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

This is the account takeover warrants report for 2022-23 under the Crimes Act 1914. Cast your mind back to December 2020. Minister Dutton was sitting in Home Affairs and running a scare campaign that Australia's crime agencies desperately and urgently needed more powers to reach into the darkest recesses of the online world. These were powers that the parliament had to grant agencies like ASIO and the Australian Federal Police. They had to do it rapidly. They were needed to allow surveillance organisations to identify and disrupt wrongdoers. Part of that was a fresh power called a takeover warrant, which allowed the AFP or ASIO to get a warrant and literally take over the computer of a wrongdoer.

This power was desperately needed. The warrants were meant to be used in relation to any offence that has a maximum term of imprisonment of three years or more. Most people would suggest that that's a fairly low threshold for such invasive powers, but none of that troubled the then Morrison government, none of that troubled Minister Dutton and of course none of that troubled the then Labor opposition either. Many civil society groups were very critical of the rapid passage of those laws and said that they would put in place oppressive powers that were absolutely not needed. They said that the case had not been made to create these powers and that if they were going to be put in then there would have to be a whole lot of additional checks and balances on the use of them. That's because they had basically set up a secret procedure with secret approvals for secret powers.

Those groups, though, were told by the then Morrison government, cheered on by the Labor opposition, that these powers were critical; they were absolutely essential and we needed them now—and that we needed to rush them through in December in the dying days of 2020. Senator Steele-John probably remembers the debate.