Howard-era Asio questioning powers ‘never intended to be permanent', Australia's human rights chief warns

The Guardian

2 days ago

The boss of Australia's human rights commission has questioned Labor's moves to make Asio's powers for compulsory questioning permanent, warning a planned expansion of the 9/11-era laws must include robust safeguards for individuals.
The home affairs minister, Tony Burke, introduced two pieces of legislation this week designed to remove so-called sunset provisions on the domestic spy agencies' powers to compel cooperation. The rules act as effective expiry dates on the powers and require parliament to reconsider their reach on a regular basis.
Labor will also add sabotage, promotion of communal violence, attacks on the defence system and serious threats to Australia's border security to the rules for compulsory questioning.
Under the Australian Security Intelligence Organisation Act, intelligence operatives have powers to issue a questioning warrant requiring a person as young as 14 to give information or produce items that may assist in a serious investigation.
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Introduced after the 11 September 2001 terrorist attacks in the US, the powers have hardly been used since 2020, with just four warrants served on three people, in counter-terror and espionage cases.
The human rights commissioner, Lorraine Finlay, said Asio should have the necessary powers to protect Australians, but that the current compulsory questioning powers are extraordinary in their intrusions on a number of fundamental human rights, 'and were never intended to be permanent'.
'The two bills introduced by the government propose to not only extend, and then repeal entirely, the existing sunset provision to make these compulsory questioning powers permanent, but also in some respects to expand the scope of the existing powers,' she said.
Finlay said the commission would closely consider the proposed changes and engage with an inquiry expected to be run by parliament's joint committee on intelligence and security (PJCIS).
She said any limitations on human rights must be necessary and proportionate, and come with 'robust safeguards'.
The Greens justice spokesperson, David Shoebridge, said the laws should be considered by a transparent and open inquiry, not run by the PJCIS, which is dominated by Labor and the Coalition.
'Making permanent these oppressive Howard-era powers is already deeply troubling, but they are going even further and expanding when and how they can be used,' he said.
'History shows that once governments get these intrusive powers they never want to let them go, and that is exactly what we see here with the sunset provisions now being stripped out.
'Asio wants these powers and the major parties are falling over themselves to deliver them through a stitched-up secret parliamentary inquiry regardless of what the public thinks.'
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Shoebridge said parliamentary scrutiny of the plan must include public hearings.
'There are real questions about how these new powers could be used to target legitimate protesters and critics of the government, harsh immigration laws and the defence establishment.'
The powers are scheduled to sunset on 7 September this year. They will be temporarily extended, for 18 months, to allow parliament to consider the wider bill, which would make the powers permanent.
Introducing the changes to parliament this week, Burke said Asio should retain the powers 'to navigate an increasingly complex, challenging and changing security environment and deliver on its mission to protect the safety of Australia and Australians'.
When the laws were first introduced, Howard government attorney general Daryl Williams described them as 'extraordinary' and 'a measure of last resort'.