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

by leave—I move:

That the Senate take note of the document.

I speak in response to order for the production of documents No. 474. This document deals with a panel supervising Defence's conduct in responding to the Brereton report. In a chain of freedom of information requests, every quarterly report of the panel was released, yet the final report was refused in its entirety. Before the final report was rejected, the last quarterly report was released in Defence Freedom of Information 500/23/24. In section 10 of that quarterly report, on page 6 of the release, the oversight panel foreshadows that their final report would be prepared and provided to Defence in September 2023. The panel met with Defence on 'factual accuracy, clarity, sensitivity and classification' of the report. Defence confirmed there was no information within the report requiring a security classification. The panel then stated:

It will therefore be open to you—

Defence Minister Marles—

… to table that report in the Parliament …

While the panel does not specifically mention prejudice in that report, it would appear strange if they had cleared the final report with Defence only for some highly prejudicial information that justifies defying an order of the Senate to make it past the goalkeeper.

The final report was then provided to Deputy Prime Minister or Defence Minister Marles on or around 8 November 2023. On 19 February 2024, the Defence department refused freedom of information request 577/23/24 for this final report that the Senate has now ordered the government to table. Under the Freedom of Information Act, an exemption to disclose on the basis of prejudice must be made under section 37. There was no mention of section 37 or prejudice in the freedom of information refusal. The only ground mentioned was section 47C(1), deliberative process. The minister, in response to the Senate order, said there's prejudicial information in this document, yet the freedom of information decision does not mention any prejudicial information.

Before we even get to arguing about the merits of the freedom of information refusal, I will point out that there was an unacceptable conflict of interest for the person making that decision. The refusal was signed by Catherine Wallis. Wallis is the director-general of the Afghanistan Inquiry Response Task Force. The Afghanistan Inquiry Implementation Oversight Panel is meant to be reviewing whether the Afghanistan Inquiry Response Task Force is properly doing their job. The taskforce is internal to Defence, while the panel is meant to be an independent external supervisor. We have the panel creating the final report on whether the taskforce has failed to do its job and then the director-general of the taskforce making the decision to keep this report card a secret. Even worse, in refusing the request, the director-general did not include that position as part of her signature. Wallis had included her full title—Director-General, Afghanistan Inquiry Response Task Force—just days earlier in a separate FOI decision. In refusing the FOI on this panel report, that title in her signature line had magically disappeared.

The avenue to make a complaint about this conflict of interest is messy. The NAAC, the National Anti-Corruption Commission, is headed by Paul Brereton. Major-General Paul Brereton, as he was at the time, wrote the Inspector-General of the Australian Defence Force Afghanistan inquiry report that started this whole episode, of which the oversight panel has been critical. The Deputy Prime Minister and part-time defence minister attended the Royal Commission into Defence and Veteran Suicide and was asked about this final report. When the commission asked Minister Miles if the report we're talking about here would be released before the royal commission was over, the minister answered that he was still thinking about it. There was no mention of prejudicial criminal proceedings, just deliberation.

The minister has claimed he's been advised there's prejudicial information in this final report. The panel says it's been cleared with Defence. The FOI refusal makes no mention of prejudice. The minister did not mention prejudice to the royal commission. The question is: from where did this advice appear? It smells like a delaying tactic. To be frank, I don't believe the claim of prejudice is genuine. Yet it may be, and for that reason we've lodged freedom of information requests with the Office of the Special Investigator and with the Department of Defence as to when they advised the minister that this report would be prejudicial.

We would expect the minister to provide much more detail on this claim of prejudice before we would even think of accepting it. We remind the minister that a Senate order is not something to be complied with at his leisure. We will pursue this report, which outlines how Defence senior leadership has failed to hold any senior officers accountable while throwing soldiers under the bus. I seek leave to continue my remarks later.

Leave granted; debate adjourned.