Senator MARSHALL (12:07 PM) —The minister talked about the officers having to worry about whether they have to be careful in the exercise of these powers. That is the point: the officers do have to be very careful to ensure that these new powers are exercised in the manner in which they were intended. That comes back to the original discussion about the balance of these matters—that the need to introduce security measures is balanced against civil society's rights to carry out legitimate protests or legitimate assembly.

The minister said the officer should have the right to say, `What's in that bag?' If there are reasonable grounds for suspecting that there is a problem with something in a bag, that is fine and that is what this piece of legislation empowers those officers to do. Labor has no difficulty with that at all. But the legislation gives these officers the ability to use these powers if they believe that people might be about to commit an offence. With respect to the power being used against those who might be about to commit an offence, there are a whole range of tests about what is reasonable and what is not reasonable which the officer certainly must apply when using that discretion.

Let us come back to the practical example that I used earlier. If there were a legitimate protest at a diplomatic mission—which the diplomatic mission would be opposed to, one would suspect, and that protest might be on the basis of that country's human rights record or human rights abuses which might be well documented and accepted—we would not want to be in a situation where the names and addresses of all those people protesting were taken down and potentially made available to the diplomatic mission that opposed the protest. People ought to be able to protest legitimately and assemble legitimately without the infringement of those rights. It is sometimes a very fine balance.

This amendment seeks to clarify these issues so it is very clear to those officers why they have those powers and the circumstances in which they should and should not exercise those powers. If there are reasonable grounds to assume that someone is doing something wrong, they are then not part of legitimate protests, they are not part of legitimate industrial action and they are not part of legitimate assembly. Therefore, it would not be a reasonable excuse under our amendment. But if they are legitimate, it is a reasonable excuse. We do not want to be in a situation where people's names and addresses are taken down for simply protesting or conducting legitimate industrial action. While I think the minister has come some way in explaining those issues, he has not yet come all the way in explaining them and the intent of this legislation—certainly not to my satisfaction.