Australian Security Intelligence Organisation Amendment Bill (No. 2) 2025
Senator HODGINS-MAY (Victoria) (12:34): First of all, I wish to associate myself with the comments made by my colleague Senator Shoebridge, who I think laid out exactly what is wrong with this complete power grab happening today under the cloak of darkness. Once again, this week, we are seeing Labor and the coalition team up to do a dirty deal to ram this bill, the Australian Security Intelligence Organisation Amendment Bill (No. 2) 2025, through the Senate today, with debate being limited to just one hour.
That's one hour to debate the biggest expansion to ASIO's coercive interrogation and detention powers in more than two decades. One hour! That is not democracy.
This is an extraordinary abuse of parliamentary process, and people in this place, on both sides, should hang their heads in shame. I see they're not even in here to listen to this debate or to engage in this debate. If this legislation is so defensible— Senator Green: On a point of order, the senator is reflecting on other senators' presence inside or outside of the chamber.
Senator Shoebridge also made comments about people being on or off the speaking lists which were misleading the Senate. I'd ask the senator to withdraw. The ACTING DEPUTY PRESIDENT ( Senator Grogan ): Senator Hodgins-May, can you please withdraw those comments.
Senator HODGINS-MAY: I withdraw. Members of the coalition and the Labor Party know that these powers will alarm Australians. That is why we're not having a debate.
That is why debate is being limited to one hour. That is why this bill isn't going to committee. This overreach is exactly what parliament is supposed to prevent: governments accruing extraordinary powers without proper scrutiny or without public debate.
They do it while the public's attention is elsewhere. The public are grieving the fact that 230,000 people are going to be kicked off the NDIS. The public are grieving the fact that, despite years and years of advocacy to strengthen gambling laws and gambling advertising laws in this country to keep people safe, they got a dog's breakfast that won't work.
People are distracted. On the final hours of sitting, on the last day of the fortnight, the government and coalition are teaming up for another dirty deal. Shame on them.
This timing, of course, isn't incidental. They are trying to bury a deeply controversial expansion of secret state powers underneath other major political news. The substance of this bill should alarm everyone who cares about democracy and who cares about freedom of speech and the right to protest—fundamental principles to a healthy, functioning democracy.
Under these laws, ASIO can detain and interrogate someone who has not been charged with a crime. They don't even need to be suspected of committing a crime. You cannot make this stuff up.
You can be compelled to answer questions, and refusing to answer can carry a prison sentence of up to five years. That's five years in prison for failing to answer questions, and you haven't even been suspected of committing a crime. As my colleague Senator Shoebridge articulated so clearly, you are prohibited from telling your family, your lawyer or anyone else about what happened—why you were plucked off the street, why you were detained.
Imagine those powers being exercised against someone who has done absolutely nothing wrong. How intimidating. How terrifying.
Imagine being taken away, interrogated by a secret intelligence agency, denied the opportunity to speak publicly about it and face five years in prison if you refuse to answer questions. That's not the Australia we know. That's not the Australia we're in here to protect.
These are not minor administrative powers. They go directly to the relationship between the individual and the state. A 14-year-old could be detained and questioned by ASIO without a lawyer and without court oversight.
This should absolutely horrify us. The new politically motivated violence trigger makes that even more alarming. That phrase risks drawing legitimate political movements, protests and dissent into the national security apparatus.
We've already seen the Palestine solidarity movement subjected to extraordinary political and national security scrutiny. Who knows where else this will go? Senator Shoebridge raised some examples, but what about welfare recipients?
What about disabled people, who are the very people that this government has shown it is willing to beat down on time and time again? Well, let's see where these laws end up and who they end up interrogating. People have a democratic right to march, to organise, to campaign, to criticise governments and to demand political change.
Freedom of speech is not just the right to say things that the government likes. Freedom of speech matters most when people are saying things that governments find uncomfortable—thin skins. The right to protest matters most when people are protesting against those in power.
If people start worrying about whether participation in a protest could put them on ASIO's radar, then you've already begun to chill democratic participation. If that power can be exercised secretly, with limited ability for the person affected to challenge it, of course that danger is even greater, and it is unacceptable. This is why parliamentary scrutiny matters so much, and the fact that you've sidelined that today is an indictment.
Today, Labor and the coalition have decided Australians deserve one hour of debate on this power grab. There is something deeply perverse about using the guillotine to rush through legislation that gives itself, the state, greater powers to restrict people's freedom. The government should be making the case for these powers in the sunlight, not passing them in the shadows.
There is a particular hypocrisy here. In 2003, Prime Minister Anthony Albanese spoke against the expansion of these sorts of ASIO powers—how much changes in 23 years. The Greens are trying to remove the worst elements of this bill, and we will oppose any expansion of these dangerous powers.
National security should keep Australians safe. It should not become a back doorstep for suppressing dissent. The real test of democracy is not whether the government can exercise power; it's whether they're willing to constrain their own power.
Today, Labor and the coalition are dismally failing that test, and Australians will remember this political cowardice, this power grab and this dodgy deal with the coalition—one of many this week—at the next election.