Julian Leeser
Berowra · Liberal Party · Australia
“Third, the bill gives the minister unilateral power to impose conditions on higher education providers under the new section 36-65 of the HESA, which is introduced by this bill. The current version of section 36-65 of the HESA requires that there be an agreement in place with the provider. The new version does not.”
“Presumably, if you're a university and you get a bad decision, then your only recourse is judicial review, litigation or a constitutional writ. It's not a great option when the target of your litigation will be the minister who will make the future decisions that shape your ongoing financial viability.”
“This bill changes it from capped funding to capped places, but the places cost different amounts depending on the course. The Commonwealth contribution to a history degree is $1,316; agriculture costs $32,400. Could a university which typically teaches history be allocated 100 places and decide to convert them to agriculture?”
“I said very clearly that I understand the value of international students to Australia. I also said: We will want to make changes to the settings around international students, but I want the sector to know that we want to work closely with you to develop these policies and announce them in due course.”
“This so-called system steward, ATEC, can be bypassed at any time by a minister choosing to exercise this power. Again, this means universities are, under this bill, subject to extraordinary control by this minister or any future minister.”
“He said that Australian kids should be taught Australian values, which he defined as democracy, the rule of law, basic freedoms and a fair go.”
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“Under Labor, Australia has experienced the largest decline in living standards in the developed world. Insurance premiums are up 39 per cent, rent is up 22 per cent, health insurance is up 18 per cent, food costs are up 16 per cent, childcare costs are up 11½ per cent and education is up 17 per cent. Electricity costs rose 32.2 per cent in the 12 months to January. Since the Albanese Labor government was elected, inflation has almost doubled compared to what it was under the former coalition government. Labor's cost-of-living crisis is hurting families in my community as they just try to pay for the basics. The most recent interest rate rise—Labor's 13th since being in government—is squeezing families and small businesses in the Berowra electorate.”
“We know it's a bad idea. That's why we oppose it. Australians deserve clarity about the direction of travel. Is this just an isolated adjustment, or is it the opening chapter in a dark age of high-tax, high-spending approaches to governing? Is it a time where people who have made provision for their assets will not be able to have certainty around their assets? This is sadly what life has become like under a Labor government that has spending out of control and is now coming up with new, alternative ways to find extra revenue.”
“When spending accelerates without corresponding structural reform, governments eventually reach the limits of conventional revenue sources. They've got to test the new boundaries. Thresholds are left unindexed. There are new bases for taxation and new interpretations of income. This is a government that is scrambling to find more revenue. Today, it's superannuation balances above $3 million. Tomorrow, it might be another threshold, another definition or another set of asset classes. Once the principle of taxing unrealised gains is entertained, it does not remain neatly contained. That's why, earlier this year, we asked questions in the House about whether they propose to tax unrealised gains on the family home. If this is a good idea in superannuation, as Labor has been prosecuting, why not on other asset classes as well?”
“It does not reduce all the other expenses that households face. Australians are facing immediate cost-of-living pressures. A future offset adjustment in superannuation does little to relieve those stresses now. If the Albanese government is serious about helping households, it must tackle inflation at its source. It must tackle its excessive spending and its weak growth, rather than reshuffling offsets within the retirement income system. Orthodox economic policy in a time of rising prices is to reduce government spending and to make a more productive economy by reducing regulation. This government, unfortunately, is doing the opposite. This proposal shouldn't be viewed in isolation. It's about Labor being able to spend more and pour more fuel on the inflation fire.”
“I want to talk a little bit about the low-income superannuation tax offset, or the LISTO. The increases in the LISTO are actually welcome, but they're modest, and, unfortunately, because of Labor's reckless spending, they don't address the cost-of-living pressures that Australians are facing today. The government has pointed to increases in the low-income superannuation tax offset as evidence of balance. Any measure that supports low-income earners building retirement savings is always welcome, but we must be honest about the scale and the timing. The low-income superannuation tax offset adjustment, while positive at the margins, does not put money back into household budgets today. It does not lower grocery bills. It does not ease mortgage repayments. It does not reduce electricity costs. It does not reduce insurance costs.”
“Total and permanent disability benefit recipients are another cohort that must be considered carefully. My grandfather, a war veteran who fought in the Second World War, was a prisoner of war in Changi and served on the Burma Railway, was a TPD benefit recipient. This cohort must be considered very carefully. These are Australians who, through no fault of their own, are no longer able to work. Their superannuation is not an abstract investment vehicle; it's their lifeline. Any changes that increase volatility and reduce predictability or complicate access to those funds carry real human consequences for some of our most vulnerable Australians. Tax policy can't be designed in isolation from lived reality. When retirement income settings are destabilised, confidence in the entire system is eroded.”
“First, the government engages in higher spending, then they have to find new taxes to pay for that spending. It's not reform; it's just straight-out fiscal mismanagement. There are new risks: the removal of the death tax exemption, impacts on surviving spouses and impacts on TPD recipients. Beyond the headline rate and the threshold changes, this legislation introduces serious structural risks into our economy. The removal of the effective death tax exemption creates uncertainty for families at precisely the moment that they are most vulnerable. Surviving spouses who rely on superannuation balances to maintain stability after the tragic loss of a partner could face additional tax complexity and reduced security. We want to support widows in our country, but this creates increased uncertainty.”
“When governments spend beyond their means, they inevitably reach for new taxes to fill the gap, to fill the hole. That's precisely what we're witnessing here. Rather than confronting waste, rather than prioritising programs and rather than restoring fiscal discipline, Labor has chosen to look for new pools of capital to tax. That's what this taxation regime is all about. Trust is fundamental in tax reform. Australians are happy to have tax reform when it's principled, when it's predictable and when it's based on broad consultation. What they don't really like is retrospective tinkering. They don't like ad hoc changes. They don't like when ideological experiments are dressed up as so-called modest adjustments. The proposal in these bills reinforces a broader pattern.”
“This is from one of the architects of the super system, who was saying that what was happening under Labor's policy would actually have destroyed the system he sought to create. The father of the superannuation system, Paul Keating, has similarly said that workers would be caught up, and industry analysis has found that claims by the government that it would only hit a small number of Australians were furphies and that it was going to hit 1.8 million Australians. They're looking at small businesses particularly closely because so many Australians who own small businesses hold their assets in super. That's how they put aside money for their retirement. The problem confronting our country is structural spending growth that is outpacing sustainable economic growth. That is the major problem that is driving prices in this country today.”
“It's rare that you hear people on this side of the House quote from Labor luminaries, but when Labor luminaries are making good points it's worthwhile noting some of the important things that they say. One of those Labor luminaries, of course, is Sally McManus, the head of the Australian Council of Trade Unions. She warned, on Labor's proposal to have the $3 million limit without indexation: I do think it's got to be indexed because you've got to make sure eventually people don't end up there. That was one of the real worries about Labor's original proposal. The former ACTU secretary Bill Kelty said: I think taxing unrealised capital gains is bad policy. It distorts the effective tax. Changes your income flows, and if it was on superannuation generally, there would be a revolution about it. It would destroy super.”
“I think about the families in my own electorate, families that are having to make harder and harder choices each year. Do they put food on the table, or do they pay their power bills? Can they afford to put their kids in weekend sport, or do they buy a new pair of shoes? Can they pay their insurance? All of these issues are issues that confront ordinary families in Berowra because of Labor's failure to get the cost of living under control. The fact of the matter is that inflation and high interest rates have beaten the Treasurer and they've beaten the government. You know this proposal is bad when three absolute Labor luminaries come out and attack the proposal.”
“If we're going to muck around with Australians' nest eggs, the bar must be set much higher. We've got a government here that's demonstrated that it can't be trusted. We were promised by the Labor Party, by Treasurer Chalmers, that they'd beaten inflation and high interest rates. Well, people paying higher mortgages as a result of the latest interest rate rise will see that they haven't beaten inflation and they certainly haven't beaten interest rates. We were told by this government that it was going to make life so much easier for families, yet families have less flexibility and less choice. Life is just that much harder for hardworking Australians when they're paying their mortgages, when they're paying their bills, when they're paying their energy bills and when they're having to make ends meet.”
“Promises matter in a country like Australia, where people go to the ballot box to choose their government and try to make a decision based on the available information. Major structural tax changes should be put clearly. They should be put transparently to the Australian people. Instead, this proposal seemed to appear out of nowhere, with limited consultation and a rushed legislative timetable. That's why this debate has resonated so very strongly with Australians, who instinctively understand that, when something's been slipped in under the cover of darkness without their consent, it's a very bad idea. We're talking about retirement savings. We're talking about things that Australians are trying to use as they plan for the future—the nest egg that they've built over decades of hard work and self-sacrifice.”
“We, as Liberals, believe very firmly that people should be able to plan for their retirement, that they should be able to put away their savings and that they should be able to invest with confidence and certainty. The government's backdown demonstrates one thing clearly: this actually was never a settled policy that was grounded in principle. Instead, it was a blatant revenue grab that was exposed and that collapsed under scrutiny. But Labor was being sneaky. At the last election, they didn't present Australians with a policy to tax unrealised gains in superannuation. Australians were not told that longstanding superannuation settings would be fundamentally altered. Australians were not warned that indexation would be stripped away.”
“In an inflationary environment—and we know that, under this government, inflation has got out of control and has been made worse by the Treasurer and his willingness to pour debt petrol on the inflation fire—failing to index thresholds is indeed a silent tax hike. More and more Australians would have been captured, not because they were wealthier in real terms but because inflation would have eroded the value of the threshold. That's actually bracket creep by design, and it underscored the flawed nature of this policy. If it wasn't a flawed policy, it was certainly a sneaky trick to take away more of people's hard-earned savings.”
“Imagine, for instance, if you had purchased Atlassian shares, which went up massively; you would have been taxed on the unrealised gain of those shares. But, when those shares fell, you weren't able to write that off. This was a structural shift that would have set a dangerous precedent across the entire tax base, because asset classes go up and asset classes go down, and if you're holding an asset class that's not crystallised—where you don't have cash in hand—you have to sell the asset class or you have to find money elsewhere in order to pay the tax. Equally concerning was the government's refusal to index the $3 million threshold.”
“We exposed a clear breakdown in the relationship between the Prime Minister and the Treasurer, the principal designer of this deeply flawed policy proposal. The original design to tax unrealised capital gains represented a fundamental break from longstanding principles of the Australian tax system. It demonstrated, in my view, that this government fundamentally doesn't understand the way people make decisions and the way in which investment is conducted in this country. Australians have always understood that tax is paid when income is realised, when a gain is crystallised and when cash is actually in their hand. What the government was doing here was effectively just proposing to tax paper gains, particularly in volatile asset classes. This wasn't a minor tweak.”
“Thanks to sustained scrutiny from the coalition—scrutiny that has been applied by many of my colleagues over many days in many different fora—from the superannuation sector, who have expressed deep concern about the government's proposals, from small businesses, whose retirement is very important and whose savings are often tied up in their businesses, and from everyday Australians, who saw the injustice of the proposal, Labor was forced to step back from the most outrageous elements of the proposal—that is, the taxation of unrealised capital gains. This was not a proposal that was just aimed at hurting retirees; this actually was aimed at hurting future generations, stealing the future of younger Australians away from them without their knowledge or their understanding.”
“The Treasury Laws Amendment (Building a Stronger and Fairer Super System) is a bill that deals with the trickiest tax that Labor have ever sought to bring into this place since Federation, and we as the coalition are deeply opposed to what they've been trying to do. This bill is also evidence of a policy backtrack. Coalition and community pressure forced Labor to abandon the taxation of unrealised capital gains and indexation freeze. This would have done untold damage. The government has been found out and has retreated under pressure. That's what we're seeing in what they've done with this bill.”
“The commission has operated effectively for seven weeks so far, and the Attorney-General's Department has confirmed that it will be able to continue its work uninhibited while the parliament scrutinises this bill. A PJCIS inquiry does not delay the commission. Indeed, it serves a more important purpose: it shores up confidence that we have the arrangements right and that the commission can receive the evidence it ought to hear. That does not occur, though, if the parliament passes permanent changes to the national security legislation improperly or in a rush. So let us use the scrutiny provisions of this parliament to support and strengthen the commission. I thank the House.”
“The royal commission must have access to the information it needs, but, in granting that access, we must preserve the integrity of secrecy law, the rights of individuals and the balance between transparency and security. That balance is parliament's responsibility. As I said, on its face, this bill strengthens the commission. It removes barriers to evidence and it protects those who cooperate. But, because it overrides secrecy provision and amends the Criminal Code, it must be examined thoroughly, it must be debated openly and it must be refined where necessary. A PJCIS inquiry will not delay the commission. I want to take a moment to say this.”
“It is recognition that legislation touching intelligence, national security and criminal liability demands rigorous examination, because the integrity of both national security frameworks and royal commissions depends on clarity and balance. As I said, the Jewish community deserves a royal commission that is powerful, effective and legally sound. They deserve a framework that cannot later be challenged as rushed or poorly constructed. They deserve a bill where all parties have confidence in that drafting and where there are no unintended consequences. Parliamentary scrutiny is responsible. It helps ensure that legislative architecture supporting the commission is sound.”
“Parliament must ensure that this defence is fit for purpose. If there are failings of intelligence practice or national security policy relevant to this royal commission, we need informed insiders to come forward. It is appropriate that the parliament satisfy itself that the bill allows intelligence officials to safely, securely and lawfully disclose information to the royal commission on a voluntary basis and that any underlying arrangements are properly designed and fit for purpose. Let me be clear. We do not oppose the bill's objective; on the contrary, we want to ensure that this gets it right. The coalition wants this royal commission to be effective. We need it to be effective.”
“The bill requires the secretary to publish intelligence information arrangements as notifiable instruments. It's appropriate that the parliament scrutinise what level of detail is made public and how variation of those arrangements will be monitored. We must also examine the evidentiary protections. The bill provides that information given in accordance with the arrangements is not admissible in evidence against the person in secrecy related proceedings. That is an important protection, but it must be carefully calibrated so that it doesn't unintentionally shield misconduct unrelated to lawful cooperation with the commission. Similarly, the Criminal Code amendment creates a new defence to certain secrecy offences where information is dealt with for the purpose of communicating it to a royal commission.”
“We need to hear from security experts, legal experts, our security agencies and law enforcement agencies, the royal commission itself and other stakeholders about how these laws will work, because this legislation overrides secrecy provisions across Commonwealth law. It's not a minor adjustment; it reshapes the interaction between national security frameworks and public inquiries. Parliament must examine whether the scope of the override is appropriate. It must ensure the definitions of 'intelligence', 'information' and 'operationally sensitive information' are precise and appropriate. It must ensure the arrangements governing the handling of classified information are sufficiently robust. We must ask: Are the safeguards adequate? Are the oversight mechanisms strong enough? Is transparency balanced appropriately with the security?”
“As Royal Commissioner Virginia Bell has noted, her inquiry is the first royal commission in nearly 50 years to investigate aspects of the work of the Australian intelligence community. We have a duty to ensure that she has all the powers required to conduct her investigations properly. It's precisely because of the gravity of Commissioner Bell's royal commission that the bill requires careful parliamentary scrutiny. It's precisely because of the seriousness of the changes proposed that this warrants closer examination. These changes should be the subject of an inquiry by the Parliamentary Joint Committee on Intelligence and Security. It's common sense, it's good governance, it's in Australia's interests and it's the coalition's position.”
“The bill also creates formal intelligence information arrangements and operationally sensitive information arrangements, which are structured agreements between the commission and the relevant agency heads governing how sensitive material is obtained, stored, accessed, used, disclosed and returned. It provides legal protections for individuals who provide such information in accordance with those arrangements. It ensures they are shielded from criminal or civil liability under secrecy provisions. It also amends the Criminal Code to create a defence for individuals who deal with classified information for the primary purpose of communicating it to a royal commission. On their face, these changes strengthen the royal commission's hand. I want to turn to why this bill requires scrutiny. These are serious legal changes that the bill proposes.”
“Its purpose is to ensure that the royal commission can access intelligence and operationally sensitive information, even where Commonwealth secrecy provisions would otherwise prevent disclosure. On its face, this is a practical reform. The bill inserts a new part 4A into the Royal Commissions Act. It makes clear that secrecy provisions cannot be relied upon as a reasonable excuse to refuse compliance with the royal commission's requirements. In other words, intelligence agencies and law enforcement bodies cannot withhold relevant material solely because another law contains a secrecy clause.”
“If the commission fails in this opportunity to properly look at these matters, it will be failing the Jewish community and all Australians. The Jewish community has been calling for this government to take action for two and a half years. The government will disrespect the memory of those 15 people who were murdered on Bondi Beach if it doesn't look at these issues properly. With that context in place, let me turn back to the Royal Commissions Legislation Amendment (Protections for Providing Information) Bill 2026. This bill amends three key laws: the Royal Commissions Act 1902, the Royal Commissions Regulations 2019 and the Criminal Code Act 1995.”
“The truth is that this issue is broader than whether you've got Jewish students or staff and it's broader than the Jewish community. It's about what's actually being taught in the classrooms about Jews, because what's being taught in the classrooms about Jews determines what the future of our society looks like. If we don't get this right, then we are setting our society up on a course for a future based on conspiracy, not on fact; on othering, not on personal responsibility; on social discord, not social harmony. What happens today on campus sets the tone for the Australia of tomorrow. That's why addressing antisemitism on campus is so vital. That's why the royal commission must look at these issues. That's why their task is so important. That's why the commission must be given the time that it needs to do this job thoroughly.”
“There have been many Jewish academics who have resigned their membership of the NTEU simply because it failed to stand up for Jewish academics during this time. It must root out antisemitism among the administrators of universities and among those bodies that purport to represent the universities. It must go deeper and examine what's taught about Jews in the classroom. It's disturbed me that, ever since I became the shadow minister for education, when I've talked to vice chancellors, many simply believe that the encampments are gone, they stood up with complaints and procedures, and that's enough. In some institutions, they believe that, because they don't know that they've got a population of any Jewish staff or students, they don't need to worry about this issue.”
“The commission will have failed in its job if it doesn't call the vice-chancellors and chancellors and put them on the stand. The fact that a group of university chancellors could issue a statement on antisemitism that didn't even mention the word 'Jew' or 'antisemitism' is a disgraceful abrogation of their leadership—absolutely disgraceful! The commission must put vice-chancellors and former vice-chancellors on the stand, particularly in those institutions, and especially in the Group of Eight, where antisemitism has been rife. They must put the chancellors on the stand as well. It must put student representative council presidents on the stand. It's their job to represent the views of all students and not make a select group of students feel ostracised. It must put the NTEU leadership on the stand.”
“Antisemitism in education and arts organisations are mentioned in the recitals to the royal commission, and the commission will have failed if it does not look at those matters adequately. If the commission needs more time than the Albanese government has granted it, then it should be given additional time, and it should take advantage of actually asking for extra time. As somebody who, for the last 2½ years, has been calling for a judicial inquiry into antisemitism, this is absolutely vital. It is vital that the commission has a very good look at both those sectors—the arts and education—because they are the areas where antisemitism has become, to quote the words of the special envoy, 'engrained and normalised.' I particularly want to say something about the university sector.”
“As a Jewish Australian, I echo those calls to the royal commissioner. Take the time to get this right. There's nothing sacrosanct about the government's timetable. It's been set by the Albanese government, a government that did not want to hold a royal commission and had to be dragged kicking and screaming to call it. As a Jewish Australian, I say that there will be only one opportunity to investigate the depth and depravity of antisemitism in our country. We will never get this opportunity again. It is really important to take this opportunity to get under the hood of the institutions in our society, especially the universities, the arts bodies and the school organisations.”
“If the commission needs to take more time to do it, it should be encouraged to take more time and take the time to do it right. There are 15 people dead, murdered in cold blood on our streets. My message to the government and to the royal commission is: do not rush this process. The second matter relates to those things that the commission has been charged to investigate with respect to institutional and institutionalised antisemitism. The royal commission has made something of the need to report by the first anniversary of the Bondi massacre on 14 December. There were media reports last week suggesting that, in private meetings between the royal commissioner and the families of the victims and the survivors of the massacre that those survivors and families have told the royal commissioner to take more time if she needs to.”
“The royal commission has been given a timetable which has been set by the federal government. As I said, it is a government that didn't want to have the royal commission in the first place, and it didn't want to ensure that the commission has adequate time to do their job. Let me say something first about the inquiry into the security arrangements at Bondi, because the commission held its first hearings last week. It's now March, and the government has given them a timetable to report on the security elements by the end of April. This is not a fair timeframe. The commission has only been recently stood up. It will be nearly impossible for it to look at these matters with any thoroughness. The security matters before the royal commission deserve to be investigated thoroughly.”
“Victims' families wanted a royal commission. Yet when that call was first made, Prime Minister Albanese shamefully opposed it. Instead of committing immediately to a royal commission, the Prime Minister proposed a narrow departmental review. He questioned whether a royal commission was necessary. He raised concerns about timeframes. He suggested it might provide a platform for extremist views. He suggested that so-called actual experts opposed it. To many Jewish Australians, that hesitation was an insult. It hurt deeply. A royal commission's not just another inquiry. It compels evidence, it overrides secrecy barriers, and it signals that this is an issue of national significance. Let me pause there to make a couple of observations about the royal commission in a more personal capacity.”
“Since 7 October 2023 Australia has witnessed a disturbing and sustained rise in antisemitism. Jewish Australians have reported intimidation, harassment, vandalism, threats and social exclusion. Synagogues have been attacked and have required heightened security. Jewish students have described feeling unsafe on university campuses. Families have removed religious symbols in public out of fear. For many in Australia's Jewish community, the past two years have not simply been uncomfortable; they've been frightening. During that period, community leaders repeatedly warned that antisemitism was escalating. They called for decisive national action. The Prime Minister and his government ignored these warnings every step of the way. After the horrific massacre at Bondi, the Jewish community called for a royal commission.”
“I rise to speak on the Royal Commissions Legislation Amendment (Protections for Providing Information) Bill 2026. This legislation proposes significant changes to the Royal Commissions Act. It aims to ensure that the Royal Commission on Antisemitism and Social Cohesion and future royal commissions can access intelligence and operationally sensitive information. From the outset, the coalition believes that it is critical that the Royal Commission on Antisemitism and Social Cohesion is given every opportunity to succeed. The Bondi massacre on 14 December last year was the worst terrorist attack on Australian soil, an attack which directly targeted Jewish Australians celebrating Hanukkah. This attack was devastating to all Australians but particularly to the Jewish community. The terrorist attack didn't happen in isolation.”
“Why only these agencies? Why now? And why don't the powers set standards and have stronger transparency obligations for suspending office holders? In conclusion, the coalition position is clear. We support accountability. But, if ministers are going to get new powers to sideline and sack statutory office holders, parliament should check the guardrails. That's why we want a Senate committee referral to scrutinise the design. I thank the House. Debate adjourned.”
“Let me come back to the net effect of these changes, because the net effect is to establish a clear chain of control for the minister. The minister sets the standards, the minister then says performance is unsatisfactory according to those standards, the minister suspends and, ultimately, the minister terminates. That's a degree of executive government leverage over statutory office holders that is far larger than we would usually expect, at least in the absence of strong safeguards. Since the Act of Settlement in the United Kingdom in 1701, we've accepted that safeguards against removal by the executive government were an essential component of any guarantee of independence. And so, when this sort of bill comes before the House, proposing to remove exactly that guarantee, it's appropriate to ask why. Why these four agencies specifically?”
“The OPC is the body that drafts the Commonwealth's laws for parliament. Its credibility depends on technical neutrality and independence. Even general directions can influence priorities. They can influence resourcing and internal processes, which in turn can shape how legislation is developed. The concern is also about transparency. The directions are not legislative instruments, and the bill doesn't clearly require them to be tabled or published. The explanatory memorandum also doesn't clearly explain why this new power is needed now. So, again, it's a power that warrants committee scrutiny because it's in all of our interests to ensure the safeguards and visibility are right for an institution as central as the Office of Parliamentary Counsel.”
“Even if it's temporary, it can strip the director of their powers, sideline the regulator's leadership at a critical time and create the perception internationally that the regulator can be controlled. The point is this: if independence is so important that you want to introduce a performance based termination ground, we need to check that the new suspension or intervention powers don't achieve the same outcome in practice, just by another route. Let's now consider the case of the Office of Parliamentary Counsel, or the OPC. This bill gives the minister a new express power to issue written directions to the OPC about how it performs its functions. The bill says that directions must be general and not about a specific drafting matter, but it's still a structural change.”
“If it looks like a government can lean on the regulator, it risks damaging Australia's credibility with our international partners. The government seems to recognise this. Unlike the other agencies in the bill, it doesn't add 'unsatisfactory performance' as a new reason that the minister could sack the Director of Safeguards. In plain terms, for the nuclear watchdog they're not giving the minister quite the same performance based sacking lever as they are for other agencies. But the bill still gives the minister new intervention tools, including an express power to suspend the director and expand misconduct related mechanisms. As I said a moment ago, suspension matters.”
“It can strip someone of their powers, damage their reputation, disrupt an agency and, in effect, push them out before anything is finally proven. And the transparency requirements are different across the board. For ASNO suspensions, they must be gazetted and made public. However, for ACIAR, Austrade and OPC, there's no clear requirement to publish or table suspensions. So some suspensions must be public and others must not be. This is inconsistent and weak oversight, and it's worth spending a minute or two reflecting on how this plays out in specific circumstances. Take ASNO, for example. ASNO is Australia's nuclear safeguards regulator. It's the body that checks and reports that Australia is meeting its international nuclear obligations. Because of that, it has to be seen to be independent.”
“First, the bill lets a minister write performance standards for some agency heads. Those standards can be used to say that someone has unsatisfactory performance, which becomes a reason to terminate them. In other words, ministers can write the rules and then use them to sack people. Again, the problem isn't that the standards exist; the problem is how they're done. The standards don't have to be tabled in the parliament. They can't be disallowed. They don't have to be published. So the minister can set the benchmark that might later be used to remove someone, without the parliament seeing it. Second, ministers get a stronger power to sideline an executive through suspending them. Suspension isn't neutral. It's a serious step.”
“Here, while parliament sets 'unsatisfactory performance' as a ground, the minister may effectively define what performance looks like without parliamentary scrutiny of those standards. That's novel and highly unusual. It raises three important questions. First, transparency. Should standards that may ground termination be publicly available? Second, oversight. Why aren't they subjected to disallowance or tabling? Third, independence, particularly where these roles involve regulatory or drafting functions. We support accountability, but accountability mechanisms must themselves be transparent and subject to scrutiny. There are also two changes that matter because they increase ministerial control over senior statutory office holders with limited built-in transparency.”
“Why should the Race Discrimination Commissioner, who has lost the confidence of so many of our ethnic communities, including the Australian Jewish community and the Australian Hindu community, be exempt from ministerial performance standards and potential termination? It is also reasonable to ask whether similar changes are planned more broadly or whether these entities have been selected for specific reasons. The introduction of the ministerial performance standard is the most significant new feature of the bill. The bill gives ministers the power to set written performance standards for certain statutory office holders. Those standards can then be relied upon in determining unsatisfactory performance, which is a ground for termination. Traditionally, parliament creates statutory offices and defines the removal grounds in the act.”
“Does this architecture preserve the right balance between executive control and parliamentary oversight? That's why we're not opposing the bill's second reading but we are seeking committee scrutiny before finalising our position. If this bill is about restoring public trust and modernising accountability, consistency is important. It is reasonable to ask why these reforms apply to only the four entities listed and not other major statutory office holders, such as the ACCC, ASIC, APRA, the Information Commissioner, or the Australian Human Rights Commission and their commissioners.”
“So, while parliament passes the framework, the executive gains greater practical control over how key accountability thresholds are set and applied. This shifts the power away from this parliament and towards the ministers. That's a problem in principle because these are statutory offices created by this parliament, often, to operate with a degree of independence, particularly the Office of Parliamentary Counsel and ASNO. We're not opposing accountability, but the questions we need to ask are: What problem is this bill actually solving? Why only these four agencies—why them, and why now? Why are the new performance standards not subject to tabling, publication or disallowance? Are the suspension and termination safeguards strong enough to protect procedural fairness and independence?”