Claire Chandler (Tasmania, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

It's a pleasure to rise tonight to speak on the Counter-Terrorism Legislation Amendment (High Risk Terrorist Offenders) Bill 2021. I have been in sitting in the chamber for some time now, listening to the debate on this bill and looking around the chamber. It's always nice to be in here on a night when we are debating legislation and we see senators from both sides of the chamber nodding along in agreement to each other's contributions. It's a testament to the hard work and bipartisan regard undertaken by the Parliamentary Joint Committee on Intelligence and Security. We've heard many considered contributions in here tonight on this bill. I listened along to Senators Molan, Fawcett, McLachlan and Scarr, and they all made very reflective and considered contributions that go to all of the complexities around dealing with these very significant national threats.

Senator Paterson, as well, as Chair of the Parliamentary Joint Committee on Intelligence and Security, went through some of the nuances around this legislation and outlined the work that the PJCIS undertook to ensure that this legislation does strike the right balance. Senator Scarr mentioned in his contribution the importance, or indeed the primacy, of government's role in protecting our nation against threats. That is an incredibly important thing that motivates many people to seek election to this place and something for all of us to consider in the back of our minds when we are passing legislation through these chambers.

As a member of the coalition government, I'm proud of everything this government has done, since I was first elected, in 2019, to keep Australians safe. Indeed previously, in my role as a committee member on the Senate Standing Committees on Legal and Constitutional Affairs, I had the opportunity to question the Australian Federal Police, ASIO, Home Affairs, the Attorney-General's Department and the like about the current security threat in our country, which this legislation attempts to deal with, and about what we can do to keep our community safe from those who seek to harm us in such horrendous ways. The bill that we are debating this evening is another part—another brick in the wall, so to speak—of us doing everything that we can to keep our community safe. This legislation, we know, is necessary to keep Australians safe, to keep our community safe.

We know there are people in this country who want to kill and injure innocent Australians in pursuit of their extremist agendas. We know this because many of them have been caught in the act of preparing to commit mass murder and violence. They have been found guilty by a court and sent to prison. We also know that many of these convicted terrorists have been given sentences that allow them to be released from prison after just a few years behind bars. We know that, in many of these cases, security services will consider these people to be still committed to their dangerous ideology and determined to use their release to continue to pursue violence and murder. Again, this is something that I have pursued with the AFP previously at Senate estimates.

It continues to amaze me that, as a society, we insist on giving second and third chances to the worst kinds of criminals who have committed or planned to commit the worst possible types of crimes against innocent Australians. We see it all the time with sex offenders and child abusers. These dangerous criminals are sentenced to a few short years in prison and then they're back in the community despite the fact many of the experts believe that such offenders will never be rehabilitated and will always be at risk of causing more harm.

Terrorism is another type of crime where it is clear-cut: if you've planned or participated in a terrorist act, you shouldn't be out on the streets—not today, not tomorrow, not next year. Most of the responsibility for ensuring that is the case rests with the courts. As a parliament, we can only do so much. That's why it's important that we do exercise the powers we have as lawmakers to keep the community safe from those who we know wish to do us harm. The bill that we're debating here this evening helps to achieve this by improving the ability of our courts to make extended supervision orders, ESOs, on a convicted high-risk terrorist offender and, under that ESO, to impose any conditions that it is satisfied are reasonably necessary for the purpose of protecting the community.

Sadly, we've seen examples around the world where known terror suspects and previously convicted terrorists have committed further atrocities when they've been released, and we know that the risk of terrorist acts remains present. Last year the UK parliament had to rush through legislation to end the absurd practice of automatically releasing terrorists halfway through their sentence, after one of those terrorists committed another heinous act following their release. There is little doubt that law enforcement and security agencies have serious concerns about the release of convicted terrorists who not so long ago conspired to murder innocent Australians. It has been reported that some retain active contact and influence with terrorist circles, including actively working to recruit other violent criminals to their terrorist ideology. This revelation demonstrates the problem with courts giving terrorists the benefit of the doubt at sentencing. There's every chance that they'll walk out of jail on the date by which the court hoped they'd be rehabilitated, having spent their time in jail continuing to hold and expound to others the same murderous ideology.

Our security services and our police forces do a fantastic job of tracking down terrorists and putting them behind bars. So why do we let them back onto the streets and tie up our law enforcement services tracking and monitoring the same terrorists that they've previously caught? The terrorists certainly don't deserve that kind of generous optimism, and the Australian public doesn't deserve to be put at risk. For the large proportion of criminals who are not seriously dangerous and whose crimes are of lesser magnitude, rehabilitation is, quite rightly, a significant priority of the justice system. For those criminals, that is an appropriate avenue that we should pursue. But to prioritise the hope that a terrorist would have learnt the error of their ways after a few years in prison over the public safety measure of having them detained and off the streets is absolute madness. Our sentencing system and, indeed, the process that we have for dealing with these violent offenders on release need to be able to deal with the potential that, at the end of the initial head sentence, there is still a serious community safety concern. That's what this bill that we're debating, the Counter-Terrorism Legislation Amendment (High Risk Terrorist Offenders) Bill 2020, is all about. The courts and the parliament must be putting community safety first and keeping these dangerous criminals off the streets and behind bars.

To go to the detail of the bill, part 1 of schedule 1 creates an extended supervision order scheme, the ESO scheme, for high-risk terrorist offenders in division 105A of the Criminal Code. A state or territory supreme court would be able to make an ESO in relation to a convicted high-risk terrorist offender if satisfied on the balance of probabilities that the offender poses an unacceptable risk of committing a serious terrorism offence if released into the community at the end of their sentence. Under an ESO, the court may impose any condition that it is satisfied is reasonably necessary, reasonably appropriate and adapted for the purpose of protecting the community from the unacceptable risk of the offender committing a serious terrorism offence. Again, this bill minimises some of the guesswork that might have to be undertaken once an offender's sentence has expired and instead creates a new opportunity to make that assessment to determine whether the individual concerned is still of significant risk to the community, and that is incredibly important.

Part 2 of schedule 1 would amend various pieces of legislation—the Crimes Act 1914, the Surveillance Devices Act 2004 and the Telecommunications (Interception and Access) Act 1979—to extend the existing surveillance and monitoring powers that were available for control orders to apply to ESOs, including search warrants and warrants for various types of electronic surveillance. Law enforcement agencies would be able to seek electronic surveillance warrants under the Surveillance Devices Act and the Telecommunications (Interception and Access) Act to inform the minister's decision on whether to apply for an ESO or a CDO. Part 2 of schedule 1 would also amend the National Security Information (Criminal and Civil Proceedings) Act 2004 to extend the court-only evidence provisions and the special advocate scheme that applies in control order proceedings to ESO proceedings. There are a number of further amendments to other important pieces of legislation in the remaining schedules of the bill, which, in the interests of time, I will leave to others to go into.

As I said, the government are committed to ensuring the safety and security of all Australians. In my opening remarks I noted that, as a member of the government, having commenced my term as a senator in 2019, I'm very proud of all the work that we've done in this space. We have seen recent terrorist attacks, and I mentioned the United Kingdom. But other colleagues have referenced ones far closer to home in their contributions—in New Zealand, where convicted terrorist offenders continue to pose a risk to the community at the end of their sentences. This bill will enhance the safety and security of every Australian by creating ESOs to ensure that those high-risk terrorist offenders can be appropriately managed in the community at the end of their custodial sentences.

As I've said, a Supreme Court will be able to impose an ESO for up to three years at a time if the court is satisfied, on the balance of probabilities and on the basis of admissible evidence, that the offender poses an unacceptable risk of committing a serious terrorism offence. The court will be able to impose any condition on any offender that it considers is proportionate to the risk that the offender poses. The bill also provides agencies with the necessary tools to monitor compliance with these orders and to protect sensitive national security information in ESO proceedings. We know that it is incredibly important that our law enforcement agencies have all the tools which they should have available to them to be able to monitor compliance. This is because that can be an incredibly complex and often incredibly costly exercise, so we should be doing everything we can to make that process easier for law enforcement.

The Parliamentary Joint Committee on Intelligence and Security has considered this bill and made recommendations. The government has accepted 10 of those in full, in part or in principle. Again, it has been so interesting to sit here in this chamber this evening, to listen to the debate on this incredibly important bill and to see the fruits of the PJCIS bipartisan process in reviewing this legislation and ensuring that it strikes that important balance between, as Senator Scarr said before me, ensuring that all of our citizens are equal under the law, that we're all afforded the rule of law and natural justice on the one hand, but, on the other, ensuring that our community is kept safe.

I think that this bill, the Counter-Terrorism Legislation Amendment (High Risk Terrorist Offenders) Bill 2021, will go part of the way to keeping Australians safe. I know that we as a government have already done so much to ensure that Australians are safe, and we'll continue to do so into the future. We have a firm commitment to the Australian people that we'll do whatever it takes to ensure the safety of all Australians. On that note, I commend this bill to the Senate.