Mr ORGAN (12:33 PM) —I am pleased to rise to speak on the Australian Protective Service Amendment Bill 2003. The government and the opposition would have us believe this bill represents a mere routine and limited increase in the powers of the Australian Protective Service. Well, I am not as comfortable with this bill as the member for Barton is. The features of this bill, based on my reading, include new powers for the Australian Protective Service; no oversight of the service; attacks on the right to be silent; a reversal of the onus of proof, as contained in proposed section 18A(4); an opening-up of searching regimes; the issue that arises of the searching and questioning of children; no explicit limits to detention for the purposes of searching; and no automatic return of seized property even if the items are not proven to be of any danger. So this bill is over-intrusive and not balanced. Both the government and the opposition would have us believe these powers are entirely appropriate and necessary in response to the circumstances we find ourselves in post September 11 and the Bali bombing, circumstances in which we as a nation are participants in a new war against terrorism—a fact we so often hear from the government.

I have a different view as to the need for increased powers by the Australian Protective Service. The Australian Greens have a different view, and many of my constituents have a different view. I see the increase in Australian Protective Service powers contained within this bill as unreasonable and dangerous. They are unreasonable because they add to the weight of evidence that shows this government will neglect the rights of individuals and communities in order to create an omnipresent police state, all supposedly in the name of the never-ending and undefinable war on terror—an intangible war which has seen two Australians illegally detained by the United States in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, not to be released apparently until the war on terrorism ends. And when will that be, or is it like the so-called war on drugs—never ending? Who knows?

It is therefore in this environment of fear and fridge magnets that we must consider the bill before us, a bill which leads Australia further down the path towards 1984, Big Brother and the police state mentality which is so abhorrent to all fair-minded Australians—a police state that will be used by this government to harass and intimidate, and restrict and record the movements of, ordinary Australian people. The implications of this bill have not been examined under a critical light. If the government is serious about protecting the liberty of individuals from terrorism and protecting the robustness of our democratic society, it must rethink its approach and remove this bill from the parliament. This bill provides the opportunity for the expansion of a police state at the expense of civil liberties and the rights of the individual. These are rights that the government is keen to champion in other contexts but will apparently suffocate and trample over when it comes to the never-ending war on terror.

Whilst I acknowledge that members in the other place have made significant improvements to this bill as originally presented by the government, in my view these improvements do not go far enough. Specifically, the main problem with this bill is that it enhances the powers available to the Australian Protective Service when, according to the Parliamentary Secretary to the Treasurer in the other place, Australian Protective Service officers already have the power to arrest without warrant and to search and seize certain items from arrested persons. So clearly Australian Protective Service powers are not constrained, thereby making the additional increase in powers completely unnecessary. In fact, the Australian Protective Service web site, which was accessed only this morning, claims—or perhaps `brags' is a more accurate term—that:

By the Australian Protective Service's own admission, it considers itself to have a unique status and authority beyond that held by any other. So just where is the necessity to increase the Australian Protective Service's power coming from? It would seem to me that the service is satisfied with its present power. Perhaps the service's new boss, the Commissioner of the Australian Federal Police, can shed some light on the issue. A cursory glance at page 15 of the Australian Federal Police 2002-03 annual report provides a glimmer of insight into the commissioner's opinion. He states that Australian Protective Service officers who were involved in the response to the Bali bombing operation `carried out their jobs with precision and understanding'. I invite the government to take a leaf out of the commissioner's book and provide some precision in a legislative form so that the rights of individual Australians are not restrained in cumbersome and offensive ways by this bill.

There are two fundamental problems with this bill which impinge upon longstanding norms of our criminal law—norms that deserve a place in this bill and society at large, regardless of the war on terror. If this bill is enacted, under proposed section 18A the Australian Protective Service will have the power to approach the public and demand individuals' names, addresses and reasons for being in the vicinity of an area, of a person, or of a place or thing if an Australian Protective Service officer believes on reasonable grounds that a person `might' be about to commit an offence. There is that word again—`might'. That word was used freely by the Attorney-General in the Criminal Code amendment bill, which he pushed through the House just yesterday. Failure to comply with the aforementioned demands of an APS officer will be a crime that will attract a fine of $2,200 in addition to a criminal record.

To many law-abiding Australians with a natural and healthy suspicion of authority, the answer to these invasive inquiries will simply be a reply of `none of your business', or something more colourful, and this might be rightly so. For it is not the business of the state to be able to unreasonably interfere in the activities of individuals or the community, particularly when there is no reason to do so—war on terror or not. Assuming a person gets charged with failure to provide personal details to the Australian Protective Service, they will then have to go to court to prove their innocence.

Once again, we see this government reverse the onus of proof which lies at the heart of our legal system—that is, innocent until proven guilty. As the parliamentary secretary has just informed us, it `does not require proof of a matter' for action to be taken under this new regime. That is just not acceptable. Once again, apart from proving their innocence, those charged may have to satisfy a magistrate that they have a reasonable excuse or that they were in a genuine industrial dispute or protest. The courts are expensive places. They consume time and money in large amounts. On that basis alone, it is not reasonable for the people of this nation to potentially have to subject themselves to this form of hollow, time- and money-consuming recourse, particularly when an Australian Protective Service officer could overzealously or mistakenly harass citizens who were merely going about their business.

But that is not the half of it. If enacted, this bill will give the Australian Protective Service the power to search people if they believe a citizen has something that is likely to be used to cause substantial damage to a place or thing involving the work of the APS. In these circumstances an APS officer may search a person or a person's possessions, or frisk a person. However, under proposed section 18B(3)(c), we note that `any other person who is of the same sex as the person who is requested by the protective service officer and who freely consents to conduct the search' may also conduct the search. It looks like we are just going to have volunteers at our airports and other places conducting searches on Australians and other people. I think this is disgraceful. Surely, this is an invasive and heavy-handed result that deserves review.

Under this legislation it is open to the Australian Protective Service to detain people to wait for a search to occur. In this way, the APS has been given a licence to imprison people and further restrict liberty. All the APS needs to do is to claim that it is busy or perhaps very busy and people can be placed incommunicado, to whittle away the hours in a cell or in an Australian Protective Service van. Compare this arrangement with the laws in place in my own state of New South Wales—a state that I am sure even the Attorney-General would agree is not known for its bleeding-heart approach to criminal justice, especially under the current Premier.

Section 40 of the New South Wales Crimes (Forensic Procedure) Act provides that a forensic procedure—which I remind the House is also more complicated than a search—`must be carried out as quickly as reasonably possible but in any case within two hours'. There is no corresponding time limit in this bill. Instead, it will be up to a person detained by an Australian Protective Service officer to prove to a court that they were detained longer than was reasonably necessary. As members are aware, this will involve another trip to the courts and another reconciliation of a barrister's account for services rendered. This is unjust and unfair. I note that the ALP's amendment calls for the establishment of a complaints mechanism in relation to the APS, and I suggest that this is vital, especially if this bill as presented should pass.

As I noted previously, the bill also provides no protection for children being searched or harassed—protections which even the ASIO Act provides. The point needs to be made that, if it is good enough for the Australian secret service to treat children with more sensitivity, surely it is also appropriate to require our security services to do the same.

In summary, overall, this bill is not needed. We have heard from the Australian Protective Service that they have unique status and authority beyond that held by any other security provider in this country. We have also learned that the agency head, the Federal Police Commissioner, is satisfied with the precision of the Australian Protective Service. More broadly, though, this bill is not thought out—or, rather, it is too well thought out—by this government. It is another step towards a police state—a step that in all conscience I cannot support. This bill represents a line that the people of Cunningham will not allow me to cross and ideas that are repugnant to the Australian Greens. For these reasons I condemn this bill and the never-ending and unnecessary expansion of the police state that it represents.