The prospect of any moves to rectify Australia’s deeply flawed intelligence oversight mechanisms has vanished after Labor yesterday joined with the Coalition to kill off a move by South Australian senator Rex Patrick to expand the powers of parliament’s intelligence committee.
Patrick’s bill to give the committee the power to conduct its own inquiries into operational matters, subject to a veto by the government for sensitive matters, was referred to the Senate’s Finance and Public Administration Committee in August for a short inquiry which attracted just six submissions and a public hearing lasting exactly 56 minutes. Yesterday, the committee issued a report with the major parties rejecting the bill.
Labor has previously professed to support expanding the remit of the intelligence committee to enable it to conduct inquiries of its own volition. Unlike normal parliamentary committees, the Joint Committee on Intelligence and Security is tightly controlled by the government and prevented from initiating its own inquiries or examining the operations of intelligence agencies. Labor reintroduced a bill, originally prepared by John Faulkner, to reform the PJCIS in 2015 but it was killed off by Malcolm Turnbull in a sneak Senate move in 2016.
Labor’s enthusiasm, however, has waned since. In “additional comments” by Labor senators (not a dissenting report from a government-chaired inquiry), they noted:
… the substance of Labor’s proposals has since largely been adopted in recommendations 21 and 23 of the 2017 Independent Intelligence Review undertaken by Mr Michael L’Estrange AO and Mr Stephen Merchant PSM. Despite receiving the review well over a year ago, the government has yet to act on these two recommendations.
Well, it’s true that the government — preoccupied with playing musical chairs with the party leadership positions — has done nothing about the intelligence review except the one thing it didn’t recommend (establish a Home Affairs portfolio to pander to Peter Dutton’s ego). But it’s false to say that the L’Estrange-Merchant review adopted the substance of the Faulkner bill: as Crikey pointed out more than a year ago, the review only pretended to expand the remit of the PJCIS. Crucially, it would still prohibit the committee from initiating reviews into the operational matters of agencies.
Instead, Labor used the objections of Margaret Stone, Inspector-General of Intelligence and Security (and thus, an office with an institutional interest in preventing any rival source of authority in the same area) to the proposal as a basis for rejecting Patrick’s bill. Stone had devised an obscure “separation of powers” argument to maintain the arbitral role Patrick’s bill gave her in relation to government attempts to veto inquiries was inappropriate.
The final word is best left to Patrick, who could have justifiably expected more support from Labor.
Despite the Executive’s views, there is no reason why the Parliament should not give immediate consideration to enhancing its scrutiny of the Australian intelligence agencies without further delay. The issues are well known. Information and analysis are not lacking, only political on the part of the government.
Australia’s intelligence community agencies are not infallible. In the future their performance will be tested in a much more demanding security environment and the Australian parliament will need to subject our intelligence agencies to much closer scrutiny than has been the case previously. This Bill provides a sensible and secure framework within which to extend parliamentary scrutiny to the operations of Australia’s national security and intelligence agencies.
Let’s fervently hope Patrick is not proved correct by tragic events in coming years.
We need another Hope style Royal Commission to guide urgent structural reform not an expanded platform for political games after the event.
BK – Labor is not going to bite at the endless attempts by Morrison and Dutton’s to bait them. Labor will wait until they are in government and then go through a long process of reviewing nearly everything this govt has put in place. There will be years of steady incremental changes and sensible reforms to the fearplex the Libs have spent 20 years building.
Under an LNP govt the national security story is not about what Labor says or doesn’t say – it’s about the Libs constantly trying to wedge Labor. And how it is slowly doing their heads in. The Libs are seething that Labor won’t bite. They know exactly what Labor is doing and the only way for them to attack Labor is to either double down on the fear or acknowledge what Labor is doing – which would immediately expose the govts strategy of baiting Labor. The same is exactly what’s happening with refugees.
As no matter how carefully Labor puts it’s position it will be twisted and weaponized against them. With Lies Ltd screaming fear and loathing against the terrorist and refugee loving Shorten and Labor Party.
It’s up to the media and that includes Keane and Razor to put the onus back onto the govt to explain it’s policies and its craven political efforts to wedge Labor.
That you both refuse to see this as much as the rest of media refuses to call out the LNP govt – either means you both ignorant of what is clearly obvious or you are both deeply biased towards Labor and like the rest of the media will never miss a chance to put the boot into Labor and specifically. Probably a bit of both.
Yes Shorten is a Kingslayer guilty of double regicide. But, after the chaos and incompetence of this government – so bloody what.
Its actually about governing the country not playing a political party games; neither deserve to govern as neither can see beyond their own pissy little labor vs liberal fights.
Fuck them all off would be the best answer, and this is why PHON, KAP etc are gaining momentum.
Mainstream partys power duopoly is finished within the next 4 election cycles unless they are able to show how they will govern not how bad the other side is. They will become bit players in the Australian political landscape otherwise.
wow… “Labor will wait until they are in government and then go through a long process of reviewing nearly everything “.
Such naivete, you might be interested in some bridges I have to sell as well as some prime Lunar real estate, speshal price as you my brain dead frend.
The sort of “strategy” that saw Shorten elected to lead them.
Patrick should have thrown in a grab bag of goodies for them to get interested. Maybe reinstate the lifetime family gold passes.
Seriously, does anyone with two functioning neurons believe that “Labor” will not carry on in precisely the same way as the current shower?