Rex Patrick (SA, Centre Alliance) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

National security, the protection of our people, our sovereignty, and our democratic system of government, must always be a top priority for government and for the parliament. Unfortunately, however, political figures are often tempted to twist national security for political advantage. Ambitious bureaucrats can also exploit security to build empires, with little concern for the dangers an excessive concentration of state power may pose to democratic institutions.

Last week the Minister for Home Affairs, Peter Dutton, cynically sought to exploit a tragic knife attack by an alleged extremist and the arrest of three other terrorist suspects to try to bully this parliament into passing his controversial encryption bill before Christmas without full scrutiny and debate. The minister is absent from the parliament this week owing to an injury, but that hasn't stopped him from renewing his demands that parliament pass this legislation in this sitting fortnight, even though the Parliamentary Joint Committee on Intelligence and Security, the PJCIS, is yet to complete scrutiny of the bill.

Encryption is undoubtedly a significant and growing problem for our intelligence and law enforcement agencies. However, very serious concerns have also been raised by IT companies, and security and privacy experts, that Mr Dutton's bill will effectively open back doors that may systematically compromise internet security, including the services used by Australians every day. These concerns cannot be swept under the carpet. And I acknowledge that the security agencies may differ on that perspective. Moreover, if the encryption legislation really is an urgent priority for the home affairs minister, as he claims, he would have introduced this bill into the parliament months earlier. This isn't the first time that the minister has used exaggerated rhetoric and dire warnings to push a political position. Not so long ago, he claimed that Melburnians were too scared to go out to restaurants at night because of African youths street gangs.

National security issues require careful and mature consideration and a measure of circumspection, not politically driven appeals to prejudice and division and fear. There can be no short-circuiting of the parliament's duty to carefully and methodically scrutinise the executive government, especially the powers and the work of our security and intelligence agencies. I was pleased to hear the Labor opposition signal last week that it didn't want scrutiny of the encryption bill rushed. Yesterday the PJCIS reaffirmed its inquiry schedule, with further hearings today and on Friday. However, Labor hasn't always been robust in resisting coalition demands that controversial national security legislation be pushed through without proper debate. In June, Labor joined with the government to ram new espionage and foreign interference laws through the Senate in a single day. There are now some signs that Labor might agree to rush an amended encryption bill through the Senate, with powers to compel IT companies to break encryption initially limited to national security agencies. However, such a proposal would not address the serious systematic issues involved. As Labor senator Jenny McAllister noted yesterday, cutting short the PJCIS inquiry would risk unforeseen consequences without proper scrutiny. This must not happen with the encryption legislation next week.

In due course the Australian people, and particularly the electors of the division of Dickson, will have their say on Mr Dutton's future as a minister and as an MP. There will also be an opportunity for a new government to look again at the organisation of our security intelligence and law enforcement agencies. The creation of a Home Affairs portfolio is very much Mr Dutton's signature achievement. He also owes much to his energetic, empire-building departmental secretary Michael Pezzullo. Having security, law enforcement and border protection agencies in a single portfolio had been long debated but lacked strong support from policing and security experts both within and outside government. A homeland security department was seen as unnecessary given the excellent coordination and communication between our intelligence and police agencies.

More than a few observers looked askance at the proposed concentration of the investigative and coercive powers within a single portfolio ultimately responsible to one minister. Professor John Blaxland, of the Australian National University's Strategic and Defence Studies Centre, a former Defence intelligence officer and official historian of ASIO, argued that a new super ministry was, at best, inadequately justified and, in many ways, seriously flawed. Blaxland described the creation of the home affairs department and the transfer of ASIO and the AFP away from the Attorney-General's portfolio as 'a fraught move that would demolish well-tested arrangements for a high degree of healthy contestability concerning intelligence judgements and operational options'. Blaxland warned that the new arrangements were more about politics than substantive fact based organisational reform.

Mr Dutton's portfolio is now all encompassing, including, as it does, the new department, ASIO, the AFP, the Australian Border Force, the Australian Criminal Intelligence Commission, and the Australian Transaction Reports and Analysis Centre. The department itself, effectively a ministry of state security, has grown like topsy and taken on many new responsibilities, often without scrutiny or debate. For example, although the investigation of foreign political interference is a matter for ASIO and the AFP, and the Attorney-General's Department has responsibility for establishing the new foreign influence transparency regime, Home Affairs has appointed a new Counter Foreign Interference Coordinator, heading two new branches to counter alleged interference in Australian politics by foreign powers.

One might reasonably question the wisdom of Home Affairs reporting directly to Minister Dutton to delve into political affairs without statutory safeguards that ensure the apolitical and highly professional work that we normally see from ASIO and the AFP. More broadly, there are serious concerns about the paramilitary culture that Mr Pezzullo has instilled in the Australian Border Force and across Home Affairs. The nation-building role of the old department of immigration has also been lost amidst a fanatical political focus on external and internal threats.

All governments are entitled to their administrative arrangements, and the parliament has properly facilitated those decisions in relation to Home Affairs through legislative actions. Prime Minister Morrison is unlikely to make any major changes to the Home Affairs portfolio before the election. However, whoever does win the election should take the opportunity to reconsider the arguments around the creation of Home Affairs, and, I suggest, move to dismantle the portfolio in favour of a more balanced approach to national security.

A year on from the creation of the new portfolio, I think it is now increasingly clear that the co-location of ASIO, the AFP and the Criminal Intelligence Commission with other elements of Home Affairs constitutes an excessive concentration of power. Notwithstanding the safeguards that apply to individual agencies, too much power has been placed in the hands of a single minister. This would be the case even with a minister other than the current incumbent. ASIO, the AFP, the Criminal Intelligence Commission and AUSTRAC should be transferred back to the Auditor-General's portfolio, together with responsibility for all aspects of telecommunications interception and access. That would leave Home Affairs as a border protection and immigration agency—a shift that would best be reflected with an appropriate name change. It would also be appropriate for the Home Affairs secretary to be moved somewhere else where his energy, if not his empire-building zeal, might be usefully employed.

As a crossbench senator, I make these observations, aware that it will be a matter for whoever forms the next government to make their administrative arrangements. However, I would urge both government and opposition—perhaps especially the opposition—to rein in the Home Affairs juggernaut. It would be most unfortunate if this conglomeration of power were to become a permanent fixture in the Australian body politic, ready to be picked up and exploited in the future by some ambitious and unscrupulous political figure.

At the time of the next election, it will not be too late or too difficult to make the changes needed to restore a sound balance in the handling of national security matters—a balance that would be more in keeping with the traditions of our liberal democracy and bear much less resemblance to the structure of a police state—and I would urge the next government to do so.