Kristina Keneally (NSW, Australian Labor Party, Deputy Leader of the Opposition in the Senate) Share this | Hansard source

In respect of the Counter-Terrorism (Temporary Exclusion Orders) (Consequential Amendments) Bill 2019, I move amendment (1) on sheet 8712 standing in my name:

(1) Schedule 1, page 3 (after line 9), after item 1, insert:

1A At the end of Part 4

Add:

30A Certain reports and briefings

(1) If:

(a) a report by the Independent National Security Legislation Monitor referred to in subsection 29(1) or 30(1) relates to a review of the Counter-Terrorism (Temporary Exclusion Orders) Act 2019, or a report relating to that Act is otherwise prepared in the course of the Independent National Security Legislation Monitor carrying out the functions in subsection 6(1); and

(b) the Committee on Intelligence and Security requests, in writing given to the Independent National Security Legislation Monitor, a copy of the report;

the Independent National Security Legislation Monitor must give the Committee a copy of the report, or a copy of extracts from the report that deal with that Act.

(2) If the Committee on Intelligence and Security requests a briefing in relation to the report or extracts, the Independent National Security Legislation Monitor must give the Committee such a briefing.

This amendment, like the ones I just moved, seeks to give full implementation to the recommendations made by the Parliamentary Joint Committee on Intelligence and Security on the legislation currently before the House. As I have said several times in this debate—and I make the point again—the Parliamentary Joint Committee on Intelligence and Security is one that is dominated by Liberal members of this parliament. Labor has five members on that committee and the Liberal Party has six. A Liberal member chairs the committee.

That committee gave thorough consideration to the temporary exclusion orders legislation before the parliament, as requested by the government, and made 18 substantive recommendations. The government, for the first time since 2013, has chosen to reject in whole or in part 11 of those recommendations. In doing so, it has rejected four in whole and six in part and has ignored one entirely. We have already dealt with the one they've ignored entirely, because they are refusing to release the advice from the Solicitor-General that this legislation is constitutional. This amendment seeks to, as did the ones that we've just debated—I note the government voted against those amendments that we considered. In doing so, senators who are on the Parliamentary Joint Committee on Intelligence and Security, such as Senators Stoker, Fawcett and Abetz, saw their own colleagues vote against their own recommendations.

It may be the case that the Liberal chair of that committee, Mr Hastie, has come to a view personally that he's happy to support the government's position, but, as the chair of the committee, his responsibility would be to speak on behalf of the committee, and the committee has spoken. The committee put forward those 18 substantive recommendations, the 19th recommendation being that this bill pass the house subject to those recommendations being adopted by the government. Mr Hastie may have had a change of mind as a member of parliament, but he is also the chair of the committee. He can only speak for himself. He cannot speak for the committee. I make that point because the committee did not have the opportunity for the government's legislation that we are currently considering to come back to it, and that legislation is different. It's different to what the committee considered, it's different to what the committee has recommended and it's different to the United Kingdom's scheme that the government so frequently compares these laws to.

This amendment would seek to amend the Counter-Terrorism (Temporary Exclusion Orders) (Consequential Amendments) Bill 2019. It would seek to give effect to recommendation 16 of the Intelligence and Security Committee. This is an important one, because it goes to the notion of oversight and the ability of the committee to interrogate and understand how this legislation is being implemented. This is extraordinary legislation. The minister herself has acknowledged that. I acknowledge that. It is extraordinary legislation. It seeks to bar a citizen of the country from re-entering the country for a period of time. It requires that citizen to get a return permit from the government. When the return permit is applied for, the minister must grant it. That's something we haven't heard the government, and particularly the Minister for Home Affairs, reflect upon too often in public, but that is the fact. This bill is not so much about excluding people as it is about organising their safe return; having conditions in place to manage their safe return, to keep themselves safe and to stop them from radicalising others; and keeping Australians and the Australian community safe. That is what this bill really does.

These are extraordinary powers that we are giving to the minister. I recognise that we're in extraordinary circumstances, because foreign fighters are a new problem for countries like Australia. People have gone overseas, sometimes taking family members against their will—not to be fighters; just to be with them. Sometimes those family members get radicalised overseas. People who have gone over to be part of the so-called caliphate have sought to do Australia and Australians harm and have sought to do our allies harm. We have, as US Secretary of State, Mike Pompeo, says, a responsibility to deal with our own citizens. We do have, as, of all people, President Trump said in February this year on Twitter—he tweeted that the US expects their allies to be responsible for their people. President Trump made the point that the Americans did a great deal of work, in the military sense, in seeing ISIL stopped—although it hasn't gone away. President Trump has a view that the allies of the United States should take responsibility for their people and bring them home: to face justice, to face court processes or, indeed, to face deradicalisation programs; to work to see if we can integrate people back into the community, where that's appropriate to do so; or, where they have committed a crime or crimes, to put them on trial and to see their incarceration. These are extraordinary powers, these are extraordinary times and it is extraordinarily necessary that we take these steps.

What this recommendation from the committee would do is amend the Independent National Security Legislation Monitor Act 2010 to enable the National Security Legislation Monitor to provide a copy of its reports at the same time as those reports are provided to the Prime Minister. The committee also recommended that the monitor should be empowered to brief the committee on his or her findings. That's what it does. It simply says that the Independent National Security Legislation Monitor should be able to provide a copy of its reports on this legislation to the Parliamentary Joint Committee on Intelligence and Security at the same time those reports are provided to the Prime Minister and that the monitor should be empowered to brief the committee on his or her findings. This goes directly to the oversight of the use of these new powers to the parliament through the Parliamentary Joint Committee on Intelligence and Security.

One would have thought, given the work that the committee did considering these extraordinary new powers—making recommendations on a way to improve them, making recommendations to ensure that they work, that they keep Australians safe, that they are constitutionally valid—that, when we are taking the extraordinary step of barring a citizen from having a free right to enter their own country, when we have good reason to do that because of the circumstances I've just outlined and when we are organising and putting conditions on the manner in which they return and on how they will live in Australia, it would be appropriate that the parliamentary joint committee have that ability to have oversight.

This recommendation is actually consistent with recommendation 23, sub-recommendation d), of the 2017 National Intelligence Review, which recommended that the role of the intelligence committee be expanded to:

… to request a briefing from the Independent National Security Legislation Monitor (the Monitor), to ask the Monitor to provide the PJCIS with a report on matters referred by the PJCIS, and for the Monitor to provide the PJCIS with the outcome of the Monitor's inquiries into existing legislation at the same time as the Monitor provides such reports to the responsible Minister …

So this recommendation from the Parliamentary Joint Committee on Intelligence and Security, which is dominated by Liberal members, mirrors exactly the national intelligence review ordered by then Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull. This was an independent review of our national security laws and this is exactly the recommendation they made. A parliamentary joint committee where the Liberals have the majority, the government has the majority, has made the same recommendation to the government and here today the government, in its legislation before this parliament, is actually rejecting that recommendation.

When that 2017 national intelligence review was released publicly, then Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull said, as he stood next to the now Minister for Home Affairs, that the government had accepted the recommendations of the review. Well, in rejecting this recommendation 16, the government has now told the parliament that it is still considering the recommendations of the 2017 Independent Intelligence Review. So what has changed? What has changed since Prime Minister Turnbull said the government have accepted the recommendations and today the Minister for Home Affairs and the government in their response to this bill and these recommendations from the Parliamentary Joint Committee on Intelligence and Security now say they're just considering them? They haven't accepted them; they're just considering them now. What has changed? Well, we know the Prime Minister has changed. Perhaps that's it; I don't know. Again, if this matter had come back to the Parliamentary Joint Committee on Intelligence and Security—quite frankly, if the chair had done his job as chair and sought to bring the government's response back so we could examine it or we could question it—we could seek to understand why the government had made changes and we might be able to answer this.

But two years after the public release of the 2017 National Intelligence Review, it's time for the Minister for Home Affairs to do his job and actually implement this recommendation, and if he can't do that then he needs to explain what has changed since 2017. Why did the government say in 2017 that they would implement this recommendation? Why did the government members on the PJCIS in April of this year recommend that this be implemented? And why now is the Minister for Home Affairs taking a backward step? He's opposed to oversight?

We have extraordinary powers. Is he opposed to oversight? Does he fear parliamentary scrutiny? This is a committee his own government has the majority on. This is a committee that has extraordinary access to information. It wouldn't be the first time the committee has received confidential or secret information, but the committee should have this oversight. The parliament should have a body that it is confident is providing oversight.

But here we have it. In 2017, they accepted oversight. In April this year, the Liberal members—were they going rogue? Had they gone rogue? Had they not consulted with the government before they made these recommendations? I think that's an interesting question to contemplate. How do we get to a circumstance where six Liberal members of a committee sign their names to 18 recommendations that are now being rejected in whole or in part by their own government? Did these six Liberal members go rogue? Senator Stoker, Senator Fawcett and Senator Abetz: did they go rogue?

Senator Brockman interjecting—

Senator Brockman makes a good point—it's possible. Did Mr Hastie go rogue? I don't know. I don't know the answers to these questions. Did they get strongarmed by the minister? I don't know. But what I do know is the government is saying, in rejecting this recommendation, that it doesn't want the oversight of this extraordinary legislation.

I ask for the support of this chamber. Amendment (1) that I am moving here today would fully implement the sensible, the modest and the unanimously agreed 16th recommendation of the intelligence security committee, which simply seeks to give effect to the 2017 national intelligence review, which former Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull told us the coalition government had already adopted. I call on members opposite and the crossbench to support this amendment.