Pyne clarifies comments after appearing to contradict Porter

Christopher Pyne has issued a clarification of his comments on the espionage bills, after appearing to contradict Christian Porter.

Christopher Pyne has issued a clarification of his comments on the espionage and foreign interference bills, after appearing to contradict Attorney-General Christian Porter.

Mr Porter told The Australian last night that the bills were necessary to address what he claimed was a current threat ahead of the five July 28 by-­elections, and needed to be passed in the next sitting of parliament.

Asked on morning television how vulnerable the by-elections were, Mr Pyne said: “Look these laws and the by-elections are not linked at all.”

Asked “then why the rush to get them through before the (winter) recess?”, Mr Pyne told the Nine Network: “Well there’s no rush.”

“We’ve been discussing these laws since last November, December, when George Brandis first put them on the table, and there’s been a long committee process, which has gone through with Labor and the crossbenchers, and this is where we’ve arrived, at increasing the public interest protections for journalists for example, ensuring that civil liberties are protected, but more importantly, protecting Australia’s national interests. That’s not a rush, it’s been an eight, nine month process,” Mr Pyne said.

Following widespread media reports that his comments were at odds with Mr Porter’s, Mr Pyne this afternoon issued a clarification.

“It is clear when my response is read in full that I was arguing that the legislation was not being rushed and it was wrong to assert otherwise,” he said.

“The laws have a broader application than the by-elections, a point the Attorney-General himself made.”

Mr Porter is urging the passage of two separate bills, citing intelligence advice of an accelerated escalation in hostile foreign activity over the past 12 months and the potential for foreign disruption during the five by-elections.

Labor has agreed to pass the foreign interference bill following 60 amendments. The bill will introduce harsher penalties for sabotage and espionage.

The second bill, over which negotiations between the government and Labor continue, involves setting up a public register of foreign agents.

Shorten accuses government of ‘chaos’

Bill Shorten earlier accused the government of creating “chaos” over national security, saying he agreed with Mr Pyne that the laws were unrelated to the by-elections.

“National security is too important to leave to the sort of just simple chaos we’ve seen today,” the Labor leader said.

“You’ve got the Attorney-General yesterday said that there’s a rush, we’re going to miss the boat, that somehow the by-elections will be compromised.

“I mean if the government knows something about interference in these by-elections I think they’re duty-bound to tell us what that immediate and present risk is, but absent that, I think Minister Pyne who I don’t normally agree with said there’s no rush.

“We want to get it done and we want to get it done properly.”

“Every day the laws aren’t passed means we’re more vulnerable”: Porter

Earlier Mr Porter said the bills needed to pass “as soon as possible”.

“After eight months’ consideration, every day that the laws aren’t passed means that we are more vulnerable than if the laws were passed,” he told Sky News.

Mr Porter said that until the espionage laws passed, Australia did not have a criminal sanction for the espionage-based theft of trade secrets.

“Before those laws are passed, Australia does not have a foreign interference offence,” he said.

“So it’s highly desirable that those laws are passed as soon as possible to protect all of our democratic processes, to protect all of our parliamentary processes, to protect political parties with respect to donations and financing.

“It’s very important that they’re passed together in tandem because they’re meant to work together in tandem, and passed as soon as possible, and the aim, I’ve publicly stated, is to try and have that achieved in the next two sitting weeks of parliament.”

Attorney-General @cporterwa says foreign interference laws should be passed as a matter of urgency.

'Every day that passes where espionage laws aren't passed, Australia's safety is not guaranteed.'

MORE: https://t.co/KEz2kCUf5M #SkyLiveNow pic.twitter.com/IlKN4zAtwI

— Sky News Australia (@SkyNewsAust) June 7, 2018

Last night Mr Porter told The Australian that both bills were necessary to address what he claimed was a current threat before the July 28 by-­elections and needed to be passed in the next sitting of parliament.

ASIO Director-General Duncan Lewis last month warned of unprecedented levels of espionage activity and foreign interference.

“The level of activity has increased … the thing is that this activity is designed to interfere with democratic processes … that’s the view formed within government,” Mr Porter said.

“We have now something we didn’t plan for and that is in several weeks we will have five critical by-elections.

“Even in the time that it has taken to consider the Espionage and Foreign Interference Bill, the threat environment has changed and become more acute.”

Laws and by-elections ‘not linked’ and there’s “no rush”: Pyne

Mr Pyne this morning claimed there was “no rush” to pass the bills.

“These laws and the by-elections are not linked at all,” Mr Pyne told the Nine Network.

“There is no rush. We’ve been discussing these laws since last November, December when (Mr Porter’s predecessor) George Brandis first put them on the table, and there’s been a long committee process which has been gone through with Labor and the crossbenchers, where we have arrived at increasing the public interest protections for journalists, for example, ensuring that civil liberties are protected and more importantly protecting Australia’s national interest, and that’s not a rush, it’s been an eight, nine month process.”

Mr Pyne said there had been heightened concern about espionage and foreign interference, but denied the laws were directed at China “or any specific nation”.

“They are directed at protecting Australia’s interest. I live in Adelaide as you know, and of course because of submarines and ship building activities here, we’ve become a hotspot for foreign espionage, so we need to get our laws clear and consistent, and that’s what Christian Porter and before him George Brandis have been doing, working with the Labor Party in a by partisan way,” Mr Pyne said.

Finance Minister Mathias Cormann said he did not want to “get into the commentary between colleagues” over the issue.

“Obviously Christian as the Attorney-General has got lead responsibility here,” Senator Cormann said.

“It is a very important piece of legislation to protect our sovereignty and to protect the integrity of our democratic system and so from that point of view I think the comments are self-explanatory.

“We’re committed to getting these laws passed as soon as possible with bipartisan support.”

Foreign Minister Julie Bishop said her understanding was that members of the intelligence community had advised the government that the laws were necessary and timely.

“Therefore they should be passed in this session of parliament,” Ms Bishop said.

“There is no need for us to wait until the break, we can pass them now.”

No specific threats to by-elections: Hastie

Chair of the parliamentary joint committee on intelligence and security, Liberal MP Andrew Hastie said he was not aware of any specific threats to by-elections.

“No,” he said.

“Suffice to say, the threat level is very high. We have very significant by-elections coming up next month and it’s really important that we safeguard our democratic processes,” he said.

“That’s the way I would characterise the need for these laws to be passed. I think that’s what the Attorney-General was getting at yesterday.”

Mr Hastie said he had been convinced of the need to introduce safeguards in the foreign register legislation, having previously been sceptical.

He said he had only received amendments to the bill last night and could not go into detail about what they entailed.

“Suffice to say they do look comprehensive, and we’re going to take submissions and potentially have a public hearing and consider them as a committee,” he said.

The amendments will require companies which are at least 15 per cent owned by foreign powers or individuals linked to them to be registered.

Companies where 20 per cent of board directors have links to foreign powers will also need to register.

‘Important to have bills passed, enacted and operational’

Mr Hastie said Mr Lewis’s warning and private evidence given to the committee that Australia was facing unprecedented levels of espionage and foreign interference made the swift passage of the bills necessary.

“Never before in our history have we had so much espionage and foreign interference being conducted on our shores, and with five very significant by-elections coming up and a general election in the next year it’s really important that we have these laws passed, enacted and operational,” Mr Hastie told ABC radio.

Asked if he could elaborate on the nature of the threat posed, Mr Hastie said he couldn’t go into specifics.

“Suffice to say we’ve seen Russian interference in the Brexit referendum, we’ve seen it in the US presidential election, and Australia is part of the Five Eyes community, we’re considered potentially a soft underbelly for authoritarian states seeking to get secrets from the United States, and so we should consider ourselves a target and it’s really important that we build resilience into our political system, and that’s what these laws seek to do,” he said.

Journalists will be protected

Mr Hastie said he was confident a public interest test would ensure journalists would not be at risk of going to jail for revealing sensitive information, as long as it was in the public interest.

“There is a robust defence for journalism, and then as another check and balance, the Attorney-General actually has to consent for a prosecution, so there’s a number of different things that have to be done for a prosecution to proceed, and that’s designed to prevent a chilling effect on the media because a free media is critical to democracy and we don’t want to diminish that at all, in fact we want to enhance it and I think we’ve struck the right balance,” he said.

“What we can’t have is radical transparency. The whole point of the defences is to prevent privileged and classified information from being inappropriately disclosed.

“We do have national secrets that go to the heart of our sovereignty and our national security, and they need to be protected. At the same time we need to balance that with a free media.”

Asked what he meant by “radical transparency”, Mr Hastie said: “Radical transparency is Julian Assange dropping a whole bunch of commonwealth secrets out for public consumption … which potentially reveals the identities of people who work for our intelligence agencies, compromising their personal security, so there’s a lot in this bill, there’s a lot in our report, but I’m very confident given its bipartisan nature that we’ve struck the balance, and journalists will be able to report on matters without fear of being prosecuted.”

Mr Hastie said a “prior publication defence” would also protect academics and human rights advocates who had previously published sensitive and classified information.

He said the legislation should not be perceived as “anti-China”.

“No, it shouldn’t be perceived that way. This bill is designed to protect Australia from all global threats of foreign interference,” Mr Hastie said.

“There’s any number of authoritarian states out there who are seeking to advance their national interest in political warfare in democracies.

“This law is about building resilience into our political system, our economic system. It shouldn’t be interpreted as targeting any one country.

“We’ve seen in the media over the last several years that there are a number of different countries involved in foreign interference and espionage. We don’t want it to be seen as a China bill, and it shouldn’t be.”

Labor not convinced of urgency

Shadow Attorney-General Mark Dreyfus said he did not accept that the bills needed to be passed before the by-elections.

“Not on what has been publicly disclosed by the government up to this time,” told ABC radio.

“The Attorney-General’s department, when asked by me in public hearings on January 31 this year ‘has the government, has the Attorney-General’s Department any information that suggests that there has been interference in Australian elections?’ said no, that they did not have any such information.

“The reason I asked is that the Prime Minister made much of, in his second reading speech introducing this registration scheme bill, made much of the interference that’s been reported by Russia in Brexit, in the US Presidential Elections and French Presidential Elections.

“Obviously it would be a concern if there was information available that the government had, that disclosed that there had been interference in Australian elections as at 31 January, in a public hearing, the Attorney-General’s Department representatives told me they didn’t have any such information.

“If the government’s now got information which suggests interference in Australian elections, they should definitely be bringing that forward and explaining to the Australian people what is known about that.”

Amendments to foreign register bill welcome

Mr Dreyfus said the foreign influence transparency scheme bill for the register had initially been much too broad, but he was working with the government on amendments.

“The FITS bill, when it was introduced on 7 December last year, was much too broad,” Mr Dreyfus said.

“It did some ridiculous things like catch every person working for the Salvation Army in Australia, News Corp journalists, indigenous rangers, Catholic priests, universities, a whole range of people who came forward and told the intelligence committee in public hearings just how overly broad the bill was.

“The government has taken six months to get there but it seems to have woken up that this scheme was much too broad.”

Mr Dreyfus said the amendments were aimed at restricting the registration requirement to people and organisations connected to a foreign government or related entity.

“That would seem to us to be a very good, much better way to approach this,” he said.

“We’ll have to study the amendments to what is quite a complex bill in detail but certainly this is a step in the right direction by the government to very greatly narrow the effect of what was an overly broad scheme that caught many thousands of innocent Australians, innocent people and organisations.”

Concerned NGOs ‘should look at amendments’

The Law Council and NGOs have raised concerns about the espionage and foreign interference bill, claiming they could be prosecuted for doing human rights work.

Mr Dreyfus said he would urge Amnesty International and other organisations which have raised concerns to look at the recommendations the PJCIS committee had made for amendments to the bill.

“If they still have particular concerns, I’d like to hear them, but I don’t think the bill, if it is amended in the form that the committee has recommended, will criminalise legitimate political comment, legitimate political activity,” he said.

“It won’t be criminalising peaceful protest. It won’t be criminalising the ordinary work of journalists. And that has very much been Labor’s intention in working constructively on this bill which is designed of course, as are all national security bills, to keep Australians safe and to protect our country.”

‘Christopher is right ’: Albo

Labor frontbencher Anthony Albanese said he agreed with Mr Pyne that the laws were unrelated to the by-elections.

“I think frankly Christopher is right,” Mr Albanese said.

“Any idea somehow there is foreign interference in the by-elections is a headline looking for some substance.”

Mr Albanese said Labor had reached agreement with the government on one of the bills, and negotiations on the other were ongoing.

“What happened was last night Christian Porter forwarded some amendments for the second bill that also went too far and needed some amendments,” Mr Albanese told the Nine Network

“There is no question about that, but he only forwarded them to Labor last night, so we’ll give them due consideration. We’ll work with the government.

“These laws, and national security needs to be above politics and be dealt with in a bipartisan way.”

Bill ‘will reduce basic rights and freedoms’: Greens

Greens justice spokesman Nick McKim accused the major parties of “stitching up a cosy deal” to reduce people’s basic rights and freedoms.

“The foreign influence laws, even as amended, will impact on people’s freedom of speech and freedom of association,” Senator McKim said.

“It is yet another step down the dangerous path towards authoritarianism.

“While we certainly need to guard against hostile foreign influence and interference, the old parties have rushed into a cosy deal which predictably gets the balance wrong.

“Given Labor’s shameful record in voting for the metadata laws and their ongoing support of offshore detention, we have no faith in their willingness to defend basic freedoms.