Division Description Changes — Bills — National Security Legislation Amendment (Comprehensive Review and Other Measures No. 2) Bill 2023; in Committee — 7th Aug 2023

Change	Division
senate vote 2023-08-07#1 Edited by mackay staff on 2023-12-23 13:45:06	Title Bills — National Security Legislation Amendment (Comprehensive Review and Other Measures No. 2) Bill 2023; in Committee National Security Legislation Amendment (Comprehensive Review and Other Measures No. 2) Bill 2023 - in Committee - Membership of PJCIS Description ~~<p class="speaker">James Paterson</p>~~ <p>As I foreshadowed in my second reading speech, the opposition will be moving some amendments to deal with one aspect of this bill. Before I get to that, I want to update the chamber and anyone watching on what is happening here and where we're up to here. Coalition members of the PJCIS handed down a dissenting report—the first one in 17 years—on 12 May. We said in that dissenting report that we supported this bill and recognised the importance of the measures in this bill, including: those there were recommended by Dennis Richardson, which our government commissioned and whose recommendations were accepted; and the other recommendation relating to the foreign minister's directions to ASIS, which is also in this bill but wasn't recommended in the Richardson report.</p> The majority voted in favour of keeping [part 3 of schedule 1](https://parlinfo.aph.gov.au/parlInfo/search/display/display.w3p;db=LEGISLATION;id=legislation%2Fbills%2Fr7012_first-reps%2F0001;query=Id%3A%22legislation%2Fbills%2Fr7012_first-reps%2F0000%22;rec=0#17f52f8861d04fb9b42b85f38de1a30a) unchanged. In parliamentary jargon, they voted that it might stand as printed. This part related to the membership of the [Parliamentary Joint Committee on Intelligence and Security](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parliamentary_Joint_Committee_on_Intelligence_and_Security) (PJCIS). ### Text of Part 3 of Schedule 1 *> Part 3 — M*embership of the Parliamentary Joint Committee on Intelligence and Security > > Intelligence Services Act 2001 > > 11 Subsection 28(2) > >> Repeal the subsection, substitute: >> >> (2) The Committee is to consist of 13 members and must include at least: >> >>> (a) 2 Senators who are Government members; and >>> *>>> (b) 2 members** of the House of Representatives who are Government members; and* >>> >>> (c) 2 Senators who are non-Government members; and >>> *>>> (d) 2 members of the House of Representatives who are non-G*overnment members. > > 12 Paragraph 18(1)(a) of Schedule 1 > >> Omit “6 members”, substitute “7 members”. > *> 13 Application provi*sion > >> The amendments of the Intelligence Services Act 2001 made by this Part: >> *>> (a) apply, on and after the** commencement of this item, in relation to the Committee established in respect of the 47th Parliament; and* >> *>> (b) do not affect the appointment of a member of that Committee made before** the commencement of this item.* <p>We said we would support all of those on the condition that the government did not proceed with one other change in this bill, which has not been recommended by any independent inquiry or by any independent expert. The government has not been able to provide any evidence on where this recommendation has come from. This recommendation is for the expansion of the PJCIS, which we believe is being done by the government for the purpose of putting a member of the crossbench or a minor party on the committee. That is the only area of contention between the government and the opposition, and my amendments seek to deal with that so that we can support this bill.</p> <p>Just in case the government didn't pick up the signal that we send in our dissenting report, Senator Cash and I wrote to the Attorney-General and the Minister for Home Affairs on Tuesday last week. We said we would not be able to support this bill if the changes to the PJCIS remained in it, and we said it would potentially also impact our ability to support a subsequent bill, the Intelligence Services Legislation Amendment Bill 2023, which has just been introduced in the House and referred to the PJCIS for inquiry. That bill contemplates broader and deeper oversight of the intelligence community by the PJCIS and the IGIS. The coalition is up for a conversation about that; we are open to negotiating on that—not, however, at the expense of operational security. It is our view that the expansion of the PJCIS to include crossbenchers puts that operational security at risk, and we are not prepared to support this bill or any other bill that puts that at risk.</p> <p>If the government still wasn't clear following the letter from Senator Cash and me, in which we offered to negotiate on these questions, in the Senate when this was considered on Thursday last week I again made our position clear. In a meeting with the Attorney-General's office on Friday, Senator Cash and our staff made clear to his staff what our position is.</p> <p>I think it has now dawned on the government—only this morning—that this bill now cannot pass this chamber unless the government is willing to compromise with the coalition on PJCIS membership or unless the government is willing to compromise with the Greens on their amendments. Let's be really clear on this. The two amendments that the Greens propose would remove two of the recommendations made by Dennis Richardson, which we accepted when we were in government, which you have accepted now you are in government, which have bipartisan support and which are straightforward, uncontroversial, appropriate and necessary. So the government has a pathway before it: either do a deal with the Greens on national security and remove from this bill bipartisan recommendations made by Dennis Richardson, and, therefore, put our national security at risk; or do a deal with the coalition and maintain the bipartisan culture and ethos of PJCIS and get this legislation passed today. There are important provisions of this bill which should be enforced, and the sooner the better. But we cannot support them while the government makes this unilateral change to the PJCIS membership.</p> <p>This is my final appeal to the government after many appeals: please pause on this. Please do not proceed with these PJCIS changes which were not recommended by any review, not recommended by any report and not recommended by any independent expert. The government has only been able to say it has been a 'decision of government' and has provided no evidence as to why it is necessary. I really appeal to you: support the opposition's amendments. I will move two of them, if necessary, in sequence.</p> <p>The first one would simply omit the changes to the PJCIS membership from this bill and leave all other provisions of this bill intact. That doesn't mean that there aren't going to be other opportunities to have discussion about PJCIS membership; that could take place as part of the committee's upcoming inquiry into the Intelligence Services Legislation Amendment Bill 2023 that the government has introduced, or as part of that legislation, if the government believes that is necessary. But let's sit down and have a conversation on a bipartisan basis and maintain the very strong working relationship we've had on the committee; let's do it that way.</p> <p>Alternatively, if the government is absolutely insistent that we must expand the size of the PJCIS membership, and if they are insistent that they need the flexibility to appoint different members of each chamber—from the House and from the Senate—then we have an alternate, fallback position. That is to permit the increase in the size of the PJCIS but to put in the IS Act for the first time that—as the convention has always been, save for one exception—that those members come from the parties of government: that members of the government and members of the opposition make up the committee. That will allow the government to expand the membership of the PJCIS and allow the government to choose members from whichever chamber they believe is necessary—within limitations; there should be senator and members, as a minimum, on the committee—and it will only prevent the government from putting a crossbencher or a minor party member on the committee. That is the only change it will make. We really think these are two reasonable propositions which solve the problem the government has got itself into today. We are offering to work on this on a bipartisan basis to solve this problem, and I really urge the government to consider it.</p> ~~<p class="speaker">Murray Watt</p>~~ <p>The government will be opposing the amendments foreshadowed and moved by Senator Paterson. Probably the best way for me to address them is by referring to the amendments that are contained in the bill that the government is moving which provide the rationale for the government's position on the bill itself and also on Senator Paterson's amendments. The current act does not require the PJCIS to be composed of a certain number of non-government members, but the amendments that are contained in the bill being moved by the government will introduce a requirement that at least four of the members of the committee are non-government members. The bill does not change the current appointment process from members to the committee under subclause 14 of schedule 1 of the act and the bill does not change the ability to appoint any member of parliament to the committee. As I say, the amendments in the bill being moved by the government will introduce a requirement that at least four of the members of the committee are non-government members, to reflect the fact that this is a committee that does operate on a bipartisan basis.</p> <p>Independent members and members of minor political parties will remain able to be appointed to the committee under the proposed changes, just as they are presently able to be appointed to the committee. The nomination of members to the committee is a matter for the Prime Minister. The appointment of members to the committee is a matter for the parliament, but, as I say, the government will be opposing the amendments being put by Senator Paterson.</p> ~~<p class="speaker">David Shoebridge</p>~~ <p>The Greens oppose these amendments coming from the coalition. Rather remarkably, the contributions from the coalition ignore the existing law. The law requires the make-up of this committee to reflect the make-up of the parliament. It actually says that expressly in black-and-white. We have a series of propositions put by the coalition to urge the government to populate this committee with breach of the clear legislative requirements that are being made up in a manner that represents the diversity in the parliament. It is quite remarkable, seeing a major political party urging the government of the day to not only maintain a political club but to do so in clear breach of the law on a national security committee.</p> <p>When this committee was established, the parliament turned its mind to the idea that it would be receiving significant amount of privileged secret information, so, rather than create a club where only a select subset of the parliament would get access to it, the parliament expressly legislated that if you're going to have a committee which receives rafts of secret information and then provides reports to the parliament on how it should respond, the parliament said, 'Well, that committee should be reflective of the parliament.'</p> <p>We have now had the coalition, both today and on Friday, state that this committee should statutorily exclude anybody who is not from the coalition or the Labor Party. They use this term 'parties of government' as though the coalition is to be trusted. This is the same political party that made Scott Morrison the Prime Minister, who had so many breaches of integrity that the entire nation, except for a tiny subset of hard-right ultras in the coalition, breathed an enormous sigh of relief that he was no longer in a position to have access to that kind of information. This is the same coalition that in its fringe 'cooker' section is working on QAnon conspiracies, and sharing QAnon conspiracies as part of their political project. And the coalition say that they are somehow a trusty set of hands on national security.</p> <p>Let's be utterly clear about it. There are a bunch of people elected as coalition MPs who cheered on the riots attacking democracy in the United States. There are a bunch of people in the coalition who cheer on the attempts by Donald Trump and his mates to subvert democracy in the United States. And there are a bunch of people in the coalition, elected into this chamber and into other parliaments around the country, who would cheer on the subversion of democracy in Australia. And they say that they're somehow to be trusted, uniquely trusted, with security and defence information. It would almost be laughable if it were not so serious.</p> <p>What have we seen from 17 years of unanimous like-mindedness, the unchallenging club? What have we seen? Well, we've got a little bit of an insight into the outcomes of that in today's media. We're seeing billions and billions of dollars stripped out of our defence and security budget by unscrupulous consultants who realise that nobody is checking. They realise that the bulk of what goes for scrutiny of the defence expenditure and defence programs in this country happens in this secret club that Senator Paterson used to chair and is so in love with. The secret club chaired by Senator Paterson, in the course of his entire occupation of the role of chair, somehow missed a multibillion-dollar rort of defence coming from KPMG. How many times did KPMG turn up and say they loved what you were doing—less scrutiny, more money, less power? Somehow or other it just passed them by on their secret committee.</p> <p>The same secret committee signed off on the French submarines deal and said it was so important and we should urgently do that. They loved it. That was $5 billion and a decade wasted. Who has been held to account for that? Nobody on the secret committee, nobody in the defence establishment. Isn't it going well? Is this the same secret committee that was in charge of oversight of the national security when the 2016 white paper was delivered that said there was a mess, and when the Defence Strategic Review was delivered, which says that pretty much no part of defence is working, that they're not meeting the right strategic challenges and they couldn't procure their way to a shared meal in a pub? Is that the same secret committee that's been doing such a great job? It turns out it is, and they want to just keep the club operating. Any objective view of it says that it's not working.</p> <p>If this amendment, sometimes referred to as the Wilkie amendment, works its way through, and there is at least one critical voice, one critical mind, on the committee, how could that be a backward step? I know that there was tittering from the coalition benches when there was a discussion of Andrew Wilkie being a whistleblower. There was a little frisson of tension from the coalition. Imagine putting a whistleblower on it. Imagine putting somebody on it who had firm integrity, who stood up when they saw an unlawful war coming, who put their liberty on the line to call out what has ended up being a two-decade debacle from our country and our allies in Iraq. Imagine putting someone with that kind of integrity on a national oversight committee. That's something the coalition could never come at, putting somebody like that on the committee—just one critical voice, one critical mind. The thought of having even just one critical mind on this committee has given the coalition a serious case of kittens. They've all been birthing kittens for the last 48 hours at the prospect that there might be one critical mind. We aren't so frightened of democracy. We kind of like a critical mind being on this committee, and we will be opposing this amendment.</p> ~~<p class='motion-notice motion-notice-truncated'>Long debate text truncated.</p>~~

~~James Paterson~~
As I foreshadowed in my second reading speech, the opposition will be moving some amendments to deal with one aspect of this bill. Before I get to that, I want to update the chamber and anyone watching on what is happening here and where we're up to here. Coalition members of the PJCIS handed down a dissenting report—the first one in 17 years—on 12 May. We said in that dissenting report that we supported this bill and recognised the importance of the measures in this bill, including: those there were recommended by Dennis Richardson, which our government commissioned and whose recommendations were accepted; and the other recommendation relating to the foreign minister's directions to ASIS, which is also in this bill but wasn't recommended in the Richardson report.
The majority voted in favour of keeping [part 3 of schedule 1](https://parlinfo.aph.gov.au/parlInfo/search/display/display.w3p;db=LEGISLATION;id=legislation%2Fbills%2Fr7012_first-reps%2F0001;query=Id%3A%22legislation%2Fbills%2Fr7012_first-reps%2F0000%22;rec=0#17f52f8861d04fb9b42b85f38de1a30a) unchanged. In parliamentary jargon, they voted that it might *stand as printed*. This part related to the membership of the [Parliamentary Joint Committee on Intelligence and Security](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parliamentary_Joint_Committee_on_Intelligence_and_Security) (PJCIS).
### Text of Part 3 of Schedule 1
> *Part 3 — Membership of the Parliamentary Joint Committee on Intelligence and Security*
>
> *Intelligence Services Act 2001*
>
> *11 Subsection 28(2)*
>
>> *Repeal the subsection, substitute:*
>>
>> *(2) The Committee is to consist of 13 members and must include at least:*
>>
>>> *(a) 2 Senators who are Government members; and*
>>>
>>> *(b) 2 members of the House of Representatives who are Government members; and*
>>>
>>> *(c) 2 Senators who are non-Government members; and*
>>>
>>> *(d) 2 members of the House of Representatives who are non-Government members.*
>
> *12 Paragraph 18(1)(a) of Schedule 1*
>
>> *Omit “6 members”, substitute “7 members”.*
>
> *13 Application provision*
>
>> *The amendments of the Intelligence Services Act 2001 made by this Part:*
>>
>> *(a) apply, on and after the commencement of this item, in relation to the Committee established in respect of the 47th Parliament; and*
>>
>> *(b) do not affect the appointment of a member of that Committee made before the commencement of this item.*
We said we would support all of those on the condition that the government did not proceed with one other change in this bill, which has not been recommended by any independent inquiry or by any independent expert. The government has not been able to provide any evidence on where this recommendation has come from. This recommendation is for the expansion of the PJCIS, which we believe is being done by the government for the purpose of putting a member of the crossbench or a minor party on the committee. That is the only area of contention between the government and the opposition, and my amendments seek to deal with that so that we can support this bill.
Just in case the government didn't pick up the signal that we send in our dissenting report, Senator Cash and I wrote to the Attorney-General and the Minister for Home Affairs on Tuesday last week. We said we would not be able to support this bill if the changes to the PJCIS remained in it, and we said it would potentially also impact our ability to support a subsequent bill, the Intelligence Services Legislation Amendment Bill 2023, which has just been introduced in the House and referred to the PJCIS for inquiry. That bill contemplates broader and deeper oversight of the intelligence community by the PJCIS and the IGIS. The coalition is up for a conversation about that; we are open to negotiating on that—not, however, at the expense of operational security. It is our view that the expansion of the PJCIS to include crossbenchers puts that operational security at risk, and we are not prepared to support this bill or any other bill that puts that at risk.
If the government still wasn't clear following the letter from Senator Cash and me, in which we offered to negotiate on these questions, in the Senate when this was considered on Thursday last week I again made our position clear. In a meeting with the Attorney-General's office on Friday, Senator Cash and our staff made clear to his staff what our position is.
I think it has now dawned on the government—only this morning—that this bill now cannot pass this chamber unless the government is willing to compromise with the coalition on PJCIS membership or unless the government is willing to compromise with the Greens on their amendments. Let's be really clear on this. The two amendments that the Greens propose would remove two of the recommendations made by Dennis Richardson, which we accepted when we were in government, which you have accepted now you are in government, which have bipartisan support and which are straightforward, uncontroversial, appropriate and necessary. So the government has a pathway before it: either do a deal with the Greens on national security and remove from this bill bipartisan recommendations made by Dennis Richardson, and, therefore, put our national security at risk; or do a deal with the coalition and maintain the bipartisan culture and ethos of PJCIS and get this legislation passed today. There are important provisions of this bill which should be enforced, and the sooner the better. But we cannot support them while the government makes this unilateral change to the PJCIS membership.
This is my final appeal to the government after many appeals: please pause on this. Please do not proceed with these PJCIS changes which were not recommended by any review, not recommended by any report and not recommended by any independent expert. The government has only been able to say it has been a 'decision of government' and has provided no evidence as to why it is necessary. I really appeal to you: support the opposition's amendments. I will move two of them, if necessary, in sequence.
The first one would simply omit the changes to the PJCIS membership from this bill and leave all other provisions of this bill intact. That doesn't mean that there aren't going to be other opportunities to have discussion about PJCIS membership; that could take place as part of the committee's upcoming inquiry into the Intelligence Services Legislation Amendment Bill 2023 that the government has introduced, or as part of that legislation, if the government believes that is necessary. But let's sit down and have a conversation on a bipartisan basis and maintain the very strong working relationship we've had on the committee; let's do it that way.
Alternatively, if the government is absolutely insistent that we must expand the size of the PJCIS membership, and if they are insistent that they need the flexibility to appoint different members of each chamber—from the House and from the Senate—then we have an alternate, fallback position. That is to permit the increase in the size of the PJCIS but to put in the IS Act for the first time that—as the convention has always been, save for one exception—that those members come from the parties of government: that members of the government and members of the opposition make up the committee. That will allow the government to expand the membership of the PJCIS and allow the government to choose members from whichever chamber they believe is necessary—within limitations; there should be senator and members, as a minimum, on the committee—and it will only prevent the government from putting a crossbencher or a minor party member on the committee. That is the only change it will make. We really think these are two reasonable propositions which solve the problem the government has got itself into today. We are offering to work on this on a bipartisan basis to solve this problem, and I really urge the government to consider it.
~~Murray Watt~~
The government will be opposing the amendments foreshadowed and moved by Senator Paterson. Probably the best way for me to address them is by referring to the amendments that are contained in the bill that the government is moving which provide the rationale for the government's position on the bill itself and also on Senator Paterson's amendments. The current act does not require the PJCIS to be composed of a certain number of non-government members, but the amendments that are contained in the bill being moved by the government will introduce a requirement that at least four of the members of the committee are non-government members. The bill does not change the current appointment process from members to the committee under subclause 14 of schedule 1 of the act and the bill does not change the ability to appoint any member of parliament to the committee. As I say, the amendments in the bill being moved by the government will introduce a requirement that at least four of the members of the committee are non-government members, to reflect the fact that this is a committee that does operate on a bipartisan basis.
Independent members and members of minor political parties will remain able to be appointed to the committee under the proposed changes, just as they are presently able to be appointed to the committee. The nomination of members to the committee is a matter for the Prime Minister. The appointment of members to the committee is a matter for the parliament, but, as I say, the government will be opposing the amendments being put by Senator Paterson.
~~David Shoebridge~~
The Greens oppose these amendments coming from the coalition. Rather remarkably, the contributions from the coalition ignore the existing law. The law requires the make-up of this committee to reflect the make-up of the parliament. It actually says that expressly in black-and-white. We have a series of propositions put by the coalition to urge the government to populate this committee with breach of the clear legislative requirements that are being made up in a manner that represents the diversity in the parliament. It is quite remarkable, seeing a major political party urging the government of the day to not only maintain a political club but to do so in clear breach of the law on a national security committee.
When this committee was established, the parliament turned its mind to the idea that it would be receiving significant amount of privileged secret information, so, rather than create a club where only a select subset of the parliament would get access to it, the parliament expressly legislated that if you're going to have a committee which receives rafts of secret information and then provides reports to the parliament on how it should respond, the parliament said, 'Well, that committee should be reflective of the parliament.'
We have now had the coalition, both today and on Friday, state that this committee should statutorily exclude anybody who is not from the coalition or the Labor Party. They use this term 'parties of government' as though the coalition is to be trusted. This is the same political party that made Scott Morrison the Prime Minister, who had so many breaches of integrity that the entire nation, except for a tiny subset of hard-right ultras in the coalition, breathed an enormous sigh of relief that he was no longer in a position to have access to that kind of information. This is the same coalition that in its fringe 'cooker' section is working on QAnon conspiracies, and sharing QAnon conspiracies as part of their political project. And the coalition say that they are somehow a trusty set of hands on national security.
Let's be utterly clear about it. There are a bunch of people elected as coalition MPs who cheered on the riots attacking democracy in the United States. There are a bunch of people in the coalition who cheer on the attempts by Donald Trump and his mates to subvert democracy in the United States. And there are a bunch of people in the coalition, elected into this chamber and into other parliaments around the country, who would cheer on the subversion of democracy in Australia. And they say that they're somehow to be trusted, uniquely trusted, with security and defence information. It would almost be laughable if it were not so serious.
What have we seen from 17 years of unanimous like-mindedness, the unchallenging club? What have we seen? Well, we've got a little bit of an insight into the outcomes of that in today's media. We're seeing billions and billions of dollars stripped out of our defence and security budget by unscrupulous consultants who realise that nobody is checking. They realise that the bulk of what goes for scrutiny of the defence expenditure and defence programs in this country happens in this secret club that Senator Paterson used to chair and is so in love with. The secret club chaired by Senator Paterson, in the course of his entire occupation of the role of chair, somehow missed a multibillion-dollar rort of defence coming from KPMG. How many times did KPMG turn up and say they loved what you were doing—less scrutiny, more money, less power? Somehow or other it just passed them by on their secret committee.
The same secret committee signed off on the French submarines deal and said it was so important and we should urgently do that. They loved it. That was $5 billion and a decade wasted. Who has been held to account for that? Nobody on the secret committee, nobody in the defence establishment. Isn't it going well? Is this the same secret committee that was in charge of oversight of the national security when the 2016 white paper was delivered that said there was a mess, and when the Defence Strategic Review was delivered, which says that pretty much no part of defence is working, that they're not meeting the right strategic challenges and they couldn't procure their way to a shared meal in a pub? Is that the same secret committee that's been doing such a great job? It turns out it is, and they want to just keep the club operating. Any objective view of it says that it's not working.
If this amendment, sometimes referred to as the Wilkie amendment, works its way through, and there is at least one critical voice, one critical mind, on the committee, how could that be a backward step? I know that there was tittering from the coalition benches when there was a discussion of Andrew Wilkie being a whistleblower. There was a little frisson of tension from the coalition. Imagine putting a whistleblower on it. Imagine putting somebody on it who had firm integrity, who stood up when they saw an unlawful war coming, who put their liberty on the line to call out what has ended up being a two-decade debacle from our country and our allies in Iraq. Imagine putting someone with that kind of integrity on a national oversight committee. That's something the coalition could never come at, putting somebody like that on the committee—just one critical voice, one critical mind. The thought of having even just one critical mind on this committee has given the coalition a serious case of kittens. They've all been birthing kittens for the last 48 hours at the prospect that there might be one critical mind. We aren't so frightened of democracy. We kind of like a critical mind being on this committee, and we will be opposing this amendment.
~~Long debate text truncated.~~