Tim Wilson
Goldstein · Liberal Party · Australia
“Now, we see even more immoral leadership as the Prime Minister and his ministers refuse to audit whether federal money has found its way into the hands of organised crime through the CFMEU Labor cartel.”
“The silence that we heard from our prime minister and our national leaders every step of the way led to horrific incidents like, on 10 November, the protests at the front of Central Shule in Caulfield South in the Goldstein electorate. It led eventually to the most horrific terrorist incident on our most famous national beach.”
“The idea that you would put the social solidarity of the most marginalised section of our community on a ballot paper knowing it would fail is an abrogation of leadership and responsibility and something I do not think this prime minister will ever be able to shake.”
“I've recently been spending a lot of time thinking about what moral government is and what type of government seeks to divide citizens, feed corruption and break trust within the community. The short and sharp of it is that it's an immoral government.”
“But to engage in citizenship stacking, where they deliberately went around and targeted electorates and got people to become Australian citizens on the eve of a national poll, is absolutely disgraceful.”
“There is hope. We can have a moral government again that's focused on uniting Australians and building trust and taking Australia forward together. But the only way we can do that is by seeing a change of government and the end of the Albanese government.”
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“The member for Isaacs's solution was to abolish the position of the person whose responsibility was to have oversight over the mental health deterioration of children in the custodianship of the government. At every single point, what we had was a government—the Rudd-Gillard-Rudd government—who was involved in demonisation and humiliation of children and a rapid advancement in the deterioration in their mental health. His only answer to those situations was through a different piece of legislation put forward to abolish the office of Australia's human rights commissioner, which included a pathway to remove any oversight or actually address the problems of how the government was bullying, dehumanising and delegitimising children.”
“Some of those choices could have been to get children out of detention, just like this sort of legislation; review the Administrative Review Tribunal; or review legislation to assess whether people should have pathways to be able to get out—visa or migration pathways. But that wasn't the pathway that the member for Isaacs took. As Attorney-General, his solution was to seek to abolish the office of the Australia's human rights commissioner, the office that was, in part, responsible for oversight of the treatment of those children in detention. So what do we have? We had children denied education. The solution to that was to abolish the position of the person who had oversight. Children were suffering from mental health conditions.”
“Of course, this legislation is designed to fix the legacy of the member for Isaacs, who, every time he has tried to put things forward, has gone onto fail and create more problems and more confusion than the problems he sought to solve in the first place. I remember this, well and truly, back in my time as Australia's human rights commissioner, when we were dealing with the legacy of the Rudd-Gillard-Rudd governments and the children who were asylum seekers, locked in detention because of those governments. During that time, the member for Isaacs, at the latter stage, was Attorney-General. During that period as Attorney-General, he was confronted with a number of choices.”
“As the member for Goldstein, it is a great privilege to speak on this legislation. I speak as somebody who supports this legislation because there is no legislation in this parliament that has ever been put forward by the member for Isaacs that has not needed improvement. The member for Isaacs established the Administrative Review Tribunal in the last parliament. He has a litany of train-wreck legislation that needs constant improvement, like his tenure as a minister in government. I say this with sadness. When he isn't turning up to teal fundraisers and events in Goldstein or sending volunteers to Goldstein to help teal candidates get elected—even though they claim to be independent—he puts train-wreck legislation before the parliament.”
“My question is to the Minister for Employment and Workplace Relations. Journalist Nick McKenzie, who was uncovering the truth about corruption in the CFMEU and its links to organised crime and gangland figures, has endured home intrusions in a chilling act of intimidation that has no place in this country. Australians deserve to know the truth. What specific action has the government taken to protect journalists who are just doing their jobs to expose CFMEU corruption?”
“My question is to the Minister for Employment and Workplace Relations. The minister has said the government's administration of the corrupt and criminal CMFEU is 'the strongest available action'. But CMFEU officials have been meeting with underworld figures such as Mick Gatto and violent abuser John Setka as well as receiving secret bribes. Why has the Albanese government done nothing to address this crime and corruption, and is it because, under the Prime Minister's Labor leadership, those opposite have received almost $7 million in CMFEU donations?”
“If you want to reminisce about some of your favourite moments from Kath & Kim episodes, it touches a few of those points too. There are of course many other sailing clubs across the community in Port Phillip, including the Beaumaris Yacht Club. I want to say to the head, Bruce Fraser, and to its committee members good luck for your sailing season. But one of the most important things for all the clubs, as we start the sailing season, is to remember to stay safe and respect the water. While Port Phillip is not necessarily a surf beach like some people might experience off the coast of their electorates, it does not change the fact that water can be dangerous. Be safe. Make sure you tell other people that you're going to be in the water, and play it safe.”
“I hear it was a spirited and always lively and somewhat less sober start to the season. Congratulations to the Royal Brighton Yacht Club and to Peter Demura and all of the committee members and executive members as well. There are clubs yet to have their opening of the season, including the Beaumaris Motor Yacht Squadron. To John Giuliano and all the committee members at the Beaumaris Motor Yacht Squadron: I hope you have a wonderful sail past as a start to the sailing season. And, always, to one of my favourite yacht clubs, the Black Rock Yacht Club, and particularly to their commodore, Randal Garnham: congratulations on the season yet to come. It's always a beautiful setting down there if you ever want a wonderful location in the community.”
“With the introduction of equal opportunity legislation in the great state of Victoria in the early 1980s, men were also allowed to join the club, and, of course, the demographic of the club progressively changed. A few years later it changed its name to the Hampton Sailing Club. However, the purpose and spirit of the organisation remain the same—an active and accessible venue for Bayside and the wider community to enjoy off-beach recreational watercraft activities. The opening of the sailing season is a big event within the Goldstein community, and I want to congratulate those clubs that have already had the opening of their sailing season. To the Sandringham Yacht Club and particularly its commodore, Mark Welsh: congratulations on the start of your sailing season.”
“So begins summer; so begins the sailing season. I want to start by congratulating the Hampton Sailing Club on their 80th birthday, which is going to be celebrated this Saturday. I'm looking forward to coming along. It started in 1945. Hampton Sailing Club was formerly the Victorian Ladies Yacht Club, which was formed in 1945 when a group of young women involved in the Rangers-Girl Guide movement secured the use of an old shed on the Sandy foreshore. The club are lucky to be able to include some of the VLYC members in their celebration this Saturday. The women assembled a fleet of sabots for sailing training purposes, and the new club prospered. As the membership grew, so did the number and classes of boats they were sailing. Eventually the club moved to new premises, to its current location to the west of Hampton Pier, in the 1960s.”
“Wherever it is, the only people who are winning are the Australian Labor Party, because the industrial relations system in Australia today is not about empowering workers. The industrial relations system in Australia today is about control. It's about controlling Australian people and Australian workers and making sure that they do the Labor Party's bidding. This is the immoral nature of this government. They simply do not have the best interests of Australians at heart and they are not interested in how they're going to empower them to be part of the future success of this country. So my simple question to the minister, though she hasn't bothered to turn up, is: when are you going to stop the kickbacks, when are you going to start to focus on the Australian people, and when are you going to stop the money flows to organised crime?”
“Of course, we see this consistently across the industrial relations system, whether it's with the industry super funds that use marketing expenses to shower money onto the trade union movement, which miraculously makes significant financial contributions to the Labor Party so they can stay in office and they can keep taking money out of Australian workers' wages and showering it upon themselves; whether it's with the trade union movement so that they can campaign for Labor to be in a position to change the laws to favour them at the expense of ordinary Australians; or whether it's making sure that they suppress wages for Australians so that they can take advantage and strongarm them and use their muscle.”
“The simple question is: is public money going to finance organised crime? It should be an easy answer, but the minister refuses to look, and there's a simple reason why. It's because she knows that, if she shuts down the cartel kickback supply chain, at some point it'll stop feeding people within the Labor Party ecosystem and the cartel they have operating.”
“They know that, if they stand up and protest, they protest too much, because they know how much they're complicit in this crime. It is time to stand up and it's time to call it out. Every time they sit there in silence and do nothing, they continue to be complicit. Last night in the Senate—only last night—three states, Victoria, New South Wales and Queensland, reported to government their concerns about corruption and cartel kickbacks across three projects in their states. We've made a simple request of the Minister for Employment and Workplace Relations and the Minister for Infrastructure, Transport, Regional Development and Local Government to do an audit to make sure that public money is not going towards cartel kickbacks and brown paper bags or into the CFMEU and organised crime, and they're refusing.”
“The only state in this nation that's been prepared to call it out has been the LNP government in Queensland, where they've commissioned an inquiry, the Wood inquiry, that's directly called out the cartel kickbacks that have existed in the CFMEU. In doing so, they've directly exposed what is now happening. Millions of dollars are being funnelled through the facilitation arrangements established through the industrial relations system enabled by the Labor Party. They are making sure the money makes its way into organised crime and the trade union movement so it can then, of course, be kicked into the ALP campaign coffers. That's being paid for by average Australians. This is the most disgraceful episode in this nation's history, and I note the silence on the government benches right now.”
“It is explicitly clear that government projects are being commissioned where the CFMEU, in concert with the government, is ensuring brown paper bags of public money are being transferred to the few, for their benefit, and these are being paid for by the Australian worker. This is the problem. The cartel kickbacks that are going through and are funded by your Australian taxes are now part of the systemic nature of the increased costs of Australian projects funded through the industrial relations system. You are not just paying for it through higher taxes and debt into the future but increasingly paying it through higher costs for projects across the country and, of course, through lower returns and lower values. This is the disaster of the Albanese government, the Allan government and so many other governments across the country.”
“One of the things that Australians always held their head high about was that we were supposed to be a nation free of corruption. We were supposed to be a nation where good, honest, decent people got themselves into positions of public office, and where, when there was corruption, people of good, decent, honest reputation called it out. The problem we now have is that the government has become the enabler of corruption. This is a systemic problem now across not just the federal government but the state governments as well. Every day this is being revealed across the country, whether it's the Wood inquiry in Queensland or in media reports in New South Wales, Victoria, Western Australia or South Australia.”
“So the simple question I have for this government is: will you commission an audit to assess whether Australian taxpayers' money—not just taxes you have today, not just money and revenue you have today, but the debt you're borrowing from future generations—is going towards financing cartel kickbacks and corruption? Will you question whether it is going to go into brown paper bags? A division having been called in the House of Representatives— Sitting suspended from 11:45 to 11:5 7 It's quite clear. The government simply will not answer whether or not any federal money is going towards cartel kickbacks and brown paper bags through public-sector projects. If the minister will not answer these simple questions, then how can we have confidence that they're not going to not just those projects or the CFMEU but her own account?”
“They have refused to commission an audit to make sure that Australian taxpayers' dollars are not going to fuel and fund organised crime. So we're not talking about esoteric matters; we're talking about very serious matters. Right now, Australian taxpayers' money is at risk of financing organised crime. And you are not just paying the debt; you are paying and financing the interest on that debt, and it is pushing up the cost of the interest on your house. This is the fundamental immoral position of this government—that they will not even take a casual interest or put proper resources in to make sure we have a crackdown on organised crime and whether there's a direct connection to what you the Australian taxpayer are paying.”
“It shouldn't be given to organised crime.' You'd think they'd say, 'No, we're not going to borrow from Australians and future generations—and, more importantly, your children—to facilitate payments to people like Mick Gatto.' But the federal minister, Amanda Rishworth, will not even audit the volume of money that is currently going to projects, to ensure that that money is not going to criminal gangs. Last night in the Senate it was revealed that three state government projects have reported to the federal government concerns about corruption and cartel kickbacks. Twenty-eight days after, we have contacted both the federal minister for infrastructure, Minister King, and the federal minister for industrial relations, Minister Rishworth.”
“Even worse than that, at every point that this government is given a choice about whether it wants to pull in the belt, whether it wants to show economic responsibility and restraint—simple things, like when we've seen hard evidence in the public domain now that public money is being used to facilitate cartel kickbacks to the CFMEU and where Australian taxpayers' dollars are finding their way into brown paper bags to facilitate cartel kickbacks to criminal and organised gangs. You'd think the federal government would say: 'No, that's Australian taxpayers' money.”
“When you have $50,000 per minute going towards financing the nation's debt and the only response from the government is to palm out more cash and continue the spending spree in perpetuity, without any sense of fiscal restraint, this is only going to become a bigger problem, where the rate of expenditure is going to increase and the volume of debt is going to increase. And, of course, we're going to borrow more from tomorrow to spend today. We're going to have more debt, it's going to fuel inflation, and Australians are going to pay higher interest rates, and it's going to be directly connected to the consequences and the decision-making of the Albanese government.”
“If you've ever seen it— A division having been called in the House of Representatives— Sitting suspended from 11:3 4 to 11:41 As I was remarking before we were rudely interrupted by the incompetence of the Leader of the House— Government members interjecting— it's a five-minute speech—the entire income of 2.4 Australians will go to financing the nation's debt, and that is material because it is going to continue for the next five minutes and the next five minutes and the next five minutes in perpetuity.”
“In the five minutes allotted to me in this speech, 2.4 Australians' entire income will simply go to financing the nation's debt—$50,000 a minute. With $104,000 as the average income, 2.4 Australians' entire income will just go to financing the nation's debt. If the limit of the contribution towards financing the nation's debt was limited to the extent that I was speaking, I can assure you that I would be silent. The reality is that it will go beyond those five minutes and will continue in perpetuity. The reality is that this government has no capacity or will to constrain its spending because it is addicted to making sure it spends other people's money.”
“More importantly, how many small businesses are going to impacted by the soon-to-be changes that you're proposing around same-day payments on superannuation? I can give you a number. It comes from a report from MYOB, who do the payroll systems for a large chunk of the country, Minister. If you'd care to go to page 9 of the report, called Securing Australia's Superannuation : MYOB submission , it says: This suggests that approximately 22.6% of businesses would be at risk of insolvency— from the government's legislation. So another simple question, Minister: how many small businesses will be made insolvent because of your proposed changes? It's a simple question and one to which I've no doubt you can provide some sort of simple answer. Of course we know you won't, because you don't bother looking, because you haven't done the work.”
“And this government is not a friend of small business. It is continuing to wage its war on small businesses all across this country, because it is not prepared to listen or to understand the consequences of the legislation it is putting forward. Instead—we've said this many times before—it sees no small business, hears no small business and certainly doesn't speak to any small business, because, during the discussion around the penalty rates legislation, the minister couldn't answer a simple question: how many small businesses would be impacted? We've now passed the legislation, and it's being implemented. She's given many speeches in the federal parliament crowing about her incredible achievement. She still can't answer that basic question: how many small businesses are impacted, Minister? We'd love to know the answer.”
“In fact, there was only one penalty rate that was being applied, and it was to make sure that it was going to their union friends. But who was it being paid for by? It was being paid for by Australian small businesses. Any pathway to simplicity—any pathway where there would be less cost on small business by making sure that they didn't have to have their own HR department, their own industrial relations department, their own tax advisers and their own lawyers, rather than that money going to wages and of course the opportunity for small businesses to actually get ahead and profit—was the demonised worst outcome for this government. So it's a simple proposition that this government has no friends in small business because it is not a friend of small business. If you want a friend, you've got to be a friend.”
“Small businesses are on the front line of this, and that's why they're experiencing record insolvencies. And the government is not their friend; the government is not doing anything to help. In fact, the Albanese government has declared war on small businesses, who simply want to get ahead and employ more Australians. The absurdity of the situation is that, in this chamber and this parliament, when we had industries like the retail industry wanting to pay workers more, the government was motivated to pass laws so that they could keep the industrial relations system complex, to favour their union mates, to keep the cartel kickbacks going, so that the money would flow to their friends, at the expense of Australian workers. It was done under the banner, they claimed, of making sure they secured penalty rates.”
“That is why Australia right now has the largest number of insolvencies of small business in its history. We only need to look at why. We have a consistent problem of inflation because this government continues to borrow from tomorrow to fuel today. We have a record number of jobs that are being created from public expenditure. Four out of five jobs are either directly created from public-sector jobs or by borrowing from tomorrow to pay for today to be able to keep numbers inflated. But who pays that cost? Small businesses pay that cost—your inflated costs—that are being passed onto Australians, through high prices and therefore inflation and higher interest rates. Today's expenditure from tomorrow's debt means that Australians pay higher prices today and, more importantly, higher interest rates.”
“When the Minister for Small Business can't even turn up to defend her legacy as the minister, when the previous speaker for the government couldn't even use the allotted time to defend the legacy of this government—you had your chance, Member for Deakin, but you couldn't even use your full time to defend the economic legacy of this government, particularly in terms of the importance of standing up for small business—it says something and speaks to something directly about this government, about where their priorities are. Despite their boasts and despite their claims, the reality is Australians are living with the cost-of-living crisis—and, more importantly, small business is living with the cost-of-small-business crisis—that this government has delivered.”
“I know the government whip has rushed in here against the idea of somebody daring to stand up against the idea of Labor Party control—using instruments of state to impose conformity onto people's lives and to bully people. How dare people raise that banner! But that is the reality—”
“Once upon a time you'd say the peak point of insanity in the state of Victoria was when—I say this politely and with the greatest respect to my fellow citizens—they re-elected the government that did that. But, actually, I'm wrong. The peak point of insanity in the state of Victoria was when our former premier decided to sidle up against the world's most horrific and egregious dictators and get happy snaps next to people like the President of Russia and Kim Jong Un. This is insanity. This is not a partisan point I'm seeking to prosecute. It is a point about control. One of the reasons why, at the core, people like me are Liberal is that we believe that people should be empowered to be able to make decisions about their lives. They should not have a situation where the government seeks to impose control over people's lives.”
“It doesn't matter what the issue is. It doesn't even matter whether I agree with it or not. Democratic accountability and responsibility are a necessary part of the institutions of our democracy. But it's not just that; it's also so that people can be held accountable because the member for Macarthur is right—we got things wrong during the pandemic. I don't just mean this in chamber; I also mean the state governments and their failure to adapt. One of the greatest problems is how unwilling we as a nation have been to acknowledge some of those problems at different points, but there is no state where that has been more egregious than the great state of Victoria, which literally bullied Victorian citizens into compliance and control.”
“Being from the great state of Victoria myself, I watched as our state government lied to the people of Victoria. When I say 'lied', I mean they explicitly lied and said that there was evidence as the basis and justification. They used the case of expert evidence which never existed to shut down, silence people, lock people in their homes, impose a curfew and bully children and families for two years and refuse to adapt and adjust. I fully understand that there is a need to have evolutionary policy to address the challenges of health care. But I can tell you one thing—some of us are deeply sceptical of the idea of a starting point where we just get together people who through a different basis of argument are declared experts and who then declare emergencies and the job of the Australian people is to suddenly conform.”
“Nobody who's debating this legislation starts from a position of arguing against the importance of preparation around health care, making sure that we have access to services, containment of diseases or, of course, protection of the Australian public. I'm sure he's not suggesting anything along those lines or an unwillingness to focus on disease control. How best we do that, though, in terms of legislation, the institutions we build and the powers they have is an enormously important part of the framework, particularly because—as the member for Macarthur correctly identified—it comes off the back of a period in which there has been, let's say, an elevated level of distrust from a large section of the Australian community about how powers have been used and/or abused in recent years.”
“I want to follow on from the remarks in the member for Macarthur's speech—erudite. I want to make it clear how much respect I have for the member for Macarthur. We came into parliament together in 2016. I went walkabout for three years, but he has always, I thought, served the parliament extremely well. Obviously we have a difference of opinion occasionally with how we vote, but his contributions in this chamber—particularly on matters related to the context of health care—have always added substance. He's actually lacked a partisanship, because I think he's motivated from a heartfelt and genuinely sincere place. I say that, genuinely and sincerely, from the bottom of my heart as well. So I take everything he has just said on board with sincerity and the good spirits in which it's intended.”
“We should make sure that the internet and technology do not become, any more than absolutely necessary—the answer is it's never necessary, absolutely never—a pathway or an enabler to cause harm against those who cannot stand up or speak for themselves. That's why we support this legislation.”
“My hope is that, by passing this legislation, it will not be the end of this discussion—sadly, it will not be the end because, tragically, we see the dark depths of humanity in these conversations—but a continuation of the commitment from this parliament that we are serious about finding every pathway to crack down on those people who wish our fellow citizens harm and, more importantly, that we work with agencies around the world to stop the tragedy of those in our country who aid and assist other people in the commitment of their sexual violence and their sexual crimes and help bring them to justice as well. This is a common cause of humanity.”
“When it comes to the powers that this parliament affords our agencies, including the Australian Federal Police, ASIO and others, we want to be confident that, when those agencies are going after criminals, working with partners overseas, they are able to find people who are perpetuating harm—people who are committing crimes against children, against women or against any person, particularly where they're using nefarious recording of information, often involving sexual violence, sexual crimes—and that they can find that content and shut it down. This is not an unreasonable expectation. It is, in fact, exactly what everybody in this parliament should seek.”
“We need them to be able to do the task of protecting us, to secure the services we need, to empower Australians—whether it's access to health services or whether it's through crime and support and security. There are times in my electorate where people call the local police station, and they can't even get connected. There are times when they're using their mobile telephony across this country and expect to get access, but they can't even connect to a local telephone tower. This is a common complaint of members, particularly those from rural and regional Australia, but I can tell you that it happens even in the Goldstein electorate.”
“It should be one, one, one for the people who are still alive. One of the most disappointing things that we heard in question time today was how the minister responsible didn't see it as her responsibility. We heard the minister being quite happy to pass the buck to the telecommunications company as a way of avoidance and to accept that that number of Australians who desperately needed support in past weeks amounted to their lives being worth zero, zero, zero. It's very sobering, because we all depend on telecommunications these days. We all desperately need the support and services. When the services are there, we need them to work for us.”
“Telecommunications powers matter. Getting them right matters. This legislation matters for the reasons I've outlined. That doesn't mean the government always get things right. We know and have lived with, in recent weeks, a situation where Australians have lost their lives as a direct consequence of what happens when the government—through intransigence, indifference or apparently because the minister is new—does not have the proper arrangements in place around telecommunications powers where Australians want to do simple things like dial triple 0 to be connected to an emergency service so that they can get the support they desperately need in a moment of health crisis. If they don't get that help, tragically, people die. Triple 0—zero, zero, zero—represents the absence of the heartbeats of the lives lost.”
“Whatever our differences, I would hope that everybody in this chamber and this parliament fundamentally believes that the role of this parliament—the government that represents the people of Australia—is to make sure that we defend the best interests of those who cannot speak for themselves and that we stand up and say that there is no place on online platforms for things like sexual violence and sexual crimes against children. I am fully extending that with the absolute intent that that is the view of the government and that we need to bring forward the powers for our agencies and police to do everything to stamp that out. That's the basis on which, in a bipartisan way, we are supporting this legislation. We actually understand just how important it is to take these steps, because of the human impact that sits behind it.”
“They become enablers of criminal activity which directly harms not just Australians, although Australians are caught up in it; they become enablers of criminal activity that has an impact on people in every nation around this world. Because of their role aboveboard and on the dark web, we're in a situation where they allow the criminals to write the rules, not the law-abiding citizens and democratic governments standing up for safety, for justice and for protecting the vulnerable.”
“With some countries, we're not necessarily in the best position to have those arrangements, but there are countries where we can do it if we come to terms and work with their governments on a mutually beneficial basis. We have agreements in place with the United States, of course, which is of incredible importance, particularly for the infrastructure they have as part of the internet. But there are countries we should have arrangements with or that we wish we had arrangements with because they are the harbours of so much illicit and illegal content on the internet. I think of countries like Russia, North Korea and so many others. They use themselves as safe havens for criminal activities. We know they do. They know they do.”
“So it's extremely important that we give the agencies the powers they need to be able to crack down on these types of crimes. More important than that, because telecommunications are not limited solely to what goes on within in the domestic boundaries of our great Commonwealth, is that we also need to make sure that our agencies have the capacity to access data and information that transcends our national boundaries. This has been one of the biggest challenges for our agencies working with other governments and police force counterparts around the world. Once you leave Australia's national boundaries, so ends Australian national law. So we have partnerships, agreements and arrangements with governments and agencies in other countries to be able to information-share on a voluntary basis where we find it fruitful to do so.”
“It's also something we on this side of the chamber, leading up to the last election, said we would be very aggressive in continuing to pursue, particularly around mandatory minimum sentences, particularly when telecommunications devices are used for things like sexual violence and crime, particularly against women. We understand how much it can become an enabler, how much we see it as a significant and serious threat into the future and how we need to take these issues very seriously. Sitting behind anything that happens in the online world is something that's actually happening in the real world. When the online world becomes an enabler of crime, it's becoming an enabler of crime in the real world. And sitting behind every one of those stories are real people—often, as I've said before, some of the most vulnerable within our community.”
“The consequence of that is that the powers our agencies need to crack down on it are becoming much more substantial. They need powers so they can access information, and they need pathways to represent others and be in a position to get information from people so that they can provide the evidentiary basis to go through to points of identification and prosecution. We have dealt with this before on the intelligence and security committee, when I was on it. Some of the legislative measures have continued to evolve and take time; that includes what is presented before the parliament today.”
“It's a very important part of how terrorist organisations connect with each other, whether it's through mechanisms of distribution of finance, distributing information to others around the promotion and propagation of the information about their crimes, or pathways of coordination for their various different attacks. It's also for other types of harm, where people use telecommunications as a mechanism to distribute the consequences of their criminal conduct and to be able to send it out to consumers as well. As we use technology to identify pathways to address what might be through traditional channels, what we see more and more of is telecommunications pathways going deeper and darker into the recesses of the internet, beneath the things that you or I, or average people, would use to be able to distribute that information.”
“Of course, we in the opposition are supporting this legislation because we understand how important it is to protect children and, of course, anyone else who is at the end of sexual violence, sexual crimes or any other type of violent crime where people perpetuate or use telecommunications as a mechanism to do harm. It's more important because we understand how much technology has become an enabler of some of the most distressing parts of increased crime. There are lots of different challenges that are now being presented. We know that telecommunications is a very significant part of the networks that organised crime uses.”