Lisa Singh (Tasmania, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary to the Shadow Attorney General) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I move:

That the Senate take note of the answers given by the Attorney-General (Senator Brandis) to questions without notice asked by Senators Collins and Singh today relating to data retention and to section 18C of the Racial Discrimination Act 1975.

Senator Brandis has made it very clear today that it is orthodox cabinet process for the leader to override the Attorney-General on his signature policy and to leave it until right at the last minute to tell the Attorney-General he is doing so. We all know that Senator Brandis has staked his career and his 'freedom agenda' on this particular signature policy, so what did he find to say when he was confronted with this reality—that the Prime Minister had rolled him on his signature policy? On Sky News on 6 August, Senator Brandis said:

Well you know what this business is like … you win a few, you lose a few.

What has Senator Brandis won? In his almost 12 months in the role of Attorney-General for this country he has won nothing. On the other hand, what has he lost? He has lost his credibility, he has lost all respect and he has been completely rolled by the Prime Minister on a signature policy that he had staked his career as Attorney-General on. He lost all that on one of his first pieces of legislative reform, a favour that he wanted to do for his friends in the IPA and for his friend—or the Prime Minister's friend—Andrew Bolt.

One of the chief duties of a politician and of a legislator is to explain one's program and to persuade the public about its value in that constant battle of ideas. So how has the Attorney-General fared in this endeavour? What is his record of victory in that marketplace of ideas? Has he demonstrated the levels of competence in public life that are the basic requirement of the political trade and, indeed, that of an Attorney-General. Let us turn to that first signature policy, a key reform, which, in many ways, Senator Brandis very much staked his career on: the repeal and removal of protections against racist hate speech in section 18C of the Racial Discrimination Act.

For many people, this may not seem a worthy goal, but for Senator Brandis and his ideological gang, including the IPA, it certainly was. How did he proceed in the implementation of it? There is no doubt that, on that first question of explaining what he was doing to the Australian people, he had had some measure of success in the end. For Senator Brandis, the primary right that needed to be defended was, as he so clearly explained, the right for bigots to be bigots. After this statement, it became very clear what he intended. He had explained himself and his program; but, after their understanding of that explanation, the community issued a resounding rejection of it.

He had failed in that other important test—that of persuasion. He had completely failed it. There were some 5,000 submissions on his flawed consultation process and the majority of them were a complete and utter rejection of what Senator Brandis highlighted as his signature policy. Why? Because we know what Senator Brandis was trying to do in his freedom agenda: he was trying to allow the rights of bigots to have more precedence in this country than the rights of victims of racist hate speech. So he fell very fast and hard on that first hurdle—the hurdle of persuasion.

But then in the most recent foray of his political endeavours, he has not even been able to reach the second hurdle. Anybody who watched Senator Brandis attempt to explain metadata on Sky News might be tempted to conclude that he has never actually used the World Wide Web or been familiar with the difference between an IP address and a website name. We all know that Senator Brandis likes spending taxpayers' money on books and expensive bookshelves, so my advice to Senator Brandis is that maybe he should pick himself up a copy of the 'dummies guide to the internet', and then perhaps he will not need the communications minister to clean up his mess. Maybe he should recognise that his embarrassing performance in that regard and, indeed, his embarrassing performance in relation to racial hate speech were a rejection of his role as an Attorney-General. (Time expired)

Richard Colbeck (Tasmania, Liberal Party, Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister for Agriculture) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise to take note of the motion moved by Senator Singh. What the opposition have demonstrated with the presentation that Senator Singh just made is that they are prepared to just make it up as they go along. Senator Singh characterises the policy around 18C as Senator Brandis's signature policy. It was a policy that the government took to the last election. I think quite rightly and quite genuinely Senator Brandis put out a consultation paper to the community to allow community consultation and comment, yet now Senator Singh wants to complain that the government actually took notice of that consultation process. Senator Singh put statistics on the table about the reaction to it. I think a good government will take note of community consultation. It will take note of current circumstances that exist when proposing pieces of legislation.

Lisa Singh (Tasmania, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary to the Shadow Attorney General) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I thought it was about counter-terrorism laws.

Richard Colbeck (Tasmania, Liberal Party, Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister for Agriculture) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Yes, it is also about counter-terrorism laws. The government quite rightly made the decision that it did not want the issue of 18C to be a distraction to what is a very serious issue for this country with respect to dealing with the issue of counter-terrorism. I think it was a wise decision.

What a good government does is take note of the consultation process it might have publicly and also take note of the views that are held within its party room. It does not, as the previous government did over six years, run a chaotic top-down process where decisions were not taken as part of cabinet. We heard Senator Brandis say during question time that the decision with respect of 18C was made in cabinet and announced subsequent to the cabinet meeting, as it should have been.

I also know that members of the government consulted broadly amongst the party room. There are members of this government who have expressed publicly their concerns about the government's proposals on 18C. They were in close contact with their communities about the proposals of 18C. They utilised the very wise process that Senator Brandis put in place around the exposure draft to consult with their communities. They brought that feedback back to the government through the party room, through their direct consultations with Senator Brandis and, I am sure, through their direct consultation with the Prime Minister, his office and other members of the executive. That is a good, considered government process. When the collective wisdom of the cabinet came together to discuss the issue, they took all of those matters into account. I think that is quite a wise process. Why would you not do that? You have a strong view in the community. You have a range of views within the party room. The process is put out for public consultation. An exposure draft of the legislation is put into the community to talk about. At the end of the day, after gathering all of that information together, you make a decision based on the consideration of all of the circumstances that were in play at the time.

Despite those who might want to downplay the threat of terrorism in this country, it is a significant threat. Anyone who has a good knowledge and understanding of these issues is expressing that view right now. To take away a distraction to that, alongside the process of good and sound community consultation, only make sense, and the characterisation that the opposition has portrayed around this decision today quite clearly does not stack up. They imply that it is a signature policy of Senator Brandis, but it was a policy that the government took to the last election and we have made a wise decision on that policy in cabinet. (Time expired)

John Faulkner (NSW, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

) ( After such a long time struggling to become a cabinet minister, of course Senator Brandis must have been delighted to have been appointed as our Attorney-General. As all of us in this place know, Senator Brandis has an absolutely towering view of his own capacity and his own importance. He certainly convinced a lot of us of his potential, and he had only really been stymied by former Prime Minister Howard, who he had allegedly described as a lying rodent but defended himself by saying he only called him a rodent. When Senator Brandis was elevated to cabinet, many of us, myself included, thought he would make a pretty reasonable job of it. I said something very positive in The Sydney Morning Herald about him last July:

There is no doubt George is a capable and effective politician. He's one of the Liberals' best, but he does take himself very seriously at times.

I got the last bit right but I got the rest of it quite wrong —Senator Brandis has been a complete disappointment. He has made an absolutely, utterly, ham-fisted botch of being Attorney-General of Australia. For someone who is so full of himself, it must have been a truly terrible revelation for him to have come face to face with the fact that he is just not up to the job. He does not understand the detail of the legislation that he is responsible for. Take mandatory metadata retention. The Attorney-General does not even know what it is that his legislation would make ISPs retain. That is hardly a surprise, seeing as he does not seem to understand at all how the internet works. He said that what people were viewing on the internet would not be included but that the web address they communicated to would be. Of course it would have been better for the Attorney to consult with the communications minister, who knows something about the internet, but the communications minister had to learn about what the government was up to in The Daily Telegraph. This was excruciatingly humiliating for Senator Brandis, and that interview he did on Sky News was so bad, he was so out of his depth, that even members of the Labor Party told me they felt sorry for him. I did not share their view, but it was certainly extraordinary.

The U-turn on 18C reforms will always be an unforgettable legacy of this Attorney-General. An exposure draft on that was released without even checking with the cabinet—a disaster of a draft, made worse by Senator Brandis's public admission in this chamber that it was a licence for bigotry: 'People have the right to be bigots,' he said. Then, on 4 August, he was telling the public via Peter van Onselen that he still wanted to repeal section 18C of the Racial Discrimination Act, but on 5 August he was standing next to Tony Abbott, the Prime Minister, who dumped him and his proposal. But he claims today that that is orthodox cabinet process. I say very generously to Senator Brandis, 'George, you've really got to lift your game. You are embarrassing yourself, you are embarrassing your party.' It is a fact of life that Senator Brandis is nowhere near as good as he thinks he is, as Senator Williams knows. George Brandis should stop being a complete clown. That is what the public think about him. He should step up or step down. (Time expired)

John Williams (NSW, National Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

) ( Metadata and security is a very serious issue. As Senator Faulkner would be well aware, the government has put more than $600 million towards our security. Senator Lines is in the chamber and obviously, like a naughty student, she has been summoned to the principal's office for six of the best because of her comments yesterday. This is not a political game to be played—it is a very serious issue. There are some 100 Australians here in our nation assisting people overseas in areas like northern Iraq and Syria, where we see these inhumane and despicable actions being carried out and put on the internet for people to view. It is a serious issue and it is not a time to play politics. As you know, Mr Deputy President, the Australian Labor Party aligns with the government when it comes to the security of Australians. It is an issue first and foremost for anyone who sits in either of the chambers here in Canberra. It is quite amazing what those in ISIL are doing. We do not want that to grow. We do not want to have Australians—especially young Australians—being indoctrinated into participating in these disgraceful activities around the world. We need to keep our country safe.

When we talk about metadata and the retention of knowledge that helps our agencies like ASIO and the Federal Police, it takes me back to several years ago when five people were charged. Three were found guilty and locked up. Their goal was to shoot up those training in Holsworthy Army base. Thankfully, through the great work of our agents, that did not occur, and those culprits were charged, found guilty and locked up. What a terrible tragedy that would have been if something like that did occur. That is why it is important that the metadata be secured.

Metadata is information produced by the communication systems. When you are using, for example, mobile phones, the data notes whom you call, time of your discussion and how regularly you call that person. These details are great information for our agents to monitor and keep our nation safe. That is what this is all about. Metadata should be retained for the proposed two years. As David Irvine, the Director-General of ASIO, has said, 'Unless metadata storage practices are changed, law enforcement and counterterrorism efforts will be severely hampered.' We do not want to see those law enforcement and counterterrorism efforts severely hampered in this place. I do not think any one of us wants to see that. Our security agents have also been very clear that they do not want industry to be required to keep records about Australians' web-browsing. As part of our work to keep Australians safe from terrorism, consultations are starting with telecommunications providers about continuing to retain metadata. Our law enforcement agencies must have all the tools at their disposal to track down criminals and keep the community safe. That is what is most important here. It is not a political joke. It is not a political football to be kicked about. It is about keeping Australians safe and returning the world to peace.

I am alarmed when people like Senator Lines think we are using this as a deterrent from looking at budget questions. If that were the case, why isn't this a motion to take note of answers to budget questions? Why aren't there more questions about the budget? That is ironic in itself. Here we are, answering questions on metadata and security. It is a very serious issue.

As far as 18C goes, the government will not proceed with the proposed changes to the Racial Discrimination Act 1975 at a time when the threat to Australia from extremists is real and growing. That is most important We need to be a united country, to work together, to forward information—whatever people hear or see—to our agents and our police because we need to keep Australians safe. We need to do our utmost, working with our colleagues and our allies around the world, to see that we do our best to keep our nation safe.

Anne Urquhart (Tasmania, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Wasn't August a big month for Senator Brandis? First up, we had Senator Brandis finally falling on his sword with respect to his proposed 'rights to be bigots' reform to the Racial Discrimination Act. Then, minutes later, in the same press conference, we had the Prime Minister and Senator Brandis bumbling over the government's new mandatory data retention laws and its lack of a definition for metadata. The press conference was followed by one of the most excruciating interviews since Mike Willesee sliced John Hewson into hundreds of pieces of birthday cake over 20 years ago. That interview was on Dr Hewson's proposed 15 per cent GST. From the answers of the Leader of the Government in the Senate today, it appears the Liberal-National coalition is still as lost on the topic of the GST as it was under Dr Hewson. But I digress and return to the Brandis bungles.

Firstly, I want to take the opportunity to congratulate the thousands of Australians and hundreds of organisations who rose up to speak against these changes. The voices of the people have been heard loud and clear across the country and the world. This backdown, this broken election promise, is a win for tolerance in this country. It is a win for our multicultural Australian society. Thankfully, the proposed ill-conceived changes to section 18C of the Racial Discrimination Act now rest where they always truly belonged—on the scrap heap. The Attorney-General spent months here in the Senate stating that the government were about protecting the right of bigots. No-one has the right to be a bigot, Senator Brandis—not Andrew Bolt, not the racist who dropped anti-Semitic leaflets in the eastern suburbs of Sydney. It is still a concern that the Abbott government appears to have left this reform in the top drawer. It is not good enough. Even the proposal of these reforms and the bungled explanations from the Attorney-General signalled a green light to racism.

I also want to comment on the ongoing Brandis bungle on data retention. What is metadata? Despite the policy announcement and the huge fanfare, at present the government does not have a clear definition of metadata or 'megadata', as one confused journalist said in a recent interview—a slip of the tongue that is symptomatic of this government's absolute failure to explain anything that it is doing. For if the press cannot even get a simple phrase correct and if the government does not have a clear definition of that phrase, how does Senator Brandis expect the Australian people to understand what it all means? The really concerning thing in the data retention debate is that we are dealing with vitally important national security issues.

As a responsible party of government, the Labor Party has a natural inclination to support the government of the day in its ventures to keep Australia safe. However, if the government are incapable of structuring a coherent argument, how can you expect the Labor Party to work through these complex national security matters with them? It would not be responsible of the opposition, the Labor Party, to give the government a blank cheque on their reforms. These reforms are complex, but the Abbott government, through its Attorney-General, Senator Brandis, has been particularly confused in its explanations of these policies. It is important that the government understands the details of its policies. There are very serious matters at stake. It is also vital that the proposed reform to section 18C of the Racial Discrimination Act is not kept in the top drawer by the Liberal and National parties for another day.

We have the new senator from Queensland, Senator McGrath, who has said that he will cross the floor and vote for Senator Day's private senator's bill on these reforms. Senator McGrath is of course from Queensland, the home of outspoken Senator Macdonald and the Attorney-General, Senator Brandis. I hope Senator Brandis holds firm and does not introduce this reform, and I hope Senator Brandis holds firm and breaks his election commitment, because I believe this reform offends the Australian spirit. I believe this reform offends Australia's notion of a fair go for all. It the election commitment to reform the Racial Discrimination Act is so dispensable, if the definition of metadata is too hard to explain, then no-one should believe Senator Abetz when he says that the government has no intention of changing GST distribution.

Gavin Marshall (Victoria, Deputy-President) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The question is that the motion moved by Senator Singh be agreed to.

Question agreed to.