Telecommunications and Other Legislation Amendment Bill 2025

Mr JOYCE (New England) (18:20): I concur with those remarks. I just want to add to the closing remarks of the member for Riverina that what we've seen is that obviously the set-up that we had in dealing with this was the correct one. It was changed by the incoming government, and it's had to be changed back.

But I want to concentrate on one thing, and that's paedophile rings and having to track these things down. It is an abhorrence that is more pronounced now. It has always been there, but with the capacity for people to go online, with the capacity for people to organise across national boundaries, we have to have the utmost forensic intelligence to track these monsters down.

As we've seen in the notes, and I know the member for Riverina quoted it, there are about 226 new cases a day. For any person who's had children or has young children it's probably one of your greatest fears. It's your greatest fear all the time.

When you're out in the community, you ask: 'Who is that person? What is that threat?' Unfortunately, you do have to be vigilant against it. I have huge admiration for the police officers and for those who actually have to follow these nefarious, evil people through the dark web—through the onion routers and down into the dark web—without getting affected themselves.

When they're trying to track these monsters down—and they are monsters; they are total and utter monsters—these officers have to be supervised so that any effect on them is also managed. What we have here, in the Telecommunications and Other Legislation Amendment Bill 2025, is yet another mechanism that we hope will give greater efficacy to our continual pursuit of these people.

What we see with the continued discovery of paedophiles is they're obviously still there, no matter what we do. There's still a burgeoning filth that is threatening what is probably the most sacred thing you can have, which is a child. The other part of this that we have to be very aware of is the circumstance that Australia now sees itself in.

There was a good article in the Australian today where Andrew Shearer talked about the issues that are now happening with the intrusions, the hacking into the lives of everyday Australians, predominantly by communist China. We also know in the past it's come from Russia, it's come from Iran, it's come from North Korea and it's probably come from other malevolent forces.

This also is incredibly insidious. The capacity for people with ulterior purposes to gain access to personal details, to be able to manipulate those details, to put misinformation out into the public square—I'm not talking about misinformation about climate or something like that but misinformation that can actually change governments and change the direction of where things are going.

These two need to be intercepted; these two need to be dealt with. One of the things Mr Shearer said that I find quite alarming is: Confidence in multinational institutions is weakening. The military balance is shifting against the West and deterrence is eroding.

Our adversaries are exploiting our preference for restraint and de-escalation and leveraging coercion, cyber attacks, sabotage and disinformation to test us without triggering outright conflict. Our nation's capacity to have oversight over telecommunications also segues into our nation's capacity to deal with what is already a prominent covert attack on Australia.

This is already in train. It's already happening. It's not going to happen; it's happening right now.

It's happening today. The previous coalition had to put forward a substantial amount of money—I think it was $10 billion—because we could see this, and even $10 billion is not enough. In conversations—because I'm not stupid; I knew we were going to lose government when we did—that I had with Labor Party people in the corridors, I remember saying just one thing: 'As you go into government, remember this: communist China'—I don't say 'the Chinese people'; the Chinese people are good people—'the totalitarian regime, is a danger.

It's not any sort of association with genetics; it's associated with policy. It's associated with the process of unilateral control by one person. That's always a danger.' I said, 'Remember communist China is not a threat; communist China is already here.

The issue is already here. It has already arrived, and how we deal with it is to be eternally vigilant.' What we hope we get with this is greater efficacy in that vigilance. If we were just to rest and to quietly think that this issue will somehow fade away, then the greatest threat and the greatest problem will be ours.

One of the processes that this can lead to if we do not have proper oversight is the total chaos that could be inflicted on our nation with things such as sleeper code. To give you an example, Deputy Speaker Freelander, I presume that you rate your wealth by numbers on a piece of paper. You don't have—maybe you do, but I doubt it—bars of gold in your roof; you don't have wads of cash stuck in your mattress.

What you have is the reliance that the figures you see back what you're worth. For the title on your house, I bet you don't even have a piece of paper anymore; I'd presume it's all online. I'm going to pose a scenario.

What would happen if people were clever enough in the online environment to make all those numbers disappear? You look at your bank account and there is no amount in it. You look at your title and there is no record of you owning a house.

All your records have disappeared. If you had to go to a bank and prove you had the money you thought you had, how would you do that? If you could create a whole range of that across a society, imagine the chaos you'd create.

Imagine the absolute chaos you'd be able to create in a nation. Imagine the view the nation would have of its own security. These are the sorts of things we have concerns about.

I'll give you another example, something that was put in the realms of conspiracy theories but now not so much. So many people today—this is a part of intermittent energy I have got no problems with—have solar panels on their roofs. However, one of the concerns we have now is if people are able to remotely control these and affect the inverters so that they don't switch off—they just heat—then they will catch on fire.

That means, as we always hear Minister Bowen speak about how many of these solar panels are going on roofs, if they're coming from China and communist China has the capacity to turn off their safety requirements, then you have a huge problem stuck on every roof throughout Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane, Adelaide—across Australia. This could be complete and utter chaos.

If you can make them catch on fire, I imagine that you can burn down the houses. It's the same thing with electric cars coming in. If you have the capacity to switch them off, it's same thing.

If you have the capacity to deal with the delay in the safety capacity of that car, to have its electronics overheat and catch on fire—if you can turn that off, you can create mass confusion in a nation. As they say, a war will start in the cyberworld, and it'll start in space. All of these other things that are envisaged—if you can turn off our reports in regard to weather, you also turn off the capacity for our airports to work and for our planes to work.

In all of this, we are playing a massive game of catch-up. As we have to as a trading country, we import products from sources that might have a malevolent interest in how they work with us, and we have to be absolutely vigilant in everything we do. We have to use every card that we've got to make sure we keep Australia safe.

It's not just from Mr Shearer; we've also heard in the past from Mr Burgess and before that from Mr Pezzullo. They have all said the same thing. All these people who've been in the realm of understanding the threats to our nation have the same thing to say.

It's no longer a conspiracy theory; it's no longer outlandish; it is in live play and happening now. I'm absolutely certain that those who are on the National Security Committee are fully aware of that. So any form of legislation we can bring in, such as the Telecommunications and Other Legislation Amendment Bill, that allows us the capacity for the better protection of Australia, the better understanding of anything—of getting any intel that we can as to what other people are up to in our nation—we must use.

In closing, I just want go to one thing that's in every town. It is the tobacco wars. In every town, just being flaunted in front of you, is the sale of illegal tobacco.

It's the burning down of people's houses. If you dare to bring it up, if you try to address it—I was talking to people in a regional town not that long ago, and I said, 'Why doesn't somebody do something about this?' and they said: 'You'd have to be the bravest person in town. They'll burn your house down if you approach them.' I have real concerns.

Obviously, we need to get inside what's happening in these criminal rings, but, at this point in time, we don't seem to have the desire, the capacity or the mechanism to touch them. It's perverse that you can walk down the main street of a town and find maybe three or four shops illegally selling tobacco, and no-one cares about it, or they're unable to do anything about it.

It also shows to other people walking down the street that the law is lost. There is no control over this. If they can do it in plain sight, how do we have confidence in other aspects of law enforcement?

How do we believe that you have the capacity to deal with other issues, other criminal activities, if you can't fix something that's right in front of your nose? If you look at the people serving in these tobacco shops, they look like they're opportunists. They don't look like geniuses, but they're obviously being organised.

They're getting their product from somewhere. They're selling their product out in the street. The actual incidence of smoking is going up.

The revenue that we were getting is falling through the floor, and our law enforcement is—I don't know—just completely unable to deal with it. I hope things such as this bill can assist in what is a much, much wider issue, and that is the lack of capacity Australia has to deal with some of the most pertinent issues, whether it's paedophilia, whether it's international pressures or whether it's domestic crime.

I hope we can actually manage them.