Secrecy Provisions Amendment (Sunsetting Provision) Bill 2026

Senator DEAN SMITH (Western Australia) (11:14): I rise to speak on the Secrecy Provisions Amendment (Sunsetting Provision) Bill 2026. This is a short bill, and it does one thing: it extends the operation of section 122.4 of the Criminal Code by six months from 29 June 2026 to 29 December 2026. Section 122.4 gives criminal effect to a range of Commonwealth nondisclosure duties.

It makes it an offence for Commonwealth officers and others engaged by Commonwealth entities to disclose information in breach of duties imposed elsewhere under Commonwealth law. Those duties protect sensitive information that Australians rightly expect the government to safeguard, including tax records, health information and other confidential data held in trust.

Without this bill, section 122.4 sunsets on 29 June—today. If that occurs before parliament settles the broader reforms, a gap would open up in the criminal law protecting that information. The coalition will support this bill.

We support it because allowing such a gap to emerge, even temporarily, would not be responsible. But this bill is not the reform itself; the substantive reform sits in the companion legislation, the Secrecy Provisions Amendment (Repealing Offences) Bill 2026. The coalition does not support that bill in its current form, which is why this extension is necessary.

Once this extension passes, the existing law continues to operate for another six months, no offence lapses, no protection disappears and no regulatory gap arises. The current framework remains in force while parliament properly considers the reforms intended to replace it. This bill gets the sequence right.

It preserves the existing protections while parliament completes its work on the legislation intended to replace them. For that reason, the coalition supports the Secrecy Provisions Amendment (Sunsetting Provision) Bill 2026. We support the continuity it provides and the opportunity it creates for parliament to properly scrutinise the substantive reforms, and we'll use that time to argue that those reforms must be settled before they are enacted, be tested with stakeholders and return to parliament in a form that is genuinely ready to become the law of the Commonwealth.

On this basis, I commend the bill to the Senate.