Mr LEO McLEAY (10:10 AM) —Like the previous speaker, I was a member of the Joint Select Committee on Intelligence Services that looked at the Intelligence Services Bill 2001. The committee did its job quite well. The government and opposition members on the committee cooperated with each other to come up with a report which we debated in this House a few weeks ago. The government has accepted most of the recommendations in that report and that shows that there is some movement here. It is particularly gratifying to me, as a member of the committee, that the government has done that.

As we know, this bill will place Australia's foreign intelligence collection agencies, ASIS and the Defence Signals Directorate, on a statutory basis. As members are probably aware, ASIS was originally established in 1952 by an executive minute and for 20 years very little was known about the organisation by anyone outside of the government. An article in the Daily Telegraph in 1972 exposed its existence and since that time there have been numerous incidents and sundry inquiries into the aspects of various intelligence agencies, and of ASIS in particular. This legislation is, at long last, an attempt to regularise ASIS and its activities and to put it on a firm legislative basis.

It is very appropriate that we are debating this legislation now after we have seen the outcome of last week's attack in America and the talk of the failure of the intelligence services in the US. That seemed to be a particular failure of human intelligence, and there is now talk in the US that they are going to go back to what some people might think were the rather irregular good old days of the CIA. There has been talk that the intelligence services will have to cooperate with criminals and that they might have to enrol criminals and unsavoury people. In the words of one of the leading American officials, `It's a bad world out there and we've got to get down in it.'

This legislation makes sure that ASIS and DSD do not get down to doing illegal things in that bad world. It is very important for Australians to understand that there is now a legislative footing for this organisation, that this legislation will spell out the things that ASIS can and cannot do and that it will spell out the role of ministers and the parliamentary committee in overseeing the body. That is probably a very good thing for the organisation because too often with intelligence services people outside have an idea that they are up to everything—and all sorts of things—and that is often as much an impediment to the way these organisations work as it is a help. Putting ASIS on a legislative basis is a good thing for the body.

During the committee inquiry I learnt of the very high level of dedication of the people who run the security services in Australia. As long as we attract such people to run them, I do not think we will see any of the excesses that we sometimes see of intelligence agencies overseas. To have a parliamentary committee having oversight of ASIS and DSD will be a good thing. I have noticed as a member of the ASIO committee that the more open the intelligence services are with members of parliament, the more confident we feel with them. The model of the ASIO committee has been a very good way for parliament and for the government to regulate the security services.

I remember that in the seventies and the eighties all sorts of conspiracies abounded about what ASIO were doing here, what ASIO were doing there, that they were keeping files on everybody and that they were doing this, that and something else. But since the legislation was changed and ASIO was put on a more formal basis, there has not been that sort of paranoia and there has not been that hysteria among some sections of the community in Australia. I think the model for regulating ASIO, the internal security service, will be a successful model for regulating the work of ASIS and DSD. The role of the joint parliamentary committee that will be set up will also help to dispel some of the ideas that people have about what these organisations do.

The amendments the government has accepted to the bill that were put forward by the committee will also strengthen the bill and strengthen the rights of individuals. Explicit provisions have been put in the bill to prohibit political activities by ASIS. The immunity provisions have been tightened up because the committee was concerned that the immunity provisions in the original bill were extremely wide. The work of the committee was very useful in that when that was brought to the attention of the agency they said that was not their intention. They then worked with the committee with a proposal which would overcome what I am now willing to believe was an unintended consequence of the legislation. If the legislation had not gone to a parliamentary committee for discussion, the bill would have gone through in its original form, which would have had that very wide classification of an immunity of a person who was nearly any person who was helping ASIS to do anything in Australia.

The provisions of this bill make it also very clear that ASIS cannot get themselves involved in a lot of the things that we have seen more proactive people talk about in the US in recent days. I think to have that laid out in legislation for ASIS is a good protection for them, because there will always be people who think that in these James Bond sorts of areas everybody is out there trying to be James Bond. Members of the committee found to their relief that ASIS do not see themselves as James Bond or M or Q or whoever is sitting in the officials' box and that they do not have those views of the way that the organisation ought to work. But it is important that it is legislated to show that, because it is as much a safeguard for them as it is for the rest of us.

We have provisions for the Leader of the Opposition to be briefed by ASIS. We have provisions in the bill to ensure that the rights of Australians who might come to the attention of the organisation are protected, and we also have a much stronger definition of what the immunities are for ASIS officers. It is important that people do not get too carried away with wondering what those immunities are. They are designed basically to protect people from the conspiracy laws here in Australia. There is no doubt that some of the work that ASIS do will by definition be illegal in the country in which they do it, but there are laws now in Australia that provide that, if Australians conspire to break the law in another country, that can also be a crime here. While one would not want to see planning committees in the foreign affairs building being carted off to jail for considering something that may have been illegal in some other country, one also does not want to see planning committees in the foreign affairs building deciding to go out and burglarise people here in Australia. It is fairly clear from the way the legislation is now drafted that the vast majority of that work will be about planning things overseas and very little to do with people actually breaking anything other than the conspiracy laws here in Australia. But the original draft of the bill would have allowed people to do a lot more than that.

All in all, the legislation is very timely because it makes the point that the external security services and the internal security services here in this country are not in a position, and will not be in a position, to do the things that some of the more cowboy elements in America are suggesting that their security services ought to do. The framework in which they should operate is very explicitly laid out now, and I have no doubt that that is probably as much a relief to them as it is to us.

It was also an interesting experience to see the heads of at least four of the major spy organisations in the country sitting at the table, if the fellow from the Defence Department does not mind being referred to as a spy. The Director of DSD, the Director-General of ASIO and the Director-General of ASIS appeared before a parliamentary committee and gave frank evidence in public. I congratulate my fellow committee members for taking the decision at the beginning that all evidence would be taken in public. If we had not done that—if we had had in camera hearings—it would have led people to believe that some secret deal was being negotiated and that it was not all above board. The evidence the witnesses gave to the committee was frank, and it helped us to come to those unanimous decisions. There are not too many committee reports of this nature that go through this parliament. My recollection is that there has never been a unanimous decision out of an area that has as much contention as this area sometimes does. The committee members worked well together, and our job was helped by the fact that the officials were frank and honest with the committee. There were some rather humorous asides, particularly on the issue of who has the safe that disappeared from the Parliamentary Counsel's office. In all, it was a very useful exercise.

I look forward to the work that the joint committee will do. I hope that the members who get elected to that committee will take their roles very seriously. The people who have been on the ASIO committee over the years have done that and have achieved a good working relationship with the security services and have provided critical support without being captured. If this new committee develops that type of relationship with the agencies, it will be useful both to the agencies and to the parliament. I will be interested to see how the legislation works. I think there should be a review of the legislation in a few years time to see how it is working. You can never be sure of these things. If people know there will be another time line to look at it, it will focus people on it. It would be useful for the parliament and whoever is in government in a couple of years time to look at how this legislation is working. The closer we can make this legislation mirror the ASIO legislation, the better template we will have for the other organisations coming under our purview now. I commend the bill to the House.