James Paterson (Victoria, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Cyber Security) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise to make a contribution on the Counter-Terrorism and Other Legislation Amendment Bill 2023. The threat of terrorism is enduring and complex. While ASIO lowered the national terrorism threat level to 'possible' about 12 months ago, the threat is by no means extinguished, and events in the Middle East have been a sad reminder of that. Earlier this year, the Director-General of Security, Mr Mike Burgess, noted:

Terrorism remains a significant threat in some parts of the world and an emerging menace in others, and developments overseas could resonate here in Australia.

This was a very timely warning, in light of the devastating attacks on Israel on 7 October by Hamas, a terrorist organisation which was listed in its entirety under the former coalition government in 2022.

Here in Australia, in times when our social cohesion is being tested in our communities and neighbourhoods, the critical task of our law enforcement and security agencies is to protect Australians from the risk of violence, and that has never been more important. In our democracy we don't silence the views of others, even when we find them to be egregiously offensive, but we cannot accept the actions of groups that use or advocate violence to achieve their political, religious or ideological objectives and put the lives of Australians at risk. That is why we as parliamentarians must ensure that our law enforcement and security agencies are equipped with the powers and capabilities that they need to combat the threat of terrorism and that we continually review the use and effectiveness of those powers to ensure that they are fit for purpose against an enduring and evolving threat.

The Counter-Terrorism and Other Legislation Amendment Bill 2023 implements several of the recommendations of the Parliamentary Joint Committee on Intelligence and Security's review of police powers in relation to terrorism, the control order regime, the preventative detention order regime and the continuing detention order regime, which I handed down, as chair of the PJCIS, in October 2021. That PJCIS report unanimously supported the extension of powers reviewed and found that they will continue to provide law enforcement with the tools that they need to counter the threat of terrorism. As chair of the PJCIS, I noted that 18 potential or imminent terrorist attacks had been disrupted by law enforcement and security agencies since 2014, thanks to powers just like these. That PJCIS report made 19 recommendations, all of which were accepted by this government in its response in September 2023.

The current bill introduces several reforms to ensure law enforcement agencies are equipped to protect the community from terrorism, while improving safeguard mechanisms. It does this by extending the operation of stop, search and seizure powers for three years and enhancing safeguards on the use of those powers; enhancing oversight over the minister's power to declare a prescribed security zone; extending the operation of the control order regime for three years and enhancing the safeguards and effectiveness of control orders; extending the operation of the preventative detention order regime for three years and bolstering the safeguards that apply to the issuing of PDOs; enhancing transparency requirements on continuing detention orders; and extending the operation of criminal liability offences for breaches of non-disclosure duties until 29 December 2024 while the government considers the report of the Commonwealth's review of secrecy provisions. I note that this last provision was unrelated to the PJCIS's review.

When the bill was introduced in the other chamber, the Attorney-General noted that the government would not be implementing recommendation 6 of the PJCIS review at that time but had agreed to it in principle. This recommendation relates to amending section 3UEA of the Crimes Act to require any agency that enters premises in accordance with that section to obtain an ex post facto warrant as soon as possible, following the use of warrantless entry powers. The PJCIS report on this bill, which was handed down in October this year, recommended that the government should introduce amendments to establish a post-entry warrant framework, thereby acquitting recommendation 6 of the original PJCIS review.

I welcome the government's decision to accept this recommendation, noting that the bill was amended in the House of Representatives on 19 October 2023 to establish the new post-entry warrant scheme. This bill will provide for the continuation and enhancement of important counterterrorism powers that law enforcement agencies require to protect Australians. It will ensure our law enforcement agencies have the powers they need to manage the threat of terrorism, while protecting the rights of the individuals through stronger oversights and safeguards. The coalition will always support sensible changes which ensure our legislation is fit for purpose to enable our law enforcement agencies to protect Australians from terrorism. That is why we'll be supporting the passage of this bill.

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

I rise on behalf of the Greens to indicate we will not be supporting the Counter-Terrorism and Other Legislation Amendment Bill 2023. At the outset, I note that there are a number of modest improvements proposed to the regimes covered by this bill as a result of these amendments, but those modest improvements to a regime which is so contrary to our basic liberties and our basic traditional legal protections are so cosmetic that they do not amend the substantive law sufficiently for the Greens to support them.

Of course, one of the key provisions in this bill is to extend the sunset clauses for these various counterterrorism laws by yet another three years. As I've noted before and as most civil liberties advocates have noted, when it comes to counterterrorism laws and laws that beef up the security state, sunset provisions are inserted in the bills but the sun never sets. Indeed, that's what this bill proposes. It proposes to push off the sunset not for 12 hours but for a further three years. The bill extends the operation of a series of police powers—largely Australian Federal Police powers but, in some instances, powers able to be exercised by other police bodies—under the 1914 Crimes Act and the 1995 Criminal Code Act for a further three years, extending them to December 2026.

In terms of the three principal elements of the bill, the first is the power to stop, question and search persons and to seize items in identified Commonwealth places—for example, on the floor of the Senate chamber, while Senator Scarr wanders about like that. It gives the authority to stop, question and search people as well as seize items in defined Commonwealth places—including in what are called 'prescribed security zones'—and to do that without a warrant and without the need for reasonable suspicion. That power being given to police to stop, question and search without reasonable suspicion and without a warrant was, until these laws passed in 2005, unknown to our legal system. Those powers were offensive to our legal system. They were something far more at home in deeply authoritarian states than in a liberal democracy such as Australia pretends to be.

The second aspect of the bill is the control order regime. The control order regime allows for obligations and restrictions to be imposed on people allegedly for the purpose of protecting the public from a potential terrorist act or to prevent the provision of support for, or the facilitation of, a terrorist act. Those are the Criminal Code division 104 provisions. Again, these control order regimes—the 'future crime' provisions—were utterly unknown to our law and utterly unknown to our system of checks and balances from a common law tradition, until they were brought into our law in the raft of different laws that came into force in the decade following September 11. The third aspect of the security apparatus that's proposed to be extended to December 2026 is the preventative detention order regime. That allows a person to be taken into custody and be detained for up to two full days—48 hours—if it is suspected on reasonable grounds that they may be preparing to engage in a terrorist act. This is, again, another future crime provision, which, although sitting there in the statute books, has been hardly used at all since it was brought in. Again, these future crime provisions were unknown to our law until the raft of security legislation and counterterrorism legislation that passed in the years following September 11.

A number of stakeholders have made submissions to this bill and to the PJCIS inquiry into it. The bulk of those submissions raise very serious concerns about the three-year extension. At best, they support a limited 12-month extension with detailed justification being provided by the government for the continuation of these powers. Why should there be such detailed justification? I'll go back to the 2005 Senate Legal and Constitutional Affairs Legislation Committee that first looked at these powers when they were being passed. It's important to remember the context of those powers being passed. They were following the horrific bombings in London in July 2005, and there was fear in our community and deep concern with what we'd seen happen in London. In that environment of fear and anxiety, the Anti-Terrorism Act (No. 2) 2005 was rushed through this parliament, and it didn't follow the usual scrutiny process. A rapid drafting of the bill with no external consultation was rammed through a Senate inquiry with a very limited time frame and then brought to the House to be pushed through, because there was that fear driving legislators at the time.

The Senate Legal and Constitutional Affairs Legislation Committee said this in relation to the bill:

Extraordinary laws may be justifiable but they must also be temporary in nature. Sunset provisions ensure that such laws expire on a certain date. This mechanism ensures that extraordinary executive powers legislated during times of emergency are not integrated as the norm and that the case for continued use of extraordinary executive powers is publicly made out by the Government of the day.

That's what they said in 2005, but now it's 2023 and these laws are still on our statute books. The sun has repeatedly been about to set, but every time it's been reset by this parliament to extend these extraordinary provisions, that were intended to be temporary in nature, so that they're almost effectively permanent provisions of our law. They are deeply contrary to longstanding traditions of liberty and freedom of the individual from an excess of state power in our system. Yet here we are again, in 2023, proposing to extend them for another three years, while each of these elements in the system are under serious question and serious scrutiny. And there has not been a justification, apart from a basic, primal fear to support the ongoing provision of any of these laws—particularly the preventative detention order regime and the control order regime.

Other aspects of these same future crime counter-terrorism provisions have been unravelling in real time around us as this happens. The continuing detention order regime, which is a close cousin of these regimes, has fallen into gross disrepute in the last 12 months with the Benbrika case. With the continuing detention order regime, at the expiry of a person's prison sentence, if they've been convicted and sentenced for a terrorism or related offence, there's the ability for state authorities or Commonwealth authorities—depending on who the prosecuting authority was for the original terrorism offence, whether it was a state or Commonwealth offence—to seek continuing detention orders to keep the person in jail after the expiration of their sentence. Again, it's a concept that is anathema to our concepts of rule of law and traditional liberties—keeping someone in jail past the expiration of their maximum sentence based upon concepts of future crime and future threat. This is a future assessment being made by courts or nominated judges—who, for all intents and purposes, appear to be courts—an assessment of future crime being made by our legal system. It's about the likelihood of future offending or of a future offence being committed. As I said, it's an extremely close cousin of the control order regime and, indeed, the preventative detention order regime.

It turns out that the core assessment tool that's being used by Commonwealth authorities and, through the Commonwealth, by state authorities, to justify continuing detention orders is called the VERA-2r assessment tool. A critical review was done of the VERA-2r assessment tool by lead author Dr Emily Corner, and it was found that there was no critical basis for the assessments and conclusions in the VERA-2r assessment tool. Indeed, the report found that the assessment of the likelihood of committing a future offence using the VERA-2r assessment tool—its finding of the probability of future offending—was no better than a roll of the dice or basic chance.

What did the Commonwealth government and home affairs do under the leadership of Secretary Pezzullo and the ministerial control of the now Leader of the Opposition, Peter Dutton? What did they do with the Corner report? They hid it from the court; they refused to give it to the court while the courts were undertaking or reviewing VERA-2r assessments from so-called experts of continuing detention orders, after a continuing detention orders after a continuing detention orders. Dozens of continuing detention orders were made using the VERA-2r assessment tool, purporting to assess the likelihood of future offending and all based on a grossly flawed tool. This was when the prosecuting authorities and the Commonwealth knew that there was a critical report in the hands of the Commonwealth which pointed out that the assessment was no better than chance and they hid it from the court. Again, this was destroying fundamental parts of our historical legal structure meant to defend our individual freedoms—destroying them, in this case, by a conscious decision of the bureaucracy and the complicity of the Department of Home Affairs. It prevented the courts from getting the evidence that showed the tool was not worth the paper it was written on.

What better assessment do we have and what comfort do we have that control orders or preventative detention orders will be based on anything better than that? None. The reason is that our legal system is not designed to chase down future crime. It isn't designed to make predictions about people's future conduct and then hold them in jail or detention based upon predictions of future conduct. That's something that you find in deeply offensive authoritarian regimes. We judge people on what they do and we judge people on what they've done. We don't put people in jail because of the fear of future crime—or we didn't used to until these provisions came into law from 2001, particularly from 2005 onwards.

The Greens note that there are some cosmetic improvements bring brought into these regimes: marginally better oversight and some slightly better reporting. But at the core of this bill is the continuation of a series of detention mechanisms; warrantless stop, search and detain powers for police; and a control order regime that should not form part of our law. The sun should set on these powers; it should set in a few short weeks and they should not be extended to December 2026. For those reasons, the Greens oppose this bill.

Malcolm Roberts (Queensland, Pauline Hanson's One Nation Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

As a servant to the people of Queensland and Australia, I call out Labor's destructive and irresponsible immigration policy that allows violent race-hate bigots to spit their venom in support of filthy, cowardly terrorists. Brother Ismail, an Islamic extremist, recently gave an Islamic sermon in Sydney in which he called the Hamas terrorists freedom fighters and warriors and ignored the slaughter of innocent Israeli men, women and children and the kidnapping of hundreds of hostages to be taken back to Gaza. He called on Muslims to wage jihad in Australia and said that the al-Qaeda and Islamic State flags were the flags of Muslims. He said the national flag is not our flag. He's not Australian. What is he doing here? I would expect that the police are watching this extremist carefully as they consider which crimes he has just committed.

How can the Labor government support an increase in immigration numbers without greater vetting of the quality of immigrants, particularly from Middle Eastern countries and specifically Islamic countries that have a clear historical culture of race based hate and violence under Islamic ideology? Those with extremist views and those coming from countries with a history of cultural violence must be excluded from bringing those views into Australia, either in the immediate, short or long terms. Stringent measures must be put in place to exclude such hate filled, antihuman and inhuman individuals.

Across our vast single-nation continent, united as one nation, with people from many diverse backgrounds, religions, cultures and nations, Australians must be entitled to feel and be safe from the cultural violence that exists mostly overseas. Look, though, at what recently happened in Sydney, at the horrendous rally in support of Palestine on the steps of our Opera House, our iconically Australian and iconically Sydney building, after Hamas's cowardly, inhuman terrorists from Gaza massacred innocent men, women and children. This was Australia's day of shame, as Islamic extremists burnt the Israeli flag and chanted disgraceful slogans such as 'Gas the Jews!' and 'Kill the Jews!' just as occurred in Nazi Germany. 'Gas the Jews!' and 'Kill the Jews!' was chanted here in Australia. It is despicable and un-Australian. Those who were supporters do not deserve to be in Australia. Australian Jewish children are living in fear of their lives from the antisemitic cowards who have shown their hate and threatened innocent Jews. Is this the Australia we want? No, it's not. What we need is social cohesion, where we all get along and violence is not acceptable—where violence is rejected.

Consider the High Court of Australia. It disconnected from the expectations of Australians when its recent decision about convicted terrorist Abdul Nacer Benbrika restored his previously cancelled Australian citizenship, allowing him now to stay in Australia. He was found guilty of plotting to kill thousands of Australians here in our country. The man in the street, the everyday Australian, would not want this man to remain in Australia. I don't want him to remain in Australia. I want him out. Failed immigration policy is responsible for letting these inhuman and antihuman scum into Australia.

While there are many fine Muslim Australians—and we've had some as candidates in One Nation—assimilating into our culture and complying with our values and laws, Islam, I want to be very clear, is an ideology, a way of structuring society, just like communism, socialism and Nazism. It exercises control of thought, control of belief and control of behaviour using fear and violence. It is punitive and involves cruel physical punishment—for example, female genital mutilation, the suppression of women, the killing of nonbelievers and homosexuals, beheadings, canings, people being thrown off the roofs of buildings, wives being beaten—and so it goes on.

Islam goes against Australian values and Western civilisation. Is there anyone in this chamber who would defend it as being in accordance with Australian values and Western civilisation? I would hope not. Strong steps must be taken to exclude Islamic terrorists from ever setting foot here. Strong steps must be taken to ensure that the judiciary is entitled to strip citizenship from immigrants as part of their sentencing for committing heinous crimes. More importantly, strong steps are needed and must be taken to ensure that vetting of the quality and the suitability of potential immigrants investigates eliminating extremist activists from spreading their poison in our Australian society and creating homegrown terrorists. I will be supporting this bill.

Pauline Hanson (Queensland, Pauline Hanson's One Nation Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise to speak to the Counter-Terrorism and Other Legislation Amendment Bill 2023, which One Nation will support, and I would like to say I fully support my colleague Senator Roberts and his comments in his speech that he's just delivered. This legislation is timely, following the warning from ASIO director-general Mike Burgess last month that the risk of violence has increased following the atrocities committed by Hamas terrorists in Israel. Those cowardly acts of murder, rape and hostage abduction show that none of us are entirely secure against the threat posed by Islamic terrorism. That is certainly the case in Australia, because the atrocities have also drawn out people here who actually support and defend this terrorism. Some of them even sit in this chamber. We just watched them make a stupid show of walking out of the Senate in solidarity with these terrorists.

For the record, I will say that public demonstrations in support of Islamic terrorists should not be allowed to take place in this country. It is un-Australian, and anyone who participates in them does not belong in our country. There must be absolutely no tolerance in Australia for these violent atrocities or the people who advocate or support them. They are a direct threat to the safety and security of Australian people.

The threat might not be as great if Australia had a better immigration policy that prevented the importation of Islamic extremism. The major parties can't say they weren't warned about it. One Nation has been warning the country for more than 25 years about the threat represented by imported extremism, which unfortunately makes legislation like this necessary. These warnings were ignored. As a result, we had people on the steps of the Sydney Opera House calling for the gassing of Jews. Where we seen this before? A local Islamic scholar is now being investigated over preaching violent jihad in our country. If you don't know what 'jihad' means, it means war. How was this extremist preacher even allowed to come to Australia to spew his hatred? It's this sort of rhetoric which inspires the violence that our police security forces must be equipped and supported to prevent.

At this point, I'm compelled to condemn the recent High Court decision allowing the convicted terrorist Abdul Nacer Benbrika to retain his Australian citizenship. I hope that the Labor government is going to put in an appeal with regard to the decision by the High Court, because I cannot understand their ruling. They're saying that he should not be deported. If he has dual citizenship, strip him of the Australian citizenship. He is not left stateless. Let him leave our shores and go back to his own country. We don't want people like him here. This decision has devalued Australian citizenship, giving it to a maniac who plotted to kill thousands of us.

As I've said repeatedly in this place, we give citizenship out to people too readily. As I've said in the past, they should be here in this country for eight years to prove themselves worthy of Australian citizenship, so we know what they are and what they stand for. Yet you're reluctant to do this. Some other countries even have up to 30 years. In other countries, you can't even get citizenship. Yet you just bend over backwards to allow them. That's why we have so many students coming into this country, purely as a pathway to citizenship. They enrol in our universities but end up being taxi drivers purely for citizenship, and you allow this to happen. Labor's immigration policy is ridiculous.

That's why we need these laws to ensure that they are well-meaning people who value our laws, the rights of this land and every other Australian, not peddlers of the bloody hate that they bring from their other countries. That's why I've said repeatedly that I don't want Islamic terrorists in this country; I want people to be vetted properly so that they will not be allowed into Australia. What is wrong with that? Every other Australian is calling for it. Other people want safety and security on our streets, but they don't feel that it is.

The Albanese government must ensure that, the very minute his sentence is completed, this convicted terrorist is deported, never to return, or is otherwise locked up forever—but I'd rather not, because it costs the Australian taxpayer over $120,000 a year to keep him in our prisons. I'd rather get rid of him.

This legislation is appropriate for the moment, but, as we saw in Israel, Islamic terrorists are innovative in how they murder, mutilate and kidnap innocents. This has been evidenced in a 43-minute video. Where was the disgust shown with regard to this by Senator Faruqi or the other Greens today? Nothing—absolutely nothing—was said about the clear vision of what happened to these men, women and children. You stand up for the Palestinians. You have no love in your hearts for what's happened to the Israelis. All you want is to support the Palestinians.

Also with regard to that, we must be ready to respond with stronger laws and measures if necessary. Why shouldn't we? One Nation supports the extension of police powers in relation to terrorism, as proposed in the bill, and I've got to ask: where are the police on the streets to actually stop these protests? There shouldn't be protest rallies in our streets over what's happening in Gaza with Palestine. What's it got to do with us here? We shouldn't see this, and it's happening around the world. This is orchestrated. And the antisemitism—it is disgusting that we see that happening in Australia. But where are the people who are responding to that? Where are they really speaking out against it? We've had six former prime minister who actually agree about what is happening and about support for Israel. That's what we should be doing, because the people are defending themselves against the terrorism that was committed against them on 7 October, but the Greens and other people around this country don't see that, because they're peddling their own hatred.

We support the responsible minister having the power to declare a prescribed security zone to ensure additional security measures can be implemented when and where it is necessary to prevent or respond to a terrorist attack. We note that the minister must give consideration to the impact such a declaration may have on the rights of Australians in the affected area. We're forced to remind the Senate that no such consideration was given to fundamental human rights during the COVID-19 pandemic—nothing. We also note that the bill clarifies the need for parliamentary oversight of these declarations. One Nation supports the extension of the control order and prevention detention order to December 2026. We consider these absolutely necessary for the safety and security of Australian citizens because there is no compromise that may be reached with these maniacs or their treacherous supporters in Australia. We support the use of post-entry warrants, ensuring that police and other authorities can act immediately to prevent a terrorist attack that may not wait for a judge to make up their mind. One Nation strongly supports the use of post-sentence orders against people convicted of terrorist offences.

As I noted earlier, there is no compromise with Islamic terrorism. Have a look where is Islam has spread throughout the world. Look at countries such as Egypt and Iran. What's happened to the people there, especially the women? They used to dress Western, like us. They'd show their arms, legs, hair, face and all the rest of it. That was about 50 years ago, in the fifties, sixties, seventies. Now every woman has to be covered up. She can't show her arms or her legs. She's controlled by the men. She has no rights over the children. She is just a—what can I say?—someone who's there to bear his children. No control, and yet you don't care about that here. We allow that to happen in our own country, the women here to wear the full burqa. Where are the feminists? Where are the people defending their rights? They are made to cover up by their menfolk, by their husbands, and here in Australia we're heading down the same path of what it is like in Egypt and Iran. Women over there cannot even walk the streets without being accompanied by a male—can you believe that?—and in these countries like Afghanistan that is their ideology.

Hamas is an ideology. It is about wanting to control the world through their hatred and to get rid of anyone who doesn't believe in their fundamentalist views. You don't vet the people enough who come into this country. You don't vet the refugees from some of these other countries enough. You allow them in. You are not hard enough on these women who follow their husbands over there, and you just want to allow them back into the country, the poor darlings, with their children. What has happened? You don't care, because when they come here, they're put in our suburbs where they live beside other Australians. These people will never work. They are going to be on the welfare system for the rest of their lives. They are unemployable. Their views are absolutely not in line with Australian values or laws, and yet you feel sorry for them. They don't feel sorry for us, I can tell you. Remember the word 'jihad', and when the time comes they will call for it. But it won't matter to you because you will be safe in your little nest in your little homes. You could not care less about the rest of the Australian people and what they have to suffer, as we have seen people suffering around the world.

We've seen the way the Jews have been treated around the world by these protesters, and it is deplorable and disgusting. I give my full support to the Jewish people. We see them being badgered, threatened and harassed; they can't move freely in their own country, and what is happening to them is disgusting. I feel sorry for them. They are in a country where they thought they would be safe, but they don't feel safe at all. And when I saw the stunt pulled today by the Greens, it made me sick to my stomach that people are actually supporting this regime. We heard Mehreen Faruqi's disgust of Israel and what they have done to protect themselves. Through their retaliation they said: 'We've had enough. We've have had a gutful of this,' and now they are defending themselves. Good on them; I don't blame them. But the fact is that it's a pity that Mehreen Faruqi didn't look at what Pakistan did to two million Afghan people there. They just went in, bulldozed their homes, said, 'Go back to Afghanistan.' What about those people? Where is the fear for them? Oh no, that's right: Pakistan is the country that she came from, so we can't criticise the Pakistanis, can we? No, not at all.

Senator Faruqi, I will tell you again: if you don't see yourself as loving this country and abiding by the laws of the country, I have no problem. I will actually take you to the airport and put you on a plane and wave you away because that's how people feel. They want to feel safe in this country. They want values. They want morals, and they want the people who come here to respect our country, abide by our laws and not spew their hatred on our streets and, especially to innocent people. I just want to say that these maniacs will always pose a threat to the Australian community, unless they are locked up for all time to die impotently in a bleak maximum security prison cell if we can't get rid of them from our country or if we can actually stop them from coming here. But the government is reluctant to do that. They're just handing out visas willy-nilly, and then they blame the previous government for all this. But we have got, 100,000-plus visa holders in the country, and we don't even know where they are. You have got another two million people on visas in Australia, and then you have got over 600,000 overseas students in Australia. You have actually overloaded this country and you don't even know who the people are. You have put more people on in Immigration to make sure their visas are processed more quickly to get them into the country, and that is what your government does. You have no regard for the Australian people. It is all about bringing as many of these people into the country as possible to harvest their votes. That is what it is all about. One Nation will always support the strongest measures being taken to prevent and eventually eliminate the scourge of terrorism. I commend this bill to the Senate.

Anthony Chisholm (Queensland, Australian Labor Party, Assistant Minister for Education) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I thank colleagues for their contributions to the debate on this bill. I also thank the Parliamentary Joint Committee on Intelligence and Security for the recommendations in its 2021 AFP powers report, which informed the measures in the bill as well as the advisory report on the bill tabled 19 October 2023. Recommendation 1 of the 2023 report to introduce amendments to establish a post-entry warrant framework has now been implemented through government amendments moved in the other place.

This bill would provide for the continuation of key counterterrorism powers. It would also enhance safeguards and oversight mechanisms for these powers, providing appropriate checks and balances which promote the rule of law and procedural fairness. The bill will extend the sunsetting of the emergency stop, search and seizure powers in the Crimes Act and the control order and preventative detention order regimes in the Criminal Code until December 2026. This will ensure that law enforcement remains equipped to prevent and respond to terrorist attacks and that the provisions are reviewed again within an appropriate period to ensure they are fit for purpose in light of current threats.

The bill would introduce critical safeguards to prevent the exercise of extraordinary police powers unless it is necessary and appropriate to prevent or respond to a terrorist attack, and assist oversight bodies in performing their important functions in investigating and reviewing the use of these powers. The bill would limit the power to issue control orders to the Federal Court of Australia and limit the classes of persons who may be appointed as an issuing authority for preventative detention orders to superior court judges. This acknowledges the serious and extraordinary nature of these orders and the significant volume of evidence that must be considered in making these decisions. The bill would require that an issuing court must consider the combined effect of all these conditions in a control order in addition to the appropriateness of the individual conditions. It would also provide that a court can impose any conditions it considers appropriate. These measures would ensure control orders can be better tailored to address the risk profile of the individuals concerned. To allow greater flexibility in ensuring that control order conditions remain appropriate if circumstances change during the life of the order, the bill would enable the variation of a control order, including the addition of new conditions by consent. The bill would also improve transparency in relation to the operation of the post-sentence order regime in division 105 of the Criminal Code by expanding public reporting requirements.

Finally, the bill would extend the sunsetting date of section 122.4 of the Criminal Code by 12 months to 29 December 2020, maintaining criminal liability for current and former Commonwealth officers for breaches of approximately 296 nondisclosure duties in Commonwealth laws. This will allow for finalisation of a comprehensive review of the Commonwealth secrecy offences and its consideration by government.

The government thanks senators who have contributed to this debate, and states and territories for their engagement, and we commend the bill for passage.

Question agreed to.