Australian Security Intelligence Organisation Amendment Bill (No. 2) 2025

Senator ANTIC (South Australia) (12:13): I rise to oppose the Australian Security Intelligence Organisation Amendment Bill (No. 2) 2025. This bill doesn't merely fine tune existing arrangements. It breaks in new powers and makes permanent extraordinary intrusions on the liberty of Australians which were always intended to be temporary.

In doing so, it flies in the face of the rule of law. Let's be clear about what is being proposed here, about what these powers actually are and what they do. Compulsory questioning warrants allow ASIO to compel a person who may never have been charged with an offence or may never be charged with an offence to appear and answer questions under threat of criminal penalty.

Failure to answer in itself becomes a criminal offence. Telling your family, your friends, your wife or your husband about the situation becomes an offence. These are not ordinary investigative tools.

They sit well outside the framework of the traditional criminal justice system. The original incarnation was introduced in the shadow of 11 September 2001 as a temporary measure to fill a specific gap in our security services. Parliament since then has repeatedly extended them under successive sunset clauses precisely because they are so exceptional.

As it currently stands, the bill removes that sunset clause entirely, and I understand there may be a push to return that sunset clause, which is a good thing, but it is also, in the framework of this bill, a very small thing. Powers that were meant to expire becoming a permanent feature of the legal landscape is a problem. Extraordinary powers should never become ordinary.

History shows that temporary emergency powers have a long and chequered history and habit of becoming permanent features. Worse still, the bill actually expands the reach of adult questioning warrants. Currently, that framework is limited to espionage, politically motivated violence and foreign interference, but the definition of an adult questioning matter will now be broadened under this bill to include sabotage and, most alarmingly, the promotion of communal violence.

There are other categories of attacks on Australia's defence system and serious threats to territorial and border integrity. Some of these new categories are concerning in their breadth and vagueness. 'Promotion of communal violence' is particularly elastic. What does it actually mean?

What does it capture? Does it capture passionate political speech, advocacy that offends certain groups, legitimate protest or religious expression that crosses an often ill-defined line? In a free society, the state shouldn't be handed an open ended power to compel citizens to answer questions about speech or association that falls short of actual criminality.

Vague drafting is the enemy of the rule of law. Citizens should be able to know with reasonable certainty where the line is drawn. This bill, on any measure, blurs that line and makes it very difficult for people to understand whether they could simply be detained and questioned against their will.

The bill also retains the capacity to subject children as young as 14 to these processes. On its surface, that alone should give this chamber reason to pause. Yes, this legislation makes some amendments to prescribed authorities and reporting, but they're modest and they don't cure the fundamental problem, which is the absence of robust, independent judicial oversight.

There always should be a tension between compulsory interrogation and the right to silence. That is something which underpins the very nature of our adversarial system of justice. National security is obviously vital, and I think no-one disputes that ASIO has a very difficult and a very important job.

But security which is purchased at the price of permanent, expanded and coercive powers that can sweep up people who have committed no crime is a false bargain. The rule of law requires that the state's most intrusive rules remain exceptional, tightly confined, regularly scrutinised and subject to genuine sunset or renewal by the parliament, not just quietly normalised and not just quietly allowed to creep into the norm.

So I simply won't support a bill that entrenches extraordinary powers at the behest of becoming ordinary. Those powers expand the scope with vague language and treat the fundamental protections of the law as optional. Extraordinary powers should never become ordinary, and I simply will not support this bill.