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

We have had days of public scrutiny of the safeguard mechanism. But, when it comes to national security, the faux concerns of the coalition about public scrutiny all just disappear. They all get put into a dark, smoke filled room somewhere at the back of ASIO and it all just gets quietly put to bed. The major parties have got form on this, and no doubt we're going to see yet more efforts of secrecy involving AUKUS. We're likely to see the major parties coming together again to try and put defence expenditure and the review of the nuclear submarine program under another cloak of duopoly secrecy which is some sort of cooked up non-constitutional rubbish that they bring forward to this place. The so-called parties of government can cut their secret deals on nuclear submarines, on defence expenditure, on secret powers, on more powers to ASIO and more covert surveillance of Australians. You name a toxic increase in the surveillance state and the coalition and the government are on board, pushing it through, without public scrutiny—and that's what they're trying to do here. That's why we oppose the government's amendment.