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

I had not even moved it! Gesundheit!

The TEMPORARY CHAIR: Senator Shoebridge, please continue.

by leave—I move Greens amendments (1) and (2) on sheet 2096 together:

(1) Schedule 1, item 128, page 24 (after line 5), after subsection 32AAA(1), insert:

(1A) However, subsection (1) only applies if it is not reasonably practicable for persons who:

(a) have suitable qualifications and experience; and

(b) are engaged under the Public Service Act 1999;

to assist in the performance of the Inspector-General's functions.

(2) Schedule 1, item 128, page 24 (after line 12), after subsection 32AAB(1), insert:

(1A) However, subsection (1) only applies if it is not reasonably practicable for persons who:

(a) have suitable qualifications and experience; and

(b) are engaged under the Public Service Act 1999;

to assist in the performance of the Inspector-General's functions.

These amendments are not to be sneezed at. These amendments, taken together, would provide important—and we say important for security reasons and for public administration reasons—restrictions on when IGIS can engage consulting services. We have seen one of the most unwholesome displays of avarice, conflict of interest and sheer greed from the consulting industry exposed in this parliament in the last six months. We have seen the scandalous behaviour of PwC breaching conflicts of interest. We've seen the gouging of KPMG, particularly in the defence sector, taking literally hundreds and hundreds of millions—the better part of $1.7 billion—of public defence funds and keeping it within its consulting business. I would suggest they were unscrupulously stripping funds out of the public sector wherever they can. Consultants can not only take the money in the first place—and we're talking billions of dollars—but consultant after consultant has used the information they're given in confidence, within the public sector, to squeeze other profits. In the case of PwC they shared it with their corporate clients to help them dodge tax. And we've seen it in relation to Deloitte, one of the favoured consultants used in the broader security apparatus by the Commonwealth government, to squeeze money—former Deloitte partners squeezing money for their business ventures. In particular we saw those leaked emails from Canberra consultant David Milo, sharing documents that he had obtained while working for Deloitte with the Australian military. He shared those with his clients, including sharing highly secure correspondence from the Vice Chief of the Defence Force about the ForceNet project in gross breach of security requirements and confidentiality requirements. This was potentially putting at peril the national security of Australia purely for narrow private profit, to get his next consultancy firm the contracts and the millions and millions of dollars of private and public money they thought they could squeeze by grossly abusing documents they'd obtained in confidence.

When it comes to the IGIS, it's hard to picture a body, the independent inspector of security services, which has a greater need to retain the integrity of its information—to retain the integrity of the documents it obtains from ASIO, AISIS or Defence—to retain the integrity of those documents in its systems and investigations. This bill and the act just provide for the standard consultancy provisions. The bill just says that whenever IGIS thinks they want to, they can just consult it out—to contract out and engage with consultants whenever they want to, with no limitations.

We're told by the opposition that they don't want to put limitations on what IGIS can do. Maybe they're comfortable with the behaviour of David Milo and Deloitte. Maybe they're comfortable with that. I will be surprised if they are but, if so, tell us! Maybe the government is comfortable with what PwC and Deloitte have done. But the Greens aren't. So we're proposing there be specific limitations on the appointment and use of consultants by IGIS. This is hardly radical. This simply says that IGIS can't engage consultants unless it's not reasonably practical for persons who have suitable qualifications and experience, and who are engaged in other public service actions, to do the work as public servants. Keep it in-house; keep it in the public service. Don't contract it out unless you bloody well need to! Surely we can agree on that?