Larissa Waters (Queensland, Australian Greens) Share this | Hansard source

I rise to speak on the National Security Legislation Amendment (Comprehensive Review and Other Measures No. 2) Bill 2023. I do so in order to call out the veil of secrecy that descends whenever the label of 'national security' is applied to anything. You just have to say that term 'national security' and you're not allowed to talk about it. You're certainly not allowed to disagree about fundamental issues. You're just expected to keep it quiet and tow the line.

National security laws and outcomes are far too important to be done as a gentlemen's agreement between the political duopoly. Yes, the public expects that we deal sensitively with security and intelligence matters, and they want us to deal with it with integrity and rigour, but they don't want the two big parties to play footsies over these crucial safety issues and these crucial spending issues. I highlight that we've got—is it $368 billion we're up to for nuclear submarines? What a waste of money. And yet you're not allowed to say that. It would be very unpatriotic to call out the obscene overspend in defence and national security matters when we have people starving and living in their cars and tents. For some reason we're all meant to be fine with wasting almost $370 billion on machines of war—and the machine of war is always hungry; it'll always have it's hand out for more money. Too much work in this space is done secretly and does not have the benefit of scrutiny from the media. It doesn't inform the community. It doesn't even get debated in parliament.

There are some good features of this bill, including adding crossbench members to the PJCIS and to make that membership slightly more representative, but there are some serious concerns in this bill that we will seek to amend, and my colleague Senator Shoebridge will do that shortly. It's pretty clear that the constitution of the PJCIS is not only unrepresentative, but it's potentially also unlawful according to the actual letter of the relevant intelligence act. So we're welcoming the expansion of the composition of the PJCIS to include a crossbencher on it, and I also note that another positive feature is to require an annual report on public interest disclosures received by and complaints made to the IGIS, as my colleague mentioned. That's a positive increase in public reporting and accountability. However, this bill also has a whole lot of very concerning provisions in it, including an expansion of the exclusions in the Spent Convictions Scheme, which, of course, enables ASIO to use, record and disclose spent convictions information. The inquiry of the Parliamentary Joint Committee on Intelligence and Security into this bill was right to be very concerned about those provisions. Yet, again, the bill is just meant to sail through without debate or consideration in this chamber, apparently.

The other extremely concerning facet of this bill is a further reduction in oversight and transparency of our national security agencies, who already are under a veil of secrecy, by ensuring that the Ombudsman no longer has jurisdiction over ASIS, the Australian Geospatial-Intelligence Organisation, the Australian Signals Directorate, the Office of National Intelligence and the Defence Intelligence Organisation. I don't know who thought that was a good idea. Perhaps it's because the Ombudsman has done really good work in revealing embarrassing government-of-the-day missteps in other areas. It is crucial that that oversight remain, and it is shameful that this bill proposes to remove the Ombudsman's jurisdiction over those agencies. We do not support those changes, and we'll be moving amendments to the bill to retain the Ombudsman's oversight and to remove what we believe is the inappropriate use of spent convictions.

It's pretty clear that there's no transparency in national security. There's currently no crossbencher on the PJCIS, and obviously this bill seeks to fix that small aspect. I might point out that, in the 17 years that the PJCIS have been colluding, they've only had one dissenting report—it's this little club of the two larger parties—and that report was about who gets to be in the club. It wasn't about any matters of substance or any genuine debate about national security or decent spend of public money and whether we're wasting that on weapons of war or whether we're feeding and housing people, as the Greens believe we should. There's no challenge to the military-industrial complex coming from either of the two large parties, and the community is horrified.

Speaking of the Department of Defence, perhaps they get to know. Given that they're in the club, maybe they get to know some of these things. I wonder if their consultants also get to know some of this information. We've just seen this morning, in the papers and in the press, that KPMG have been massively overcharging for their consultancy work. I had a quick look at the figures. KPMG have received about $1.8 billion in public money over the last 10 years in government contracts, mostly with Defence. I wonder how much their political donations have been in order to get that return. They've been about $1.9 million. That's $1.9 million in and $1.8 billion of public money out. That's a very good return on investment there. We've just had the KPMG whistleblowers say that, actually, they were overcharging. They were told to bill for internal work; they were billing Defence for it. What an absolute rort. This whole fiasco shows that we need more transparency in these areas, and we need a ban on people seeking government contracts from making political donations.

I've got a bill coming. If we had more funding for more drafters, then the crossbench and the Greens could have more bills sooner to fix up our flailing democracy. One of the bills that will be coming soon is a bill to say, 'If you're seeking government approval for a contract to perform either consultancy services or some other service, or if you're seeking approval for an environment proposal or some development that trashes the planet, you can't donate to political parties in the 12 months before or after you seek that approval or contract.' People out there think that it's legalised bribery. They think you can buy outcomes, and they think you can buy government contracts. They think that for a reason; look at the scoreboard. There were $1.9 million in KPMG political donations and $1.8 billion in contracts, including bloated overbilling, as has been revealed by some brave whistleblowers today.

We need more transparency in this space—not less. We need to clean up that slush fund of vested interests, contractors and people seeking government approval, stop them from being able to donate to whoever is in government or who might be after the next election and stop them buying outcomes. That's the kind of scrutiny and transparency that we should be debating. Instead, we're going to remove the ability of the Ombudsman to oversight some of these important national security agencies. Has the world gone mad? Anyway, here we are.

It seems like not a day goes by in this place where we don't see the big parties team up to avoid transparency. We got more Greens and crossbenchers elected because the public want to see decisions made in their interests—not in the interests of lobbyists or donors, or the vested interests of politicians, or of big donors. Trust in politicians and our democracy remains at an all-time low. We should be doing everything we can to make sure that parliament is more transparent. Part of that would be ending the exclusion of the crossbench from the Parliamentary Joint Committee on Intelligence and Security, PJCIS, and that's one positive thing this bill does.

I might also add: as PwC is to many other government agencies, so is KPMG to Defence. The lack of security this bill is emblematic of is leading to and fuelling a very concerning culture of overcharging, duplication, contracts for mates and worse. Money should not be able to buy government contracts, development approvals, political access or political influence, yet it's clear what years of donations have been getting for organisations like PwC and the rest of the big four, and KPMG with their influence over Defence. Stopping donations effectively buying lucrative government contracts or approvals will encourage decisions to be made based on merit and will help restore that all-important trust in our political system. That trust is diminished and has been low for many years and is not improving, and part of the reason for that is the veil of secrecy and the lack of transparency around big spending measures particularly in the Defence portfolio. It is horrific that this bill is proposing to make that secrecy shroud even heavier, to remove the jurisdiction of the Ombudsman from these crucial and very powerful agencies.

I very much look forward to the committee stage, where we'll be moving some important amendments to try and fix this, to try and shed some light on the military industrial complex which is enabled by the duopoly on these matters and by the secrecy of this little club of who gets to know—and you definitely can't disagree in that club or you might get the boot. I very much look forward to the debate in the committee stage.