Lidia Thorpe (Victoria, Independent) Share this | Hansard source

I rise to move the second reading amendment standing in my name to the Crimes and Other Legislation Amendment (Omnibus No. 1) Bill 2024. I want to take this opportunity to remind the Senate that there is a committee in this building called the Parliamentary Joint Committee on Human Rights. This committee, which I am a member of, does the job of scrutinising legislation and regulations that come through this place and checks for human rights compatibility. It is a committee whose work you should all be paying far more attention to, considering it is your individual responsibility to your constituents to represent their rights. This includes their inalienable human rights. This country has agreed to be bound by these obligations, and that is what you all committed to upholding when you became members of parliament.

Unfortunately, we know that human rights are something the colony of so-called Australia has little respect for, no matter who is in government. The culture in this place is one of impunity for human rights violations, with human rights being, at best, selectively applied, depending on political whims. Respecting human rights does not just mean simply pointing at some words on a piece of paper which you choose to ignore, explain away or break with at any time. It is a practice that needs to be applied in our every action. From where we are now, it's about a significant shift in culture.

The government and the Attorney-General consider this bill, which proposes to expand the powers to search, seize and freeze digital assets like cryptocurrency, compatible with human rights. This is strange, considering the human rights committee brought to the attention of the Senate the fact that the legislation being amended was never scrutinised for human rights compliance in the first place. This includes the following: the Proceeds of Crime Act, the Crimes Act, the Telecommunications Act. When questioned by the human rights committee on the human rights compatibility of the expansion of the rights contained in this bill, the Attorney-General's answer was, 'Well, we already have this power, so what is the problem in expanding it to another area?' and, 'This is a necessary move to stop criminals.' This raises the fundamental question: how can we justify expanding powers under laws that may already violate basic human rights?

Most people in this country are probably not aware of the full extent of the hugely expansive powers police have across the country in the name of our safety. One of the key issues is the right to privacy. Whistleblower and antisurveillance advocate Edward Snowden stated:

Arguing that you don't care about the right to privacy because you have nothing to hide is no different than saying you don't care about free speech because you have nothing to say.

Under this bill, law enforcement agencies could search for and seize digital assets remotely, meaning cops could search through a person's computer or smartphone even if the device belongs to someone else. That means the police can access your smartphone because it was once used by someone that they are investigating, even if you had no involvement.

This bill also lowers the threshold for seizing digital assets. Currently, a cop must reasonably believe that the property they're seizing is linked to a crime. With the changes in this bill, the need to only 'reasonably suspect it' is the difference between belief and suspicion, but it's huge in legal terms of safeguarding peoples' rights. Suspecting something doesn't require much proof and could lead to serious overreach and unnecessary seizure of personal property, which could have devastating consequences, especially for innocent individuals.

Let's not forget the Proceeds of Crimes Act—which I think the colony should be criminalised for because you are accepting the proceeds of crime as it's stolen land and you benefit from the proceeds of stolen land. But that's another speech for another time. In relation to this bill, this Proceeds of Crime Act has provisions that allow for the freezing or confiscation of assets even if the person is acquitted of a crime. Think about that. You could be cleared of wrongdoing in a court yet still lose your property. This flies in the face of the right to a fair trial, another fundamental human right.

Additionally, there is a need to scrutinise the powers being granted to integrity agencies under this bill. It expands their ability to receive and use intercepted communications for oversight purposes. While this may sound good on the surface, there's a risk of privacy breaches when agencies gain increased access to personal communications without clear, strong safeguards. Are we confident these measures are proportionate to the task of ensuring integrity, or are we simply broadening the scope for surveillance without adequate checks? Are we giving in to a path to Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four? This government would do well to get its priorities in order and act in the best interests of the people as first priority.

Why are we seeing constant further expansion of policing and surveillance instead of bills and actions that implement the recommendation of the Royal Commission into Aboriginal Deaths in Custody? Why aren't we seeing a national effort to measure all our existing legislation against minimum human rights standards and seeking ways to facilitate the rights of communities as self-determined by them? These are rights all of you are obliged to uphold in each of your offices and portfolios, and you must do so as a priority.

The bottom line is that, before we expand any of these powers through any legislation, we must first ensure the laws they build on are fundamentally sound from a human rights perspective. Human rights are not a joke. Human rights are something we all should have in this country, and this parliament and this government should not play with people's basic human rights. This means conducting a full foundational human rights assessment of the Crimes Act, the Proceeds of Crime Act and the Telecommunications (Interception and Access) Act.

What's the point of having a committee in this place—taxpayers' money—where we sit around, talk about human rights and only get given certain legislation that the government decide that we can look at? We go through it with expertise from human rights lawyers around that table and we identify breaches of human rights in the legislation that comes before us. Then we write a report. Then we send it to the government, and the government just come up with all the reasons why they want to continue to breach human rights. Talk about a waste of time. Talk about a waste of taxpayers' money. Talk about denying basic human rights for every person in this country. It's shameful. Why have committees for the sake of committees? It's got to do something, right? Surely. Anyway, maybe I'm just in the wrong place; I don't know. But I'm not going anywhere, so you will have to put up with it!

Until this is done, it is reckless to move forward with these bills that haven't been scrutinised by the human rights committee. Expanding powers in areas that continue to breach human rights is a breach of human rights. Giving more powers to the cops to go through peoples' phones, giving more powers to the cops to take peoples' assets—it's disgusting. What are you saying? Who runs this country, the cops or the government? There are serious systemic problems within the police force. We know that. They target innocent people too. So, unless those human rights issues are dealt with, we cannot pass this bill.

Stop the genocide.