Senator BROWN (9:27 PM) —I am happy to facilitate the minister and ask a question back in the vein of what is meant by `seriously interferes with, seriously disrupts, or destroys, an electronic system including' a number of things? Would that include the folk who sat in on the web site of Lufthansa in Germany in protest about the airline facilitating the export of asylum seekers from Germany? They clogged up the web site and brought it to a halt effectively for use for other people for an hour or two. In regard to creating `a serious risk to the health or safety of the public or a section of the public', a terrorist act is one which is `done or the threat is made with the intention of advancing a political, religious or ideological cause'. Does that not include the Greenpeace protest at the oil shale plant in Gladstone in Queensland? I was there myself when they used high-speed craft to try to head off a tanker moving upstream to come abreast of that facility to take aboard shale oil which was then going on to be refined in Singapore.

Another example is blocking entry of a nuclear warship into a harbour. Would that not involve a significant threat to health and safety? What about those people who scale tall buildings? I was attendant on a number of very sterling Australian patriots who were up on the tower of the Victorian art gallery just some months ago and I can tell you exactly how far up they were—91 metres—because that is the height of the trees in the Styx Valley in Tasmania. Were those people not creating a risk to health and safety with a busy street below them?

The problem with this particular definition of `terrorist act' is that it does not get just to terrorism. The net is thrown very widely, encompassing a whole range of legitimate community protests that have good intent, but it could be very easily argued by a government which did not like the protest—and governments by and large do not like protests—that the people involved were creating a serious risk to the health or safety of the public or that they were seriously interfering with or disrupting electronic systems. Indeed, what about the S18 protest around the World Trade Organisation in Victoria? That caused howls of rage from people, not least from Premier Bracks at the time, and it was seen by some people to be violent. It was seen to be absolutely creating a threat to public health and safety. How would you escape the potential for those citizens to be proclaimed terrorists under this legislation? I am very seriously concerned about this. It goes right to the heart of the Greens' objections, because it puts the spectre of the label of `terrorism' right across the whole gamut of community protest in our democracy.

I foreshadow that if the Greens amendment fails I will come back again with an amendment to the definition of `terrorist act'. Under 100.1(2), it says, `Action falls within this subsection'—that is, it becomes a terrorist action—if it `creates a serious risk to the health or safety of the public'. I will predicate that with the words `is primarily intended to create' so that it will say, `Action would fall within the subsection if it is primarily intended to create a serious risk to the health or safety of the public.' I commend that to the opposition and to the government, because a terrorist act is one which does primarily intend to create risk and damage to the health and/or safety of the public. Similarly with 100.1(2)(e), I would predicate that with the words `primarily aims to' so it becomes `primarily aims to seriously interfere with, seriously disrupt or destroy an electronic system'. Protest very often is intended to be obstructive and can have risky consequences. The very nature of protest is to exhibit commitment and very often, in the process of exhibiting commitment, to involve oneself in risk, and potentially involve others in risk as well. I think that some degree of the problem would be gotten around if we added the words `is primarily aimed to' or `primarily intended to', because that is what the terrorists do. They are into havoc, destruction and bloodshed. That is not what peaceful protestors do. They are into political or ideological notice being taken and making a change, but they are not into doing that through creating damage to life or society.

I ask that the government look seriously at that flagged amendment—I have handed it to the clerks—and that the opposition look at it. It fixes to some degree the serious problem at the heart of this whole bill, which is the collateral risk that it poses for a whole range of groups: church groups, community groups, social justice groups, unions, environment groups, Aboriginal activists and political activists. We should not have that spectre of the label `terrorist' hanging over the heads of such people, who are fundamental to a functioning democracy and to the progress of civilised society.