Senator BROWN (7:03 PM) —The Greens also support the Criminal Code Amendment (Terrorist Organisations) Bill 2002, which reverses the imposition of the effective regulations in this matter to the day on which they are tabled rather than at the end of the 15 days of the parliamentary wait. That brings them into line with the usual way in which regulations work. It also allows that we retain the right to be able to disallow regulations as soon as they hit the table. The Senate majority has the ability to do that if we see this regulation being abused.

The government is clearly indicating here that it will not be moving, under the provisions of the legislation, to proscribe organisations as terrorist organisation unless the United Nations has listed such organisations and proclaimed that they are terrorist organisations. That is effectively what the government is saying here. We believe that a watch needs to be kept on that United Nations process, because it does mean that organisations can be proscribed by a member nation of the United Nations—be it Iraq, China or North Korea, for that matter. Without a trial or without evidence coming from the organisation, the United Nations can then decide that the organisation should be proscribed.

We have got checks and balances much better than that in this parliament, and we believe that this legislation should be supported. It will move rapidly to effectively proscribe the al-Qaeda organisation as a terrorist organisation in this country, as has happened in many other places around the world, rather than the situation under existing legislation, where that could not happen until some time early next year. We support it.