James Paterson (Victoria, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Cyber Security) Share this | Hansard source

I rise to make a contribution to debate on the Referendum (Machinery Provisions) Amendment Bill 2022. There are really two points I want to make, which I'll flag upfront. First is the importance of conducting the proposed changes to our Constitution via referendum in an utterly impartial, fair and transparent way that the Australian people can have confidence in. Second, which relates particularly to my shadow portfolio responsibilities, is the need to take appropriate steps to mitigate the very serious risk of foreign interference in the upcoming referendum.

On the first point, there are few more consequential things that we will vote for in this parliament and that the public will be asked to consider than changes to our Constitution. Elections in this country are of course significant. The choice of who governs his country—the policies they will implement, the majority they may or may not have in the parliament—is enormously significant. But if the public feel they've got that choice wrong there's always an opportunity to revisit it 2½ or three years later. By and large, our country is well governed and has a strongly supported democracy, and the change of power between the parties is done peacefully, without acrimony, and life goes on.

The consequences of getting an election wrong and electing a political party with a bad program can be quickly remedied. Changing the Constitution is much more fundamental than that, and this constitutional change proposed by the government is a very far-reaching potential change to the way in which we govern ourselves. The changes, if they're agreed to by the public, will have ramifications for years, if not decades and centuries to come. Long after we are all gone from this place, and long after it is forgotten what we did in terms of legislation we passed or policies we enacted, it's likely that this change to the Constitution, if agreed to, will remain in place and will have impacts on the way our country is governed that we here today can't yet anticipate.

Given the gravity of that change, and given the almost zero likelihood that the public would change their mind on that and reverse it, it is more important than in any other decision the public is asked to make that they do so within a framework which is utterly impartial, transparent, agreed upon and freed from controversy. It would be my hope that, regardless of whatever each of our positions ultimately are on this substantive question put to the people, we are able to put to them a system for making that decision, a framework for making that decision, which we all agree with, which we all have confidence in and which we can all say, with sincerity, there are no issues with. As it currently stands, as proposed by the government, I don't think it passes that test. Certainly, for at least a significant proportion of this chamber, we will not be able to go hand on heart to the Australian people and say that, as it stands, the process for making this decision is impartial, fair and untainted by any perceptions of bias or of aid for one case or the other.

It is a good thing that the government has made the concession that they have already, to restore the 'yes' or 'no' pamphlet, but it is a bit troubling that government speakers in this debate have framed this as a concession, like it is a magnanimous action which they didn't want to take but they're being forced to take through the negotiation process, when it should actually be viewed as putting forward the normal processes of a referendum and the normal policies that are in place to facilitate a referendum. There's nothing exceptional about continuing to provide a pamphlet outlining the 'yes' or 'no' cases. It was illustrative that so many disparate groups within the joint committee process inquiring into his bill recommended that this be restored after the government tried to remove it. But, as you've heard in this debate from other coalition speakers, we're not satisfied with this concession as it stands, and we do believe it is necessary to, at the very least—as has often been the case in referenda—restore official 'yes' and 'no' campaigns and also to fund those campaigns so that they can communicate with the public about their message and deliver a fair contest in this upcoming debate.

History is instructive here. The last time that the Labor Party in government successfully proposed a change to our Constitution was in 1946. That was also the last time that the Liberal Party supported a Labor government attempt to change the Constitution. Since then, on every occasion that the Labor Party has proposed a change to the Constitution, it has failed, and the coalition in opposition has opposed it. If the Labor Party wants to guarantee that this referendum is like all of those—in that it fails—then putting forward a bill for a process that is not fair and not impartial is one way to guarantee that that also happens.

History is also instructive when you think about the most recent previous attempt of the Labor Party to change the Constitution. It was in 2013 and it related to the recognition of local government in our Constitution. In that debate, the Labor Party, quite openly, in government, tried to put a thumb on the scales of that referendum to aid one side over the other. It's one thing for government ministers, members and senators to campaign in favour of a change to the Constitution—they're perfectly entitled to do so—but it's another thing entirely to set up a lopsided process that favours one side over the other. In the proposed local government referendum, which was abandoned because of a lack of bipartisan support and was never put to the people, the government proposed public funding in the 'yes' and 'no' cases of $10 million for the 'yes' case and $500,000 for the 'no' case. They thought that was justified, based on what they assessed to be the support in the community and in the parliament for that change, and they didn't want to give the 'no' case significant resources to push back and to contest that campaign. I think Australians saw that for what it was, and the parliament saw that for what it was, and it was one of the reasons why support for that referendum was withdrawn by the coalition and why it was never put to the people, because it would have failed.

It's instructive to remember who the relevant minister was who made that decision, because, of course, the minister for local government at the time was a Mr Albanese. It was he who devised, and publicly defended and articulated, the rationale for an unfair, biased and lopsided public funding model in that referendum. I hope that the government which he now leads—of which he is now the Prime Minister—is not trying to do the same with this referendum through less-transparent means. Of course, we know that the government plans to spend public money on a public education campaign. I hope that it will be rigorously impartial and fair, and won't side with one case or the other. But forgive me for wanting to see it before I'm assured of that.

Of course, the government has already awarded tax-deductible status to one side of the debate and not the other. I hope it's the case that the people associated with the 'no' campaign are given equal access to that tax deductibility when they're able to apply for it. I hope it's granted. But, even if it is granted, the 'yes' case has had the advantage of being able to raise tax-deductible funds over many months to facilitate their campaign. The 'no' case has not had that equal opportunity. So it does look to me like the government are again trying to put their thumb on the scale. I urge them to reconsider that, if their objective is for this to succeed and to occur without rancour or conjecture. I think there's a very high risk that if they continue to proceed with a lopsided and biased process that the public will react very strongly to that—as they should.

I'll turn to the second question, which is the question of foreign interference. This upcoming referendum campaign, as we know—and as the Attorney-General himself has said—does run the risk of foreign interference. Foreign interference probably won't be generated in this campaign because a foreign government has a particular interest in one side or the other prevailing. Instead, there are foreign governments and potential adversaries of Australia who seek to profit from division within our society and who seek to exacerbate existing tensions within our society as a means of undermining social cohesion and our national unity, and of doing harm to our democratic institutions in the eyes of the public. We have seen attempts to do this all around the world, both through cyberenabled and other means in recent years. The most recent case study that we have is from Canada, where leaked documents from the Canadian intelligence agency set out pretty clearly what the Chinese Communist Party's objectives were in intervening in previous Canadian elections.

What I thought was most interesting from those leaked documents was the assessment by the Canadian intelligence community that the outcome the Chinese government most preferred wasn't just the re-election of the Trudeau government but the re-election of the Trudeau government in minority. A comment was attributed to a Chinese government official as part of that intelligence assessment which said, 'We like it when parties are fighting between each other.' That's as if division, discord and disagreement are an objective in and of themselves for our potential adversaries. It's very important that we don't allow this referendum to become a vehicle for that, and there's a risk that it will become so unless we put in place appropriate measures to mitigate and guard against that threat. One of the three requests by the coalition to the government was, in particular, to re-establish and restore the official 'yes' and 'no' cases. That's very important in mitigating that threat.

I've been in discussions with a number of tech companies, including the major global platforms. While protecting the confidence of those conversations, and without attributing this to any one company in particular, the point was made to me that one thing they would rely on in their task in contemplating this upcoming referendum and dealing with the misinformation that will no doubt arise and the disinformation that may be placed deliberately and maliciously by foreign states as an attempt to divide us—to combat that and to help inform the public—was to be able to point to official authoritative sources of information which are reliable and which represent the opinions of leaders of the community in conducting these campaigns. It would assist them greatly if there were an official 'yes' case and an official 'no' case which they could point to. that's because, in the absence of that, they are put in the difficult position of having to make those decisions and draw those distinctions themselves, drawing themselves into a domestic political debate in which they have no particular interest and which they don't want to get involved in, quite appropriately. If we don't provide an official 'yes' or 'no' case which they can direct Australians who are searching for information to when disinformation surfaces in our system then they won't have that authoritative source to rely on and they'll have to do that by other means. That involves them making compromising and values based judgements about the merits of arguments being made in a domestic political context.

I think that the last thing any Australian should want is putting big tech companies headquartered in Silicon Valley in the position of deciding what the limits are of acceptable public debate in an Australian referendum, or what constitutes misinformation or disinformation, because those are inherently values based judgements. I think Australians will make the right decision, considering all the information presented to them, and we should facilitate their ability to do so by providing those official sources of information that they can rely on so they can easily weed out those sources of disinformation that might be provided to them.

I really do sincerely hope the government reconsiders this, because, as it is, this is on a path to being very rancorous, hotly disputed and open to foreign state disinformation and interference. None of us, regardless of our view on the substantive issue, on which we differ and on which good people of sincere values come to different conclusions, will be proud at the end of the process if what we have facilitated is a debate which descends in this way and undermines social cohesion or our national unity. I urge the government to reconsider the pathway they are on and to consider the reasonable requests that the coalition has put. It is not an outrageous request to say that there should be 'yes' and 'no' cases and that they should be appropriately funded. I hope they consider doing so.