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

I'll take that interjection. You know when someone is concerned, when you've hit a sore nerve, in this place, because the volume from the Labor benches arcs up. We are seeing again the zombie policy of the ALP and the LNP as they get together in lock step and erode fundamental rights and freedoms that they, particularly the Australian Labor Party, used to stand for in this place many years ago. I reckon Doc Evatt would be rolling in his grave at the moment at the way his party is conducting itself in this place.

On the legislation that is currently before us, it's probably worth pointing out that ASIS managed to illegally bug the Timor-Leste government in order to defraud Timor-Leste out of hundreds of millions of dollars of revenue from the Timor oil and gas fields that were rightly Timor-Leste's. It was defrauded out of those revenues—unlawfully—by the Australian government through ASIS's bugging of the Timor-Leste government deliberations on that matter. ASIS managed to do that quite successfully without an increase in their powers relating to how and in what circumstances they can use their weapons. That was one of the most shameful acts of any intelligence agency in our country's history—ripping off one of our impoverished neighbours of many hundreds of millions of dollars, at a minimum, that that country could have used to help lift its people out of poverty and provide essential medical and educational services to its people. That money was effectively stolen by the Commonwealth government, because they unlawfully bugged the cabinet deliberations of Timor-Leste and used the information they gathered through that unlawful bugging to, effectively, steal money from Timor-Leste. It is a shameful and highly embarrassing chapter in our country's history, and one which will continue to be spoken about in this place as the shameful trial of Mr Bernard Collaery and Witness K continues in the ACT legal system. I, for one, and I know colleagues Senator Patrick, Senator Storer and Mr Wilkie from the other place will continue to keep as close an eye as possible and continue to speak about it in this place, because that prosecution never should have been authorised by the Attorney-General in the first place.

So, when we hear assurances that additional powers given to our intelligence agencies will not be used in unintended ways, which is an assurance the government is trying to give us with regard to this legislation, I want to refer people back to metadata laws, again shamefully supported by the ALP and the LNP in their zombie policy lockstep and their slow sleepwalking into authoritarianism and a police state in this country. When those metadata laws were put before this parliament, the entire debate was framed by both of the major parties in this place as being about counterterrorism and national security. I invite the people who made those claims to go have a look at various reports from various agencies which actually disclose how access to metadata has occurred and why access to metadata has occurred. I refer them to the case of a local council in Queensland who accessed somebody's metadata in an attempt to find out whether they had an unregistered pet. That's the kind of mission creep that we're dealing with here, and history is replete with examples of laws being passed on a particular basis and then government authorities or agencies using those laws for something that was not contemplated by the policymakers at the time or at least not admitted to being contemplated by the policymakers at the time.

Again, it is mission creep. For readers of history, you should know that, when you give extra powers to intelligence agencies and allow those powers to be utilised by other government authorities, what we will see is mission creep and those powers being used for purposes that were not contemplated at the time that the powers were granted by this parliament. So we have very little faith when we hear assurances that additional powers will not be used in unintended ways, and that is the case also with this legislation.