Allegra Spender
Wentworth · Independent · Australia
“Estimates are between 0.5 per cent and two per cent of all abortions over 20 weeks. They are generally because of late diagnosed anomalies, genetic syndromes or severe fetal growth problems.”
“The bill is useful, it is technical, it's incremental, it has useful schedules, it has 'tell us once', it has streamlining and it has technical fixes. These are all good things, and I do not underestimate the effort that goes into getting useful changes like this.”
“Across Australia, we're seeing rising threats to women's access to abortion care. We see it in bills in state parliaments. We see it in the way some politicians talk about this issue, using misinformation and scare tactics to drive divisions, tools straight out of the Trump playbook.”
“They're saying they're waiting up to 18 months for the ATO to make a decision on how an investment would be treated, so the foreign capital just goes away. We need to change the culture here, and this is why—while I support this government's actions in this space—I urge the government to go further. This isn't about bad people.”
“I've seen firsthand how drone technology is at the forefront of some of these problems because government is slow to make decisions. There's no accountability from many government departments in terms of the speed of their decision-making.”
“I support the government's work on the fund, but I think it's currently around one tenth the size of the original 1990s National Competition Fund. If we expect that to move the dial, as it did back in the 1990s, we are going to have to put more firepower behind it.”
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“And it is the wrong decision to try and push through legislation without dealing with some of the problems that the government itself recognises with the bill and its impact, in particular, on small businesses and those in the startup space. This is not just wrong for the government. I think this is wrong, firstly, for the economy. If we don't get significant reforms right and if we don't deal with the issues, and there are issues with what the government has put forward, then this bill will not deliver what it needs to as well as it could for the economy. Secondly, it is wrong for the people. I can tell you people do not understand what the government has proposed, and until a broader part of the community understands and actually backs this—this is not fair, frankly, to the Australian people, and it's inappropriate.”
“I move: That the Treasury Laws Amendment (Tax Reform No. 1) Bill 2026 and Income Tax Rates Amendment (Tax Reform No. 1) Bill 2026 be referred to the Standing Committee on Economics for consideration and an advisory report by 31 July 2026. The government, in the last budget, has put tax reform on the agenda. I think this is the right decision and I think it was a brave decision. This is difficult, and we have not had significant tax reform in this country for the last 25 years. I recognise the guts and the courage that it took to do that. But I think the government is making absolutely the wrong decision to try and push this through quickly. It is making the wrong decision to try and push this through without significant interrogation at the Senate or at the House level.”
“I support the principles of these reforms. I believe that they are necessary to secure the NDIS for the future. But I do think that the government is being heroic in its assumptions about what it can get done by when. It is absolutely critical for the government now to deliver on what it has promised to the community. I will look most carefully at the rollout of its implementation. I'll be listening to my community and ensuring that the legislation has achieved what it set out to do, because there are 760,000 Australians and family members who rely on this scheme, and they deserve nothing less from this parliament.”
“But this bill requires a huge degree of trust from the disability community—trust that the functional capacity tool will be fair, trust that automated systems will not produce outcomes that would never have survived individualised scrutiny, trust that the states will step up with foundational supports, trust that the instruments and rules—many of which have not been released—will be developed with the community, not imposed upon it. That is a huge degree of trust for the government to ask for. This reform must also not be the end. There were lots of concerns shared with me in my community surveys which will not be addressed in this stage of reforms. There must be more steps to ensure the integrity, that fraud is countered effectively and that the level of supports provided to participants is proportionate.”
“I support the NDIS and the community it in turn empowers. I will continue to fight for its future, its sustainability and its ability to achieve the core objectives for Australians and their families. It is clear that a major redesign of the NDIS is warranted. The growth trajectory is real, the urgency of reform is real and the experiences of people engaging with the scheme and the challenges they face with the scheme are real. I strongly believe that. The design challenges the government is seeking to address—in abuse of the NDIS, in fraud, in eligibility, in planning, in market stewardship, in foundational supports, I do believe, on balance, are mostly the right ones.”
“We know that some participants, especially those with intellectual disabilities, heavily rely on capacity-building supports to ensure they can leave the house and participate in society. Approaching these reductions in more individualised ways should be considered. We must be cautious to ensure that these cuts do not undermine the key objective of the scheme—for people with a disability to participate in normal life. Finally, as many of my crossbench colleagues have shared, there's the consultation timeline. Ten days for the disability community to respond to 109 pages of complex legislation affecting 760,000 Australians is not genuine engagement. I understand the government faces real pressures, but rushed process erodes trust at exactly the moment when trust is what this reform requires. The NDIS is hugely important.”
“While I understand that exceptions are made within reasonable terms—such as someone who has hearing loss not being required to have a cochlear implant if they don't wish to—I hold concerns that not all the treatments are accessible to individuals, whether they be prohibitive by price or location or whether they are appropriate at all. Fourth, I raise the planned reductions to social and community participation and capacity-building supports. I understand the expenditure within these programs has risen significantly and that standardising average cuts is one of the easiest ways to reduce costs. However, applying an average reduction to this category of support across the board may not be the best solution.”
“Many constituents have shared with me their real concerns about this element of the legislation—that it could be a repeat of robodebt, that machine decision-making could ultimately lead to negative outcomes for NDIS participants. I am supportive of the member for Curtin's amendment, which raises these concerns. Third, my community have shared their anxieties with me about various new eligibility and assessment requirements, including the requirement that participants undergo all relevant treatments technically available before accessing the scheme.”
“My second significant concern is about the automated decision-making in schedule 3. I understand it is important to be efficient in these services. Honestly, that's feedback I get consistently—that working within the NDIS and dealing with the NDIS is a bureaucratic maze, and it should be more efficient. But we do not yet know if automated systems alone can adequately address the complexity and individuality of disability. The bill authorises automated decision-making with safeguards, but those safeguards need to be legislated clearly, not left to administrative practice. There need to be clear frameworks and guidelines about how such decision-making will be completed such that the government and decisions can be held accountable.”
“Change must not run ahead of infrastructure designed to catch those it transitions out. This includes ensuring that families are informed about what new pathways will look like. In a community survey I recently ran on the proposed changes, respondents shared these concerns, with one saying: The QLD government hasn't yet agreed to Thriving Kids, Foundational Supports programs don't yet exist and public health services, especially mental health services, are already struggling to meet demand. Another shared: More information on the Thriving Kids initiative needs to be shared, and sooner. Any changes to publicly funded community health services need to be announced (and I hope that there are some!) There's this anxiety, and people just don't know what will be there.”
“Families across my electorate and disability community organisations around the country are understandably anxious about what could happen to children who may find themselves removed from the NDIS scheme before any alternative pathways are properly operational. I have heard similar concerns from others in the community that they do not have the certainty about the supports provided to participants with psychosocial disabilities, who expect to be deemed ineligible under these changes. States and territories have responded tentatively to proposals about supports available external to the scheme, and that tentativeness creates real risk and enormous anxiety. If we narrow access before the alternative systems are ready, we will not be saving the scheme; we will simply be abandoning people. The sequencing of reform must be rigorous.”
“Let me now talk to where I believe the bill falls short, or risks falling short, in implementation. My largest concern underpins the rest—that the supports meant to exist outside the NDIS are not ready. As the Grattan Institute's Sam Bennett noted this week: The success of a slimmed-down scheme will depend on the availability of high-quality alternative services for those who no longer qualify for the NDIS. The federal government has set aside approximately $5 billion for foundational supports. While we know that $2 billion of this will go towards Thriving Kids, no information has been provided yet about which other services will be commissioned. Thriving Kids is due to be stood up in its first stage at the end of this year, but we have not yet seen it in practice.”
“New civil enforcement powers, tighter provider registration requirements and greater payment visibility through digital payment systems are welcome. I would encourage the government to also adopt the self-direction registration category recommended by the 2024 NDIS Provider and Worker Registration Taskforce, which would maintain pathways to greater participant choice within the expanded registration framework. On pricing and governance in schedule 3, I understand the rationale for giving the minister binding pricing determination powers. If used judiciously, these can help address market distortions and ensure value for money. But I want to be clear: my expectation is that these powers will be used with genuine consultation, not as just a blunt instrument.”
“However, I do note that not all recommendations from these reviews have been incorporated, and I will return to some of those gaps. I'm especially supportive of the integrity measures in schedule 2. Fraud is real. Major operations have uncovered scam schemes worth millions of dollars—money that is not going to support the people who rely on it most—and it undermines the entire NDIS scheme as it is. The NDIS Quality and Safeguards Commission has reported a sharp uptick in fraud referrals in recent years. This fraud diverts resources away from the people who deserve the support, undermining the integrity of the scheme at its core. I frequently hear from NDIS participants, providers and disability sector workers who have seen the fraud firsthand and are deeply concerned about its impact.”
“My greatest fear of what the government is putting forward is that they're just not going to be able to provide the services on the timeline that they have outlined in these bills and people who really rely on these services are going to be left waiting. This bill contains five schedules covering access and planning measures, fraud and integrity, governance, new framework planning operationalisation, and transitional provisions. I'm genuinely pleased to see that some of the reforms draw on the 2023 NDIS review and Royal Commission into Violence, Abuse, Neglect and Exploitation of People with Disability, among other reviews. These were hard-won findings from processes that listened deeply to the disability community, and it matters that they have informed this legislation.”
“I want to be honest about this because I think the disability community deserves honesty more than it deserves platitudes. We have an enormous challenge here with this program. I think one of the most profound aspects of this challenge is that, when this program was introduced, it became—and other people have used this expression—the only lifeboat in the ocean because many other services that others relied on were withdrawn. So the only option to get real support was from the NDIS. That is the world that we're in now, and that world is not sustainable nor suitable, so we need significant reform. That is why I approach this bill in good faith. However, alongside that good faith, I hold significant concerns about how some of the measures have been designed and how they will be implemented.”
“This is a problem for every person, every family member and every friend of someone who has a significant disability and is currently receiving support from the NDIS or may in the future. If we don't get this right, I don't believe those supports will be there in the future. The program was originally modelled to cost $13.6 billion a year, or $20 billion in today's dollars, supporting just over half a million people. The Productivity Commission modelling from 2011 estimated that annual cost growth would sit between three and six per cent. Instead, between 2020 and 2024, costs grew on average 24 per cent per year. The program is now projected to cost around $58 billion a year by 2028, with an estimated 900,000 participants expected to be on the scheme by 2030 if no other changes are made.”
“Just the other day in my electorate office, I met a family who have a non-verbal autistic son around the age of 13. I talked to them about the NDIS and the challenges that they found with the NDIS. We were working through some of the problems and I said, 'What did you do before the NDIS?' They said that they could barely cope. For all its faults, the NDIS has had a transformational impact on the lives of their child and on their own lives. This is why it is so important, but we cannot ignore the trajectory of the scheme and the problems with it. The NDIS is now supporting almost 760,000 Australians, and annual expenditure is growing at a rate that, if left unaddressed, would threaten the long-term sustainability of the scheme itself. This is not just a problem for the budget.”
“The National Disability Insurance Scheme is one of the most important social programs in Australia's history. Across this country, it has changed lives in ways that go well beyond funding packages and support plans. It has given people with disability genuine agency and delivers on the promise that it was built on, that Australians with a permanent and significant disability would have access to the supports they need when they need them on terms that respect their own choices. We must ensure that we keep that promise. In my electorate of Wentworth, I hear about these impacts directly. Many participants and their family members share with me how the NDIS programs have helped them participate in and contribute to the community in ways they previously didn't think possible.”
“In a recent survey of 320 Wentworth residents, 90 per cent said it was very important to them that the government takes action to limit gambling advertising. When asked about the government's proposed reforms, 78 per cent were dissatisfied or very dissatisfied, and 53 per cent have no confidence at all that these changes will make a difference. When asked to choose their top two priorities when creating reform, 75 per cent identified the same two: protecting vulnerable people and reducing children's exposure. Instead of the opt-out model the government is proposing, 87 per cent of my community would prefer a complete ban. These results are unambiguous—from this survey and from the conversations I'm having in the community. Australians are dumbfounded that decisive action hasn't come sooner. It's time the government showed courage.”
“The government's recent response to the Murphy report was long overdue—889 days late. But, when the document was finally tabled, it didn't respond to each recommendation. Instead, it simply announced its own proposals. That doesn't pass the pub test. I met one mother who shared her son's story. He was trying to battle his gambling addiction. He had excused himself from all the pubs and everywhere around the area to stop that gambling addiction, and he felt he was hounded by ads wherever he turned—on his favourite podcasts, radio and TV. He couldn't escape it. Those are the stories behind our cultural crisis that demands decisive and brave leadership. My community agrees that stronger action is needed.”
“We need to have one place to look to be able to hold governments of all levels to account against the implementation of reports that everybody says we need to act on. Finally, technology-facilitated abuse is central to primary prevention across the field. The Fix Our Feeds campaign, which allows people to opt out of harmful algorithms, is a first step and one I support. The evidence is in front of us. The recommendations are on the table. What victims-survivors and frontline workers need from this parliament is not more reviews; it is action—coordinated, funded and accountable. When it works, support it more; when it doesn't, pull it back. We owe those people nothing less.”
“The second thing is a dedicated DFSV implementation unit within the Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet, to drive whole-of-government accountability and to ensure commitments are actually delivered, not buried across portfolios. The third thing is to legislate the DFSV Commission as a full statutory authority, as I've called for previously, with powers to compel agencies to provide data and information. The fourth thing is to create and maintain a publicly accessible national register of all DFSV recommendations from royal commissions, parliamentary inquiries, independent reports and coronial findings, and, every single year, to update it with the status. We've made all these reports, we've got all these recommendations, but we do not know if they're being implemented.”
“MinterEllison and ANROWS, in the first national report examining the funding of the fight against domestic and family violence, found there is simply no source of information that monitors our funding, despite our ambitious national targets. This has to change. That is why I'm calling for four things. The first thing is a legislated national DFSV funding mapping framework, embedded in all bilateral federal funding agreements. States and territories should be required to identify and report annually against standardised expenditure categories, publicly accessible and independently overseen, with outcomes reporting attached. If we want to know whether our investment is working, we need to know where the money goes and whether it makes the difference that it said it was going to do when it got the money in the first place.”
“We do not have consistent data frameworks that monitor deaths or near-deaths of women. We do not have strong enough perpetrator accountability or national high-risk intervention systems. These are not new recommendations. Some have been agreed to, some half implemented and some not responded to or actioned at all. This is not good enough. The renewed federation funding agreements in this sector commit to publishing state and territory plans on the DSS website, but there is no definition of what those plans must contain—no standardised expenditure categories, independent oversights, outcomes, reporting requirements or consequences for noncompliance. They are plans about future spending, not a retrospective account of where the money goes, what it has achieved, what works and what doesn't.”
“But rates of femicide and domestic and family violence have left Australians understandably questioning whether our investment is working and where it is actually going. I understand why many are turning to the idea of a royal commission. But I want to be honest about what that means. As a national alliance of domestic and family violence specialists have said plainly, there is no time to wait for another report. Our national Domestic, Family and Sexual Violence Commissioner, Micaela Cronin agrees. We have thousands of recommendations already. We have already experienced delays. Frontline workers have told us what they need. The problem is not a lack of answers but that we are not joining the dots in action, in accountability or in funding. We know that, right now, we do not have a clear national picture of where our funding goes.”
“I rise to speak on this motion. I want to acknowledge the 21 women we have lost to intimate partner and family violence in just this year alone according to Destroy the Joint's Counting Dead Women project. I want to acknowledge the children who have been left behind, the families torn apart and the trauma which has touched far too many in our communities. This month is Domestic and Family Violence Prevention Month, an opportunity to be taking an honest look at whether we are doing enough to prevent future violence. The statistics tell us we are not. Our communities tell us we are not. I do not believe we are doing enough either. There is no question that this government has invested. There are plans, reviews, frameworks and funding. I acknowledge that.”
“For families without nearby support networks, this means time off work for an arrangement locked in even before the child is born. There will always be bad actors in child care, but, right now, parents are genuinely worried about the safety in our childcare centres. Australia's fragmented working with children programs are allowing perpetrators to reoffend or move across borders, while the subsidised model has attracted the very worst rentseekers to an industry unable to properly assess and monitor quality. The system isn't working. The Prime Minister says he wants child care to be his legacy. I take him at his word, but this parliament needs to be far more ambitious and get to the heart of why child care just isn't working for Australians.”
“I want to speak today about an issue that is raised constantly by the people of Wentworth: child care—specifically cost, access and safety. Australia has some of the highest childcare costs in the world. Even with over $13 billion in subsidies each year, it remains prohibitively expensive right across the income distribution. I doorknocked a professional woman, on a really good income in Clovelly, who told me that they simply cannot have a third child, which they want, because of childcare costs. What does this enormous public and private cost get us? Finding a childcare place, even in Wentworth, has been a challenge for years. And that's in the centre of Sydney. Just this year, multiple centres have closed right across the electorate due to lease pressures, rising costs and staffing difficulties.”
“My question is to the Treasurer. Your budget is framed around intergenerational equity, and I congratulate you for seeking to tilt the balance back towards young home buyers. A tax system that overburdens young workers is not only unfair; it is also unsustainable in an ageing population. But to help young Australians build their wealth, we also need to reduce their income tax rates. This budget raises more than $77 billion in extra revenue over the medium term. When will you legislate to return that extra revenue to taxpayers by reducing income tax rates?”
“But, where there is room for progress, we should try and achieve it instead of waiting for the next suite of reforms. This amendment is a small but real step towards giving whistleblowers what they deserve. Having moved the amendment circulated in my name, I commend it to the House.”
“The existing section 122.5(4) defence for compliant PID Act disclosures remains entirely intact. My amendment adds a parallel pathway. It does not replace or weaken the primary one. Compliance with the PID Act's full requirements remains the clearest and most certain route to protection. Within the PID Act remains an express carve-out: a disclosure to a foreign public official cannot attract the defence, regardless of the claimed public interest. National security concerns about disclosures to foreign governments are real, and this amendment does not disturb them. I accept this amendment does not resolve every problem with the whistleblower framework. The PID act needs comprehensive reform. That work is pending by the government. I understand they have committed to the second tranche of reforms in this area.”
“My amendment creates that safety net. It inserts a new subsection, 122.5(4AA), which provides that, where a defendant cannot satisfy every technical requirement of the PID Act's external or emergency disclosure pathway, they may still access the defence if they can demonstrate that their disclosure was reasonable and genuinely in the public interest, having regard to all circumstances. If someone makes a disclosure and does not fulfil the technical requirements but it cannot be proven they were completing this disclosure for a reasonable public good, they will still be held liable under the secrecy provisions. This is seeking to protect those who are sharing for the genuine public interest. I want to be precise about what this amendment does and does not do. It does not override the PID act.”
“Before a public official can make an external disclosure—that is, disclose to a journalist, a member of parliament or any other person outside government—they must navigate a set of conditions that are easy to fail on a technicality. Miss one step in the sequence and the PID Act immunity does not attach. If a person is not familiar with the whistleblower schemes, they may find themselves facing serious criminal charges. The Human Rights Law Centre, which runs Australia's only dedicated whistleblower legal centre, was clear about this issue in its submission to the Senate committee. In its experience, the PID Act is not fit for purpose. The conditions are difficult to satisfy. Genuine public interest disclosures regularly fall outside them, and when they do there is no current legislative safety net, just criminal exposure.”
“As I flagged in my second reading speech, I'm pleased with this legislation being introduced and I commend the government. However, in the absence of simultaneous reform to protect whistleblowers, and reforms to the PID Act, there are omissions in this bill which ultimately may harm those who are protecting the public interest. My amendment attempts to address one of these issues. Under section 122.5(4) of the Criminal Code, a person has a defence to a secrecy offence if they have made a public interest disclosure in accordance with the Public Interest Disclosure Act 2013. On its face, that looks like an adequate provision. In practice, it is in fact deeply flawed, because the PID Act's requirements for a qualifying external emergency disclosure under section 26 are technical in the extreme.”
“I move: (1) Schedule 1, page 6 (after line 32), after item 8, insert: 8A After subsection 122.5(4) of the Criminal Code Insert: (4AA) Where a defendant seeks to rely on the defence at paragraph 122.5(4)(a), on the grounds that they have made an external or emergency disclosure in accordance with section 26 of the Public Interest Disclosure Act 2013 , it is sufficient for the defendant to show: (a) in the case of items 2 and 3 of the table in that section—all the further requirements set out in column 3 of the item are met; or (b) the disclosure is otherwise reasonable and in the public interest, having regard to all of the circumstances. I rise to move this amendment to the Secrecy Provisions Amendment (Repealing Offences) Bill 2026.”
“Reducing this body of law from 875 provisions to fewer than 600 matters. Ending the absurdity of journalists being prosecuted for receiving documents matters. But we should not mistake progress for completion. The people this framework most affects, whether they are journalists, those who represent whistleblowers or civil society organisations, are still telling us it falls short. We should listen.”
“My amendment would provide that, where a whistleblower does not satisfy every technical requirement but can demonstrate that the disclosure was both reasonable and genuinely in the public interest, they may have access to additional certainty. These disclosures will still not be permitted to be given to a foreign public official. It doesn't resolve all the problems with our whistleblower framework, but it is a meaningful first step towards protections that the public expects and whistleblowers deserve. This bill's senate committee reports on 19 June. The government's response to those recommendations will be a test of whether its commitment to further reform is genuine. I commend the bill for inquiry, and I urge the government to address these issues I have raised before its passage.”
“We are still waiting. This reform is monumental, but it does not appear in a vacuum in our legislation. It comes as David McBride is still in jail and as whistleblower advocates still await certainty. Currently, under section 122.5(4) of the Criminal Code, compliance with the Public Interest Disclosure Act can operate as a defence to a secrecy offence, but the PID Act's requirements for a qualifying 'external' or 'emergency' disclosure are highly technical. This makes it harder for whistleblowers to have certainty about whether disclosures which are well within public interest will leave them criminally liable. I will be moving a consideration in detail amendment to address this gap.”
“As the HRLC noted in their submission, this mechanism is unsatisfactory as a matter of principle but, given the absence of stronger protections, desirable in practice. It is disappointing that this must be our solution in the face of reforms which don't go quite far enough. Again, I support the member for Curtin's amendment, which requires an independent review of this provision every five years in consultation with media stakeholders. Fourth, and following on from this point, the bill has not come alongside necessary reform of the Public Interest Disclosure Act. We are still without a whistleblower protection authority; we are still without a single, consolidated whistleblower act. A parliamentary committee first called for an independent protection body for whistleblowers in 1991. It was called for again in 1994 and, again, in 2017.”
“The INSLM's recommendation 13, which I note was agreed to in principle by the government in November 2024, was that consideration be given to recasting the defence as an exception, shifting the burden to the prosecution. That recasting does not appear in this bill. That is deeply disappointing. Third, the Attorney-General's consent mechanism has structural limitations. I acknowledge that this is an improvement on the current arrangement, but I hold concerns about its potential for politicisation. Journalists report on politicians. Whether a potential conflict of interest is real or simply perceived, the fact that a politician holds the power to authorise or block the prosecution of a journalist for a secrecy offence is significant and should raise concern.”
“Second, the journalist defence remains structured against journalists. The defence in section 122.5(6), which protects public-interest journalism, has not been amended. The Alliance for Journalists' Freedom puts the position plainly: the current provision requires journalists to bear an evidential burden to establish they reasonably believed their conduct was in the public interest. That is contrary to the presumption of innocence. It is the journalist, not the Crown, who must raise, substantiate and prove the public-interest claim, often in respect of conduct the journalist may not have known was covered by a secrecy offence at the time. The HRLC, the Centre for Public Integrity and the AJF all identify this as an unimplemented reform.”
“This is ordinary democratic participation. Whether or not it could fall within the offence's reach is, on the current drafting, at least arguable. The word 'improper' provides some guard, but it is undefined. An undefined concept of impropriety is a thin protection in a provision that carries criminal liability. That is why I support the member for Curtin's amendment, which replaces the vague concept of 'improper' communication with a concrete, harm based threshold. It limits criminal liability to communications that harm—or where a person intends to harm or is reckless as to whether the communication harms—an essential public interest, such as national security, public health or financial stability. It also explicitly protects journalism and whistleblowing that expose wrongdoing.”
“The replacement offence under section 122.4 applies wherever a person improperly uses or communicates Commonwealth information with an intention to obtain a 'benefit' or cause a 'detriment', terms defined in the Criminal Code dictionary as any advantage or disadvantage whatsoever. But the Human Rights Law Centre and the Centre for Public Integrity note that this departs from what the AGD's own 2023 review recommended and from what the INSLM recommended. The concern is practical; much ordinary engagement with government could theoretically involve some advantage to one party or disadvantage to another. The HRLC gives the example of civil society organisations, including the very organisations who submitted to the inquiry for this legislation, being provided with confidential draft legislation and asked to provide feedback.”
“And it clarifies that unsolicited receipt of information and other unwitting dealings with information do not constitute 'dealing with', for the purpose of part 5.6. These are real reforms. They reduce criminal liability, raise thresholds and lower penalties. I do not want to diminish what this bill achieves. Reducing 875 secrecy provisions to fewer than 600 is a genuine accomplishment. Removing the absurdity of journalists facing prosecution for receiving unsolicited documents is a genuine improvement. But genuine improvement is not the same as adequate protection. First, the new general secrecy offence does not adopt a harm based approach.”
“In response to the INSLM's recommendation, the bill repeals the security classification limbs of the deemed harm offences, removing reliance on administrative classification markings as a criminal offence element. It repeals the 'dealing with' offence for nonofficials under section 122.4A(2), ending the position where journalists face criminal liability merely for receiving sensitive information. It narrows deemed harm offences for officials, requiring a more direct connection to actual or likely harm. It nearly halves the maximum penalties for non-official disclosure offences. It legislates a requirement that the Attorney-General's written consent be obtained before any journalist can be prosecuted for a secrecy offence.”
“This is nearly double the number recommended for repeal by the AGD review and a reduction of more than a third of Commonwealth secrecy provisions. This is achieved primarily through the repeal of section 122.4 and targeted removal of criminal liability from non-disclosure duties across 13 portfolio areas. I am pleased to see this. The bill also introduces a new targeted secrecy offence directed at those who improperly use or communicate Commonwealth information to obtain a benefit or cause detriment. This narrower formulation responds to the PwC tax confidentiality breach but does consciously reject the broader general offence proposed by the 2023 AGD review.”
“Of these 875 provisions, 168 were identified as no longer warranting criminal liability at all. The review instead deemed that civil or administrative sanctions were more proportionate. The AGD review also recommended a new general secrecy offence to replace the sunsetting section 122.4 of the Criminal Code, which had long been the mechanism through which the non-disclosure duties across Commonwealth legislation attracted criminal liability. In 2024, the INSLM reviewed the general secrecy offences in part 5.6. It found them uncertain, inconsistent with rule-of-law principles and, in some cases, disproportionate, particularly as they applied to nonofficials such as journalists, lawyers and human rights advocates. This bill gives legislative effect to both reviews. It repeals more than 300 secrecy provisions.”
“But, as the Human Rights Law Centre put in their submission, 'Secrecy laws which are disproportionate and not properly calibrated are bad for Australian democracy and the rule of law.' This bill moves meaningfully closer to that balance, though not all the way there. I understand the bill has been referred to the Senate Legal and Constitutional Affairs Legislation Committee. I hope the issues I raise today are considered carefully and that the government responds to the committee's recommendations before passage. The 2023 AGD review had confronting findings. Commonwealth legislation had accumulated around 875 secrecy provisions, which was enough for the New York Times to describe Australia as 'possibly the most secretive democracy in the world'.”
“I rise in support of the Secrecy Provisions Amendment (Repealing Offences) Bill 2026. This is some of the most significant reform to Commonwealth secrecy law in decades. It draws on two major reviews: the Attorney-General's Department Review of Secrecy Provisions completed in 2023 and the subsequent independent statutory review by the Independent National Security Legislation Monitor. I commend the government for acting on these findings. Secrecy provisions are necessary. They protect national security and intelligence and ensure that those trusted with sensitive information can be held to that trust.”