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

Thank you, Minister. I appreciate your willingness to engage with that, and the response that you've placed on the record. I do appreciate that genuinely. Because we're on sabotage, I'm going to go back to the matter I was discussing before. I appreciate what you've just said about questions being asked on numerous occasions. I ask you to bear with me this time, because I am going to go back to an issue that I was talking about before. I'm going to try to really clearly step out my concerns. I hope that you're able to respond to them in the genuine way that I'm putting them, notwithstanding the fact that I've already raised similar matters before.

I want to take your attention to section 82.6, offence of sabotage reckless as to national security. That's a reasonably easy provision to read and understand. I'll step you through this. I'm going back to the hypothetical situation where a person is blockading a port that's being used for the purposes of live sheep export. The first requirement, 82.6(1)(a), is that the person engages in conduct—and, clearly, blockading a port is conduct. Then we go to 82.6(1)(b):

(b) the conduct results in damage to public infrastructure …

First, can you confirm that damage to public infrastructure, as defined, includes preventing access? Second, can you confirm that public infrastructure can include privately owned infrastructure that is being used to deliver a service? Third, can you confirm that even a privately owned loading facility would be caught within the definition of public infrastructure?