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

Senator FARUQI (New South Wales—Deputy Leader of the Australian Greens) (12:42): I rise to add my voice to the chorus of opposition to the Australian Security Intelligence Organisation Amendment Bill (No. 2) 2025. Community members, civil society and legal experts share the Greens' opposition to the major parties' continued efforts in this legislation to undermine our democracy and our civil liberties.

I want to associate myself with the excellent speeches from Senator Hodgins-May and Senator Shoebridge. These two parties, the coalition and the Labor Party, were not satisfied by screwing over millions of people this week. They want to tighten the screws even further.

All you can do and all you can think about is how we can harm more and more people who live in this country. Why are you here? What is your purpose?

Pack up. Get out. What we have before us are amendments that lock in and expand the worst of the extraordinary Howard-era laws that allow ASIO to force someone who isn't accused of any crime to immediately submit to secret questioning for up to 40 hours.

If you're lucky, you're allowed a lawyer during questioning. But ASIO can get approval to strip you of that very basic right too. Where are we living now?

Think about what you are doing. If you do get a lawyer these powers will still hamstring them. ASIO can redact their copy of the original warrant, prevent them from asking questions or boot them from the interrogation altogether.

This is the gravity of what this legislation is going to do. How much time do we have, Senator Shoebridge? We've got one hour to debate this.

The two sides are very quiet on this because they just want to push it through. All of this is without any judicial oversight of the warrant issue. It's just the rubber stamp of whichever of Australia's notoriously compliant Labor or Liberal attorneys-general happen to be in government and on the ASIO director's speed dial at that particular time.

It's clear that these powers should never have existed in the first place. That's a view I know was shared on record by many Labor members in this place before they decided that they preferred the admiration of national security hawks and warmongers over protecting the democratic rights and civil liberties of ordinary citizens. The government's quiet move to reinsert the sunset clause is a symptom of their confused approach to these powers and this legislation.

The Labor Party doesn't know who they are any more. That's pretty clear. It was reckless in the extreme to attempt to bake in the worst of the existing legislation's attacks on Australians' human rights by removing the sunset clause that should have seen these laws expire long ago.

It's good that it will stay in, but we maintain that these laws should still be allowed to lapse and should be subject to rigorous parliamentary oversight and regular independent review in the meantime. In this spirit of recklessness, the bill expands the list of matters on which people can be compulsorily questioned to include the very nebulous 'promotion of communal violence' and 'protection of Australia's territorial and border integrity from serious threats'.

ASIO and Home Affairs told the government they didn't think the latter was necessary. We know who is going to be cracked down on by these laws. It is those fighting for justice for Palestine.

It is those fighting for climate or for anything else that the government doesn't like. The submission of the councils for civil liberties to the PJCIS inquiry puts clearly the alarming consequences of these changes, saying that they create 'an incentive for the executive to conduct fishing expeditions against individuals who could not otherwise be investigated under ordinary criminal procedure'.

Given the breadth of the concept of political violence, the councils are concerned that the effect of the division is to transform ASIO from an intelligence agency into a secret police force. This is what is happening here. You are making a secret police force.

The president of the New South Wales Council of Civil Liberties said a few weeks ago: The expanded scope of ASIO powers proposed in this bill could theoretically capture activities related to political protest and represents a massive overreach of emergency anti-terror laws that has long been warned against. But you guys never pay heed to any evidence or anything the experts tell you.

You just do what the hell you want to, and, nine times out of 10, it is bad. It is bad for communities, it is bad for people, it is bad for migrants, it is bad for those who want to use their democratic right to protest, and it is bad for this country. History teaches us that the only reliable way to prevent governments from using such powers to suppress political dissent is for them not to have them in the first place.

We know that suppression always comes for the marginalised and people of colour first, and it will again this time around. I am opposed to any effort to infringe on the rights of people to associate, to organise or to protest. The lack of transparency and accountability in this legislation falls far short of the basic democratic expectations.

That Labor feel they can rush it through the Senate in just one day shows how confident Labor and the Liberals are in having normalised secrecy and national security excess over the last two decades, as they've marched in lockstep to the US drums of war. The Greens don't for one second buy the major party view that what is done in the name of national security should be done without criticism or care for the path down which the country is being led.

So we will be vocal and we will be loud and proud against attacks on democratic rights for communities and people that live here. We will not shy away from that. This bill is, of course, just another example of Labor's slide to the right on democratic freedoms.

We see it in their willingness to cosy up to the United States and its far-right leaders. While we say Australia should be a voice for peace and justice not a lapdog for militarism, the government are all too happy to put the imperial interests of our so-called allies ahead of the civil liberties of Australians. We see Labor's slide to the right in the culture of secrecy that results in Labor teaming up with the Liberals to evade scrutiny on AUKUS.

We see it in the deals they cut—at least three we've seen it just this week in the deals that they cut. We see it in the deals that they cut, again, with their pals—who but the Liberals—to rush through legislation that is chilling political debate, protest, civil rights and people speaking up about civil rights abuses across the world, especially justice for Palestine.

We saw it as Australia fell in line behind the United States and Israel as devastating wars were waged on Gaza, Lebanon and Iran, killing and maiming tens of thousands, displacing hundreds of thousands and destroying entire communities. Instead of standing up instead of standing up for civil liberties at home and standing up for international law and human rights around the world, Prime Minister Albanese and his government toe the line for war-mongering countries and egomaniacal leaders.

That's what the Labor Party of today is about. What Australia's defence and intelligence organisations need is more transparency and accountability, not the impunity granted by this legislation. At their heart, these laws represent a threat—a threat to our democracy and civil liberties.

I'm so proud to join my Greens colleagues in voting against these threats to communities who want to use their democratic right to protest and to speak out and in voting against this bill.