Feeney, David, MP

Mr FEENEY (Batman) (16:54): I rise to speak on the Australian Crime Commission Amendment (National Policing Information) Bill 2015 and the Australian Crime Commission Amendment (National Policing Information Charges) Bill 2015 which are being debated today as a package. The purpose of the Australian Crime Commission Amendment (National Policing Information) Bill is to amend the Australian Crime Commission Act 2002 to merge CrimTrac and its functions into the Australian Crime Commission, and make consequential amendments to other acts. The purpose of the Australian Crime Commission Amendment (National Policing Information Charges) Bill is to provide a legislative basis for the ACC to charge for national policing information services. This package of bills is intended to implement a decision by the Law, Crime and Community Safety Council on 5 November 2015 that the Commonwealth take steps to implement a merger of the ACC and CrimTrac. The minister has stated: 3. This merger brings together Australia’s national criminal intelligence and information capabilities under one banner. Having a unified resource of this type will enrich our national understanding of criminal activity, including volume crimes (such as domestic violence) and serious and organised crime and terrorism. This will allow police, justice agencies and policy makers at all levels of government to adopt a more effective, efficient and evidence based response to crime. 4. Under the proposed merger, CrimTrac will carry its functions over to the ACC (including its function of providing nationally coordinated criminal history checks). The CrimTrac Board of Management and the position of CrimTrac CEO will be abolished. CrimTrac was established in 2000 under an intergovernmental agreement between the Commonwealth and state and territory governments to 'enhance Australian law enforcement with an emphasis on information based policing facilitated through rapid access to detailed, current and accurate police information'. The services CrimTrac provides include: the National Police Checking Service; the National Child Offender System, comprising the Australian National Child Offender Register and the Managed Person System; the National Police Reference System; and the National Firearms Identification Database. By providing access to information collated from police records around the country, CrimTrac aims to minimise opportunities for people to evade laws by crossing state borders. The intergovernmental agreement establishes the broad objectives of CrimTrac and a board of management with representation from all jurisdictions. The agency is a 'joint venture partnership' between the Commonwealth Attorney-General's Department and state and federal police agencies. In accordance with the intergovernmental agreement, it is established as an executive agency within the Attorney-General's portfolio. CrimTrac is headed by a Chief Executive Officer and as at June 2015, had 207 employees. The agency operates under a self-funded model whereby most of its revenue is derived from charges paid by police and certain other agencies for its National Police Checking Service. The charges are paid into the National Policing Information Systems and Services Special Account and used towards operating expenses and police information services to all jurisdictions. The ACC commenced operation on 1 January 2003. It has its origins in the April 2002 Council of Australian Government Leaders Summit, which agreed that a new national framework was needed to meet the challenges of multijurisdictional crime. It replaced and combined the strategic and operational intelligence and specialist investigative capabilities of the National Crime Authority, the Australian Bureau of Criminal Intelligence, and the Office of Strategic Crime Assessments. It has a specific focus on serious and organised crime of national significance. According to the latest annual report, the aim of the ACC is to 'reduce serious and organised crime threats of most harm to Australians and the national interest'. To achieve this aim, the ACC has a range of special coercive powers, such as the capacity to compel attendance at examinations, production of documents and the answering of questions—similar to a royal commission. The ACC also has an intelligence gathering capacity and a range of investigative powers common to law enforcement agencies, such as the power to tap phones, use surveillance devices and participate in controlled operations. The ACC's main functions, as set out in the act, are to: collect, correlate, analyse and disseminate criminal information and intelligence and maintain it in a national database; undertake intelligence operations; investigate matters relating to 'federally relevant criminal activity'; and report on the outcomes of its operations and investigations and provide criminal information and intelligence to the ACC Board. Operations and investigations must be approved by the ACC Board, which also determines whether the operation or investigation is a 'special' operation or investigation, in which the ACC's coercive powers may be used. The ACC is a statutory agency within the Attorney-General's portfolio. It is headed by a CEO and, as at June 2015, had a staff of 581 persons, plus 36 secondees from other Commonwealth agencies and state and territory law enforcement agencies. The ACC Board includes the heads of the state and territory police agencies—and, in that sense, is very similar to the board of CrimTrac—and reports to an intergovernmental committee comprising the Commonwealth Minister for Justice and a minister from each state and territory. The 2014 Commission of Audit considered whether agencies responsible for criminal intelligence and information should be merged. It concluded that the agencies were working effectively together, but recommended CrimTrac be merged with the ACC 'to better harness their collective resources' and 'better support law enforcement operations by the Australian Federal Police and other Commonwealth and state agencies'. The Commission of Audit noted that implementing its recommendations would require consultation with state and territory governments, stating: It is critical their interests are reflected, including through the continued representation of the State police commissioners on the Australian Crime Commission board. The Commonwealth consulted state and territory governments through the ACC and CrimTrac boards on options to 'improve collaboration' between the two agencies. In November 2015, the Law, Crime and Community Safety Council, comprising justice ministers from all Australian jurisdictions, unanimously agreed to the Commonwealth taking the necessary steps to merge CrimTrac and the ACC. The Minister for Justice, to whom both agencies are responsible, stated: State and Territory Attorneys-General and Police Ministers gave historic in-principle agreement to embrace the new national security measure that will see CrimTrac IT specialists work side by side with the ACC's top intelligence analysts to pursue and undermine evolving national security threats. … … … With today's agreement from each jurisdiction, the Commonwealth will work towards getting the newly merged agency up and running by 1 July 2016. This will ensure that each jurisdiction has sufficient time to make the necessary legislative changes. This merger is vital because our law enforcement and protection agencies need accurate information and intelligence to respond to immediate threats. In this security landscape we must provide ample and instant information that identifies the patterns and associations that can help detect and disrupt significant threats. The proposed merger of these two agencies raises some legitimate questions about what the privacy implications may be. This is because the agencies collect, store and share privileged information differently. The minister, the Attorney-General's Department, the ACC and CrimTrac have provided me with assurances about these issues. The ACC and CrimTrac are both currently 'enforcement bodies' under the Privacy Act 1988. This means they may already share personal information with each other for enforcement-related activities, including for the prevention of crime and intelligence-gathering activities. The ACC is subject to a robust matrix of safeguards and oversight. Oversight includes the Parliamentary Joint Committee on Law Enforcement, the Commonwealth Ombudsman and the Australian Commission for Law Enforcement Integrity. Safeguards include strict provisions regarding the circumstances in which information can be shared outside the agency, which will be strengthened through this merger legislation. Safeguards also include practices and systems the ACC has in place to protect its existing holdings of sensitive information. The merger would bring CrimTrac into this framework. CrimTrac's primary functions revolve around facilitating national sharing of information provided by other agencies, primarily police. The merger will not impact on an individual's rights and remedies that are available under laws that apply to those providing agencies. To mitigate any risks, the Attorney-General's Department and the agencies are undertaking a privacy impact assessment. This document details how each CrimTrac system collects, stores and uses information and outlines why a Privacy Act exemption is appropriate. Further, to ensure transparency in the agency's dealings with personal information, the agencies are working with the Privacy Commissioner to develop and publish a protocol around personal information handling. Finally, to ensure proper scrutiny of this merger, Labor will be referring this bill to the Senate committee for legal and constitutional affairs. We wish to ensure that stakeholders have the opportunity to raise any concerns they may have with the proposed merger of CrimTrac into the ACC and, indeed, allow an opportunity for concerns with the implementation of, or timeline for, the proposed merger to be resolved. We will carefully consider the views expressed to the committee and the final committee report when it is released. The DEPUTY SPEAKER ( Mr Vasta ): I thank the honourable member for Batman. I understand it is the wish of the House to debate this order of the day concurrently with the Australian Crime Commission (National Policing Information Charges) Bill 2015. There being no objection, the chair will allow that course to be followed. The question is that this bill be now read a second time.