Nick McKim (Tasmania, Australian Greens) Share this | Hansard source

I thank the opposition for bringing this Parliamentary Joint Committee on Intelligence and Security Amendment Bill 2015 on for debate. I want to start my contribution by just reflecting on the context—the global security environment within which we are having this discussion.

It is certainly true to say that at the moment we are facing on a global scale a very complex and rapidly-evolving security environment. It is one that brings with it specific and, to date in human history, unique challenges. That is why the Greens believe it is important that there is proper scrutiny through this parliament of Australia's security agencies. But, more importantly in that context, it is why we believe that we need a more strategic approach to law-making in this country around issues like intelligence gathering, data collection and the way that our security agencies operate.

I want to make the point up-front that in fact the Australian Greens do not believe that we are taking a strategic enough approach to making laws in this area. Of course, what we have seen in recent times—particularly in the last 15 years, since 2001-2002—is an ever-changing landscape of laws that the Australian people are told is there to protect us against some of the threats that I have just spoken about. We have seen a large volume of legislative change that has been made in the name of counterterrorism and national security, and I think it is beyond argument that the majority of those legislative changes have in fact eroded some fundamental civil rights and human rights that have existed in this country for many years. In many cases, these are civil and human rights that our ancestors fought for and in some cases tragically died to protect. We are now seeing some of these rights eroded away in the name of counterterrorism and national security. I think that is an unarguable statement.

Where discussion and, potentially, contention comes into this is: are those trade-offs worth making in terms of the advances that they bring protecting the Australian people? That is a discussion we want to place front and centre in this parliament and in the public conversation in this country. We urge both the coalition, currently in government, and the Labor Party, currently in opposition, to think very carefully about whether they would be prepared to support a more strategic approach around the way we are seeing our civil liberties eroded in the name of counterterrorism and national security.

I want to be clear that the Australian Greens genuinely believe it is time for a white-paper-style assessment—call it a blue paper if you like—of whether or not the legal changes that have occurred in the name of counterterrorism and national security have in fact made Australia safer, as we are told they were designed to do and, more specifically, whether that reduction in our civil liberties in this country has been worth any advance in national security and counterterrorism. As I said up-front, we are facing a very complex and rapidly-evolving security scenario around the world. The danger with taking a white paper approach is that it is a snapshot in time and then the world moves on, rendering all the work that had been done to generate a white paper less relevant than it otherwise would have been.

We believe that it is well within the competence of our policy makers and our security agencies to design a living white paper—one that is capable of evolving in very close to real time to respond to changes in the global security environment. We do not think this is a contentious idea. We see white papers in, for example, the Defence portfolio. We would pose the question: why don't we have a white paper process in the counterterrorism space and the national security space? There is nothing wrong with a strategic approach in this environment. We have seen white paper processes for tax, agriculture and defence. We have even seen a white paper for Northern Australia. But we have not for some time seen a white paper around national security in the context of counterterrorism.

Of course, a white paper process would involve the input of our security agencies, but it would also give a range of other experts from a number of other fields the chance to have a meaningful say. It should and could include an examination of the effectiveness of the dozens of legislative and administrative changes made since 2002. I will just place on the record that since that time we have seen new crimes created at least 12 times, legal powers have been extended at least seven times, police have been granted new powers at least 16 times and intelligence powers have been increased at least 12 times. In that period such laws have only been softened twice and new oversight created just once. This erosion of fundamental civil liberties in our country is unprecedented in Australia's peacetime history. We believe we owe it to our people, including the many Australians who have fought and at times died to protect these liberties, to make sure that this erosion is actually justified by an increase in the security of the Australian people.

I come now to this legislation. The bill seeks to amend a number of acts. Specifically, it seeks to amend the Intelligence Services Act 2001 by removing some of the current constraints on the membership of the Parliamentary Joint Committee on Intelligence and Security. It would change it from the current six members from the House of Representatives and five senators to one government member and one government senator and one opposition member and one opposition senator, with the balance of the committee drawn from either chamber. We have heard contributions from both the government and the opposition today. I want to make the point that this committee is very much a closed shop; it is historically made up of members from the government of the day and the opposition of the day.

We are facing a context now where one-quarter of Australians did not vote for the coalition or Labor in the recent election—and that is a continuation of a declining trend in the vote of the political duopoly in this country. So the Australian Greens have a view that it is time the membership of this committee provided for an opportunity for a senator who is not from the government and not from the opposition to join in the role that this committee plays in our parliamentary system and in our scrutiny system. So I flag now that in the committee stages of this bill we will be moving an amendment which, if passed, will provide for a senator who is not a government or opposition senator to become part of the membership of this committee.

We understand the responsibilities that this would entail, the responsibilities that this would place on whichever member of the crossbench it is. I include the Australian Greens in that context, as members of the crossbench. We understand it would place a heavy responsibility on whichever non-government and non-opposition senator were appointed to fill a position on this committee, but we do believe that it is important that there be at least one voice on this committee that does not reflect the political duopoly, because what we have seen in Australia, certainly in the last decade to decade and a half, is a strong bipartisanship on national security matters.

My view is that the reason we have strong bipartisanship on national security matters actually owes more to politics than it does to a robust examination of the legislation that underpins Australia's national security. Neither party when in opposition want to appear weak on national security, so they fall into zombie lockstep with whoever is in government at the time and develop a bipartisanship that means legislation which is continually brought into this place—and we are facing more on the Notice Paper at the moment—and which erodes some of our fundamental civil and human liberties in this country is not adequately scrutinised. We believe we need more scrutiny; we believe there needs to be more justification put before the Australian people for this continued erosion of their civil liberties in the name of counterterrorism and national security; and we believe a crossbench senator, as a member of the Joint Committee on Intelligence and Security, could play that role or be part of playing that role. This is a closed shop committee open only to members of the political duopoly in this country, and frankly the Australian people deserve better.

I would like to respond briefly to some comments that were made by the previous speaker, Senator Macdonald. He spoke about the Independent National Security Legislation Monitor and the role that he plays in scrutinising national security legislation. Well, it is a crucial role that the Independent National Security Legislation Monitor plays, but I do want to be clear that the Greens remain unconvinced that in fact the Independent National Security Legislation Monitor is adequately funded, and we certainly believe the government is making more and more of a habit of ignoring the recommendations that come from the Independent National Security Legislation Monitor. In fact, the recommendations do not, as I understand it, currently even receive a response from government. That is not good enough. The government should at least do the Independent National Security Legislation Monitor the courtesy of providing a response to his recommendations. The monitor does a great job in examining a wide suite of legislation. He does report to this parliament, but it is not good enough that the government does not provide a response to his recommendations, which ought to be tabled in both houses of this parliament.

We accept absolutely the crucial nature of the work that the Parliamentary Joint Committee on Intelligence and Security does. We believe absolutely that it is an appropriate body that has been established, and we support absolutely the measures contained in this bill—with the caveat around the membership of the committee that has been proposed by the Labor Party. We particularly support the part of this bill that provides for the Parliamentary Joint Committee on Intelligence and Security to conduct own-motion inquiries. That was spoken against by Senator Macdonald in the speech that he just made, and when this bill was previously debated, in the former parliament, it was spoken strongly against. But we do not accept the arguments that have been put up against this. We believe it is reasonable for this committee to conduct own-motion inquiries within the constraints that the act has established and we believe it would improve the scrutiny of our intelligence agencies for this parliament to be able, through this committee, to conduct own-motion inquiries. Of course, it is this parliament that has actually established our security agencies; they are creatures of this parliament. And this parliament has every right within the constraints that exist within the act to, through this committee, have own-motion inquiries conducted and reported back as appropriate.

As I said at the beginning of my contribution this morning, it is a complex area. It is a complex global environment—one that moves very rapidly and changes very quickly. This committee plays a crucial role in scrutinising the intelligence agencies that have been established by this parliament to make Australia as safe as it can possibly be, and we share that goal of making Australia as safe as it can reasonably be made. But we do believe that there has not been a strategic approach to this. We believe that the erosion of some fundamental civil and human liberties in this country has been done in a politically ad hoc manner rather than as a result of a carefully conceived strategy. We believe that owes much to the zombie lockstep in which both the coalition and Labor proceed in this space and we believe that having a senator who is not a member of either the government or the opposition on this committee would allow for a greater diversity of thought on this committee and a greater diversity of input to the processes of this committee.

In broad terms, we support this legislation because we think it will go some way towards improving the operations of the committee. However, as I said, we feel strongly enough that there should be a senator who is not from government or opposition on this committee and we will be seeking to amend this bill to provide for that, should that amendment be successful.

In conclusion, this is a challenging time for freedoms around the world. It is not only a challenging time because threats are arising; it is a challenging time because freedoms are being eroded in response to the threats that are arising. Both of those matters need to be considered strategically. They ought to be the subject of a white paper—a living, breathing white paper that can be adapted in response to the rapidly evolving global environment.

Also, we need to ensure that this committee is made up of members who have the capacity to bring some thoughts and some positions to this committee that, potentially at least—depending on who the appointed senator from the crossbench would be, should our amendment be successful—bring a more strategic approach that is outside the political lock step, which we so often see in the context of discussions and conversations in this parliament and in the public debate in Australia around responding to the national security threats to Australia that exist today.