Regulatory Reform Omnibus Bill 2026
Senator SHOEBRIDGE (New South Wales) (18:46): I indicate that my party won't be opposing the Regulatory Reform Omnibus Bill 2026. On a broader level, the various elements in the bill proposing a tell-us-once model, so that information does not have to be repeatedly handed to agencies, has some sense in it, of course being mindful that people's privacy and protections for their data are always central to the Greens' concerns on regulatory reform.
But I won't be addressing that at length. What I will be speaking to in the second reading debate is really the content of a Greens amendment that speaks to a lack in this bill. The bill in part deals with the information that needs to be provided by people when they enter Australia.
I'm sure many of us in this chamber have experienced the joy of filling in the Incoming Passenger Card. It's not just Australian citizens who fill that in. Foreign nationals of course are also required to fill in the Incoming Passenger Card.
Other countries gather far more information that is relevant to their national interest when people cross the border and move into their country, either as a citizen returning or as a foreigner seeking to visit or spend time in that country. One of the key pieces of information that is not sought by the Australian government is whether people have fought for foreign militaries.
Of course, even Australian citizens are not prohibited under Australian law from fighting with foreign militaries. Whether that is a sensible provision is not a matter that I intend to explore in relation to this amendment. But I firmly believe, and my party, the Greens, firmly believe, that the Australian government should know, if somebody is coming into this country, whether they have fought for a foreign military, whether they've fought in a foreign conflict and the circumstances related to their engagement in a foreign war or a foreign conflict.
It is remarkable that the Department of Home Affairs does not even pretend to keep track of how many Australians are serving with foreign militaries. Nor do they routinely track people coming to Australia who have fought for a foreign military. It is a matter that Home Affairs, our border control, seems to totally ignore.
The Greens are proposing that information contained on the passenger card should include some basic questions. I reference the amendments moved on sheet 4039. They include: (1) The information that must be provided by a person entering Australia … includes … answers to the following questions: (a) "Have you been a member of a foreign military within the last 12 months?"; (b) if the answer to the question … is affirmative—"For each foreign military you have been a member of within the last 12 months, what is the name of the foreign military of which you were a member?".
(2) The regulations must provide for the questions … to be included in the person's passenger card … for the purposes of— Australian law under the Migration Act. Why is this necessary? First of all, this would be a simple change to allow the Australian government to keep track of what the Greens believe should be critical information about Australian citizens and foreigners seeking to come to this country.
At the moment, we simply have a black hole—zero information. We just had at the Sydney Marathon a member of the Golani Brigade of the Israeli military running. That is the unit responsible for, amongst other things, the killing of 15 medical staff and first responders in Rafah, Gaza, in March 2025.
Nobody checked. Nobody asked. The information that a member of the Golani Brigade, amongst other Israeli military, was running in the Sydney Marathon wasn't picked up by Home Affairs because they didn't want to pick it up.
They obviously didn't want to raise the issue of whether it's appropriate to have people who have been engaged in what the Greens believe is a genocide, what millions of Australians believe is a genocide and what international tribunals and bodies of the UN have found to be a genocide. Home Affairs didn't want to know, because then they'd have to start asking inconvenient questions such as, 'Is it appropriate for people who have been part of a military engaged in obscene war crimes to come to Australia?' Millions of Australians would say, no, it's deeply inappropriate.
The way Home Affairs under Labor avoids dealing with that question is 'don't ask; don't tell'. It's the same unprincipled approach that Labor takes to whether or not the US brings nuclear weapons into this country: Don't ask. Don't tell.
We'd rather not know. You just do your thing. Critically, the information about those members of a foreign military wasn't uncovered by Home Affairs.
It wasn't raised by the government. It was raised by a Facebook post that they put on. Not only is it about members of foreign countries coming here; we also know that some 500 Australians, as of March last year, were in the Israeli military.
We don't know that from Home Affairs, because Home Affairs don't check. Think of that. Five hundred Australians of military age went to Israel and fought for the Israeli military, and Australia has not checked—doesn't review it, doesn't care, doesn't look at it.
How did we find that out? Not from Home Affairs but from an Israeli FOI done by an Israeli NGO who was troubled about the number of foreign fighters and was trying to track where the people who'd been fighting in Gaza had come from. We could speak more about that obscene conflict in Gaza, the war crimes happening in Lebanon and the Israeli military.
But I want to be clear, on behalf of my party, that we are equally concerned about members of the Russian military who are engaged in conflict and what have been repeated reports of war crimes in Ukraine. Look at the conflict that's happening in Sudan. Look at other foreign militaries engaged in war crimes—the US military officers who fired upon a school in Iran, members of the Iranian military.
This is information that should be available to Australia to make decisions about people coming to Australia, and Home Affairs does not track it. This amendment would be a simple change to address this. We've put forward the amendment that would require an incoming passenger to say if they've fought in a foreign military over the previous 12 months and, if so, which one.
The government may argue that the Australian travel declaration is primarily focused on customs enforcement and it's not appropriate to do here. However, the Australian travel declaration, which is the passenger card, also asks questions about criminal history, criminal antecedents and prohibited material. Asking whether or not you've engaged in military service over the past 12 months is not substantively different.
I would have thought that most people would assume the government would be checking to see if Australians are leaving to fight in foreign militaries—checking whether you're going and putting on a Russian uniform and fighting, checking whether someone's going off and putting on an Israeli uniform and fighting or checking whether someone's going and putting on a US uniform and fighting.
Most people would assume that this is checked by our government, but it's a head in the sand: don't ask; don't tell. It's all too tricky. There are conflicts that are in obvious breach of international law.
I've named some of them here: Russia's invasion of Ukraine and Israel's genocide in Gaza. At the moment, the US military is engaged in killing people on the high seas and extrajudicial murder. There's the US's unlawful attack on Iran.
It's very relevant—whether or not people have been engaged in wars where there seem to be no limits and where war crimes and obscene, unregulated violence and killing are the norm. Without oversight of Australians fighting in foreign militaries, we are potentially providing a safe haven for war criminals. These amendments are the first step to ensuring that we don't do that and that international law is adhered to.
When you come home to Australia, Border Force ask you if you've been hiking or been to a farm, but they don't ask you if you've been fighting in a war. How cooked is that? Chris Barrie, who served as Chief of the Defence Force from 1992 to 2002, said the lack of action from government on this is 'another example of the great Australian complacency', and he's damn right.
I don't always agree with Jennifer Parker. In fact, I think it would be fair to say that I very rarely agree with Jennifer Parker. But she was right when she said: When somebody is motivated to go overseas and fight in hostilities for a side that is not necessarily aligned to Australian values, they're going over there and potentially being more radicalised towards those values.
And then bringing back someone who has been through that experience, who has engaged in a conflict and fighting for a side whose values don't align with Australia, can potentially pose security risks in Australia because they're bringing that skill set, that experience, that radicalisation back to Australia. She's absolutely right. Think about someone who fought in the Golani Brigade and was part of a unit that killed 15 medical staff and first responders in Rafah.
Are they values that we would agree with? I don't believe so. Think about somebody who fought for the Russian military in the war in Ukraine.
Are they values that we would agree with? The Greens will move these amendments because we think these are questions that should be asked and we think there are checks and balances that should be put in place. I commend the amendments to the Senate.