David Shoebridge (NSW, Australian Greens) Share this | Hansard source

Thankfully, the Attorney has gone well beyond the recommendation that came from the joint committee already, in amendments. But even with those amendments, which I accept were a step forward for the protection of journalists, all of these decisions will be made ex parte. Warrants will be issued, they'll be made often within chambers in the absence of any submissions from a journalist or any representations from a journalist about why warrants should not be issued.

The Greens firmly believe that in this space the interests of justice are best served by allowing the media themselves to make the arguments in court about why their sources, their work and their function should be protected—if it's appropriate—from the reach of the NACC. As I said before, we don't want to cruel journalism as we go through and create another anticorruption body, because up to now, and hopefully going forward, journalism has been one of the critical anticorruption measures.

Question negatived.

by leave—I move amendments (7) and (8) on sheet 1714 together:

(7) Page 147 (after line 12), after clause 176, insert:

176A Committee may request draft estimates for NACC

(1) The Committee may request the Commissioner to submit to the Committee draft estimates for the NACC for a financial year before the annual Commonwealth budget for that financial year.

(2) The Commissioner must comply with the request in time to allow the Committee to consider the draft estimates and make recommendations on them before the budget.

(8) Clause 177, page 148 (after line 18), after paragraph (1)(f), insert:

(fa) to consider draft estimates for the NACC submitted under section 176A;

(fb) to make recommendations to both House of Parliament, and to the Attorney-General, on draft estimates referred to in paragraph (fa);

Taken together, these amendments will expressly empower the oversight committee to request draft estimates—the draft budget, effectively—for the National Anti-Corruption Commission. They will then require the NACC to provide those draft estimates to the committee and then allow the committee expressly to make recommendations to both houses of parliament and to the Attorney-General on those draft estimates. In other words, if there's not enough money in the kitty for the NACC, if there's not enough money being provided for them to do their job, then the committee can recommend what the level of funding should be during the budget process.

As I said before, and I won't repeat the submissions we made about how this already works for the National Audit Office, these amendments seek to draw from that experience and the longstanding provisions for the National Audit Office. It simply repeats those workable, functioning provisions for the National Audit Office for the National Anti-Corruption Commission. For those reasons, we commend them to the committee.