additional powers we have afforded these agencies. The bill seeks to amend the Intelligence Services Act 2001, the Independent National Security Legislation Monitor Act 2010 and the Inspector-General of Intelligence and Security Act 1986 to change the membership, powers and functions of the Parliamentary Joint Committee on Intelligence and Security.

I wish to briefly go over the measures this bill seeks to introduce. The bill removes current constraints on the membership of the parliamentary joint committee to provide that, except for a minimum representation of one government member and a senator and one opposition member and senator, the balance of the 11-member parliamentary joint committee can be drawn from either chamber. Currently, the Intelligence Services Act 2001 mandates a composition of six members and five senators on a parliamentary joint committee. Removing the current constraints will provide parliament with greater flexibility in determining its membership of the joint committee, but the bill does not amend the requirement for the government to hold a majority.

This provision is important because it means that senators can be equally represented on this committee. There is no reason why the House of Representatives needs to be disproportionally represented on this committee. As I have said previously, national security is a job for all parliamentarians, not just members of the House of Representatives. Again, to clarify, the bill does not amend the requirement for the government to hold the majority, but it does mean there are fewer constraints placed on the choice of members for the committee based on the chamber in which they sit.

There are a number of other amendments that this bill provides, and, in the interest of time, I will only very briefly refer to them. The bill also provides for the parliamentary joint committee to conduct own-motion inquiries after consultation with the responsible minister. It may be that matters come to the attention of the joint committee that equally require examination that the minister may not have necessarily considered such a priority, so I think it is a good move to give the committee the power to conduct inquiries on its own motion.

The bill authorises the Independent National Security Legislation Monitor to provide the joint committee with a copy of any report on a matter referred to it by the committee. That is an important step to make sure that the joint committee stays informed of all developments on these matters. The bill requires the Inspector-General of Intelligence and Security to give the joint committee a copy of any report provided to the Prime Minister or a minister within three months.

The bill gives the joint committee the function of conducting pre-sunset reviews of legislation containing sunset provisions and adds the Independent National Security Legislation Monitor and the National Security Adviser to officers that are able to be consulted by the parliamentary joint committee. Again those two roles, the Independent National Security Legislation Monitor and the National Security Adviser, are obviously key to our intelligence community's response to developments, and it is important that the joint committee has the ability to consult those particular officers and inform its deliberations. These amendments are quite modest and process based, but they are very important.

In wrapping up, I just want to go back to some of the points that I made earlier in my speech. There is not one person in this parliament who disputes that one of our most important roles is to protect the safety of our people, but equally—and perhaps this reflects my background as a lawyer—I would place a very high premium on protecting the human rights and civil liberties of Australian citizens. Fortunately, in recent years we have not seen many examples of the abuse of these kinds of powers by our intelligence agencies, but it is important to make sure that our parliament does retain a bit of a check and balance on the actions of agencies that have such far-reaching and intrusive powers into our community. Perhaps it is a function of growing up as a child in Queensland in the Bjelke-Petersen era, when the Queensland government of the day had the Special Branch of the police force, which was essentially operating as a secret police service, spying on Queensland citizens, preparing files on them and conducting extremely intrusive investigations into Queensland citizens for no reason other than their political beliefs.

So it is vital that, if we are going to enhance the powers of our intelligence agencies in order to protect our safety, in parallel we have a responsibility to the Australian people to also enhance the powers of this parliament to oversight the actions of those intelligence communities. Australians—not just me but Australians generally, I think—place a very high premium on their freedoms and their human rights. They expect them to be protected, and it is incumbent upon us as members of parliament to make sure that those protections remain in place and are strengthened as the legislation which provides powers to our intelligence communities also expands. I think it is through that combination—the combination of providing our intelligence agencies with the powers that they need and also providing Australians with protections from the abuse of those kinds of powers—that we strike the right balance to protect Australians well into the future and make sure that all Australians remain safe from these terrible terrorist attacks that are becoming all too common right across the world.