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

I rise on behalf of the Greens to speak to the National Security Legislation Amendment (Comprehensive Review and Other Measures No. 2) Bill 2023. This bill has both positives and negatives. There are elements of the bill that take oversight of national security agencies forward, and there are elements of the bill that take it backwards. The bill does a number of things, but I'd say at the outset that national security laws and outcomes should not be part of a quiet gentlemen's club deal between what has been described in the earlier contribution today as 'parties of government'. I've had a look at the Constitution. 'Parties of government' doesn't feature. It's a made up club. The concept of this political duopoly having absolute hegemony, regardless of who the Australian people elected into this parliament, is deeply undemocratic and has no founding in our Constitution or, indeed, in the theory of Westminster government—absolutely none. It's a statement that the parliament as elected by the people shouldn't have the power the people have granted it. It's a statement that, outside of the formal structures of parliament, there should be a quiet side deal between what might be described as parties of government but what other people might call 'the war parties'. They can have their own separate private arrangement regardless of what the Constitution or the result at a federal election provides.

It is interesting to hear it put in such bold terms by the opposition. The intellectual underpinning of it seems to be that they're comfortable with each other. They know the members of the club, and they are comfortable with each other—and that that comfortable arrangement somehow benefits Australia's national security interest. I would suggest any review of defence expenditure, defence outcomes or procurement outcomes over the last two decades would suggest that that comfortable club has not been working very well. We spent $5 billion plus on a series of iterations about submarines that the club told us were a great idea. It was uncritically supported. That club came together and said, 'We desperately need to get some French submarines, and they're the only submarines that will possibly keep us safe.' They agreed. There was a series of unanimous reports from the committee. We ended up spending more than $5 billion and wasting a decade, and how many subs did we get for that? None. We now are facing the cost of billions more retrofitting the Collins class submarines because of a wasted decade from the club.

It's the same club that has allowed the Department of Defence to breach procurement rules, to breach legal requirements and to enter into what will be now a $45 billion contract—it was originally going to be a $30 billion contract—for Hunter class antisubmarine vessels that, at every time, key parts of the Department of Defence and the defence establishment said were an extreme risk of not being fit for purpose. That's what the club has produced. How many of those have we got in the water? None. Why? That's because, at each point, if you'd critically listened and analysed the evidence, you would have realised that key people in the Department of Defence who were silenced by the current and former secretary had said this project was an extreme risk, that it won't get in the water, that it may not do what we think, that it is untried and untested and that we shouldn't be dropping $30 billion to $45 billion on an untested, experimental design that we probably can't build. What did the club do? The club asked no hard questions. It didn't query the secretary—current or former—about it. It signed off on it. How many of those do we have in the water? We have the exact same number of Hunter class frigates in the water as we do French submarines in the water.

This club has had a discussion about recruitment in the ADF for the last ten years. How has that gone—the uncritical discussion about recruitment and the signing off on the ADF's recruitment plans? For the last decade they've been saying they're going to grow the ADF by 30 or 35 per cent. There are less people in the ADF today than there were a decade ago.

How's the club going? This is the club that says there is an urgent security risk to the country and that our window of threat has moved from 10 years to five years or perhaps even less. What is the primary solution that the club has come up with to that urgent, imminent threat? They think that they might—subject to the US Congress, which doesn't seem to be keen on it—maybe get a second-hand US nuclear sub and prop it into the water at 2030. Fingers crossed! And that is a maybe—if the US Senate agrees to it, and at the moment that's looking pretty wobbly. So, according to their rhetoric, we have an imminent threat, and the club's response is to put one nuclear submarine in the water in 2030. How does that work? That only works if you have uncritical examination of the theory about fear and the theory about imminent threat, and then the irrational responses—the counterproductive responses and the extraordinarily wasteful responses—that we get from the club. There is probably a reason that 'parties of government' is not found in the Constitution; it's because it does not work. It's an undemocratic, uncritical club that, as the opposition said, never produces a dissenting voice. Every report, bar one that they can think of, has been unanimous. That is not a sign of a functioning, robust democracy; it's a worrying sign of a dysfunctional, uncritical club that is making Australia no safer.

National security laws and outcomes should not be done as a gentleman's agreement and should not be part of a quiet, smoke filled club; they should be the subject of robust consideration. Too much work in this space is done secretly. It does not benefit from the scrutiny of the media and it does not benefit from the scrutiny of the parliament, and it is absolutely kept from the people of Australia.

Some positive measures in this bill, though, do take a step forward. They remove the ability of the Attorney-General to delegate powers and, particularly in relation to the ASIO Act, restrict the ability of the Attorney-General to delegate those powers to officials within the department. This bill also aims to amend the Intelligence Services Act to provide that the PJCIS has an expanded membership of 13 members. I think what deeply troubles the opposition is that, with the expansion, there is a threat that there might be a member of the crossbench—almost certainly a member of the crossbench from the other place, but there might be a member of the crossbench—