Simon Birmingham (SA, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Foreign Affairs) Share this | Hansard source

The Defence Amendment (Safeguarding Australia's Military Secrets) Bill 2024 and the Defence Trade Controls Amendment Bill 2024 are important bills that are before the chamber. They are important in terms of what they individually stand for and also in terms of how they collectively form part of the way in which Australia addresses its responsibilities and commitments to our AUKUS partners.

I'm very proud to have been part of the government and to have played a role as finance minister when AUKUS was founded in 2021. It is an historical defence and security pact between the United States, the United Kingdom and Australia. This key partnership provided for Australia to take steps to acquire critical, word-leading defence capabilities—in particular, nuclear powered submarines as well as advanced defence and security technologies under the Pillar II stream of AUKUS. AUKUS is a multi-generational nation-building task. It is important to our national security; to ensuring that Australia's defence forces have the capabilities that equip them to operate with stealth and capacity across our region in defence of our nation and its interests; and to ensuring that, underpinning this, our defence industry, alongside our defence force, has the capability to supply and support our defence forces and our nation long into the future. Off of that, we can leverage the immense potential that can come from cooperation and the sharing of some of the world's most important and sensitive technologies, and Australian businesses can leverage other growth opportunities through that sharing of those technologies.

The coalition welcomes the fact that there has been bipartisan support for AUKUS and that, following the change of government in March of last year, the optimal pathway to acquiring nuclear powered submarines was announced, starting with the deployment of US and UK submarines to HMAS Stirling in 2027 as part of Submarine Rotational Force - West. We welcome the expectation of Australia acquiring its own Virginia class submarines from the US in the early 2030s and the important steps to build the new SSN AUKUS boats, which will be built in my home state of South Australia and come into operation during the 2040s. It is rare that we have the opportunity to talk about such long-term commitments in this place, and it's important that we recognise the continuity of commitment that will be necessary across governments to realise the full potential of AUKUS.

There has already been important legislation progressed to facilitate the implementation of AUKUS, including in naval nuclear energy regulation. These bills that the government seeks to have passage of—the Defence Amendment (Safeguarding Australia's Military Secrets) Bill 2024 and the Defence Trade Controls Amendment Bill 2024—enhance Australia's security and export framework to facilitate AUKUS and to demonstrate Australia's progress to both the United States and the United Kingdom and to show that we are acting in concert with them and that we are ensuring the regulatory frameworks for that sharing of the most sensitive of information and ensuring that that occurs in an environment of greater security and confidence.

To touch on the bills briefly themselves: firstly, the safeguarding Australia's military secrets bill amends the Defence Act 1903 to prevent former defence staff and Australian Defence Force members from working for and transferring sensitive information to foreign military, governments or government entities without authorisation from the Minister for Defence. It is safe to say that Australians were shocked when there were reports in the last couple of years that some former Defence Force members were providing training or potentially information to foreign governments and foreign militaries. We expect that those who have worn our uniform with pride and whose service we salute and rightly thank them for should equally carry with them the expectations of maintaining Australia's national interests and, in maintaining Australia's national interests, not sharing such knowledge or information with foreign governments—particularly not, of course, with any who could be potential adversaries in any way to Australia's national interest.

The SAMS bill ensures other Australian citizens or permanent residents would be prevented from providing training, techniques or procedures to foreign militaries, governments or government entities without authorisation. Where a person does undertake these activities without authorisation, the bill establishes significant penalties: a maximum penalty of up to 20 years of imprisonment, befitting the significance of potentially betraying your country and its security interests. We are committed to safeguarding our national military secrets and to working on a bipartisan basis with the government in terms of Australia's national security, and we support the passage of the SAMS bill to address these very rare but very serious instances or risks to our security and defence information acquired by individuals.

The second of these bills amends the Defence Trade Controls Act 2012. It seeks to strengthen Australia's defence exports framework and facilitate seamless transfer of technology as contemplated by the AUKUS agreement. Naturally, within this there are a couple of critical points. The first is that AUKUS requires that seamless transfer of technology and information. We are asking the United States to share its most sensitive defence technologies with Australia, only the second country with whom they ever will have shared technologies and information around their nuclear submarine capabilities. It is a big step, it is a big test of trust and it is important that we demonstrate the capacities to manage that information with great sensitivity.

Of course, we must also make sure that our defence industries who work with partners beyond the United States and the United Kingdom have confidence that they will be able to continue to do so wherever and whenever that is in the national interest for them to do so and where it can underpin their critical role in supporting a defence industrial capability in Australia that is essential for our future. This requires us to have not only a robust but also an administratively effective export-control regime to meet these different objectives. The United States and the United Kingdom have agreed to streamline the flow of defence trade and technology collaborations, including by establishing an export licence-free environment which will support industry, education and research sectors in all three nations. This is very significant. It's the huge potential upside of AUKUS and it goes beyond just the nuclear powered submarines and into the great realm of many pillar 2 opportunities that exist within AUKUS.

We welcome this, and it's critical that Australia fully embraces this potential to ensure that our industry sectors receive the best opportunities out of AUKUS, that they maximise those opportunities to feed into the supply chains of the US and the UK and seize opportunities way beyond those that would exist solely within Australia. To facilitate this, the Defence Trade Controls Amendment Bill will regulate the supply, through the Defence and Strategic Goods List, of military or dual-use technology to foreign persons within Australia. It will regulate the supply of certain Defence and Strategic Goods List military or dual-use goods and technology from a place outside of Australia to another place outside of Australia or to a foreign person. It will also regulate the provision of services in similar ways, and it will remove the requirement to obtain a permit for suppliers of certain goods and technology and the provision of certain services to those in the UK or the US.

The coalition wants to see swift passage of this bill and has always wanted to see swift passage of this bill to ensure that we can achieve the objectives under AUKUS. The government has indicated that, since the passing of the National Defence Authorisation Act in December of last year by the US Congress, the timetable for passing the Defence Trade Controls Amendment Bill needs to ensure that we meet a deadline by the end of this parliamentary sitting period. We have acknowledged that and the importance of Australia not falling behind in implementing AUKUS.

Legislation passed by the US Congress requires a certification from the US President to be satisfied of Australia's progress in implementing security and export frameworks as contemplated by these bills, and that should be done at 120-day intervals following the enactment of the legislation by the US Congress. The first certification date occurs between this week and the next sitting of our parliament, and 20 April 2024 is the first deadline, if you like, for that indication to be given by the US President. We don't wish to see any delay.

Importantly, though, this legislation establishes a regulatory framework through which each of the AUKUS partner jurisdictions then is contingent on ensuring their regulations are developed appropriately. We have, particularly through the work of the Senate Foreign Affairs Defence and Trade Committee, ensured that there is strong engagement with industry and have been listening carefully to industry about the implications of this bill. It is critical to us that the way in which defence operates and develops the regulations envisaged under this bill is sensitive to the needs of industry.

We acknowledge that our support for the passage of these bills has been provided on the basis of the following step: enhancing the co-design of regulations for the defence export framework with recommended industry working group participants representing Australian sovereign, small and medium enterprises. This was an issue particularly championed by my colleague Senator David Fawcett, and I acknowledge his close working relationship with many of those SMEs in our defence industry sector and his right and correct insistence that those SMEs have a key role in the design of the regulations to ensure that they are workable and administratively manageable for those businesses.

We also welcome the agreement from the government to a statutory review time frame of three years from commencement to evaluate the function of the updated defence export legislation and its framework. We welcome the commitment from the Deputy Prime Minister to establish a new statutory parliamentary joint committee on defence as soon as possible. This will be a critical undertaking for AUKUS to ensure that, as a country, we have an appropriate oversight mechanism that can do the job that is necessary in a way that also maintains the confidence that is necessary in the AUKUS venture.

The coalition has indicated our expectation that this be completed by the winter break, and we welcome the acknowledgement from the DPM's office. He has stated on several occasions that that draft joint committee on defence legislation will be available within weeks, and we look forward to seeing that and to its swift progress. We have been calling for this since the change of government to ensure that there is appropriate oversight in an appropriately classified and protected space that can get transparency and accountability right while also ensuring that we can deliver confidence for this critical venture.

It's through this framework that we seek to be satisfied, and with the levels of consultation that Defence now undertakes around the regulation and with stakeholders on the bill, and with the government's commitments to regulatory co-design and consultation going forward. We're also informed that the government will propose a number of amendments to the bill to address academic and defence industry concerns raised during the Senate committee inquiry and otherwise during the course of consultation on these provisions. We, again, welcome that and acknowledge the bipartisan spirit with which the opposition and the government have been able to work through these important issues to ensure that concerns can be addressed in the legislation, as well as through the effective drafting of the regulations.

These are important mechanisms to ensure that a critical piece of our national security architecture progresses and is delivered upon. It requires the parties of government to act maturely and to work together, particularly in the face of the type of destructive and obstinate approach that we will no doubt hear from some on the crossbench shortly, who appear to be committed to a lengthy filibuster of these bills rather than to the prioritisation of our national defence and security interests, which is certainly what the opposition is doing through our constructive approach with the government.