September 11, 2023
.png)
OLIVER PETERSON: In Parliament House in Canberra concerns are being voiced by the Opposition's home affairs spokesman, James Paterson, who joins me on Perth live. Senator, welcome back to the program.
JAMES PATERSON: Great to be with you.
PETERSON: Are you worried about what you've seen in the UK with this parliamentary staffer?
PATERSON: I'm very worried about it. If it's happening there, then it could easily happen here because the processes that allowed someone to be hired without being adequately vetted in the UK and allegedly acting as a spy for the Chinese government are exactly the same as the processes for the vast majority of parliamentarians who work here in Parliament House in Canberra. If you're a minister, your staff are cleared. But for everyone else, whether you're a government backbencher or an opposition backbencher or shadow minister, or if you're a crossbencher, there is no vetting process in place for staff which is designed to weed out exactly people like this.
PETERSON: We had a local council in Perth last week say they would like to see all councillors in the city of Stirling undergo police checks, which I thought, yeah, that should be happening. You would have thought it might have happened already. I would have already thought, to be honest, Senator, that anybody working in our parliamentary system would be properly vetted. This surprises me.
PATERSON: I know, and I suspect it'll come as a surprise to a lot of your listeners as well. But that's the reality of the system we have. It's only staff who work for ministers who might access classified material from time to time as part of their jobs, who are cleared, and they get cleared to a range of different settings based on how sensitive the classified material they have access to. But because in theory, a parliamentarian or staff are in opposition or on the backbench doesn't have direct access to classified material, they are not permitted. The problem with that is that foreign intelligence adversaries are not just interested in classified material only. In fact, a lot of the things are interested in are non-public information that's still very sensitive, who's friends with who, who has views on certain issues, what they're planning to do about that in the coming weeks and months ahead. All of that is very attractive to foreign intelligence services, and all of that is held on parliamentarians, by their staff.
PETERSON: Hey, that sort of information, that level of detail can be cultivated over a number of years, so it might not be called in over the next 12 months, but it might be called in over the next 12years.
PATERSON: Exactly right. And a further disturbing element of this is that the person involved is alleged to have used their position to undermine consensus for legislative action, dealing with issues raised by the Chinese government. That can be done by any staff member in the building who has access to their boss and can persuade them about the merits or otherwise of pursuing a particular course of action. So security vetting is not a panacea. It doesn't guarantee that that doesn't happen, but it does reduce the risk. And we put that in place for our bureaucrats and our intelligence agency employees and ministerial staffers. So why shouldn't we put it in place of someone who, for example, is a member of the Intelligence and Security Committee and their staff, or indeed a member of the upcoming Defence statutory committee?
PETERSON: Senator, is it a long process? Is that why it isn't done, or is it just something that has been overlooked? And now obviously what we've seen happening in the UK, you hope that the Government and the Parliament, might act.
PATERSON: Well, depending on the level of clearance that you receive, it can be quite quick or it can be more robust and lengthy. So a baseline security vetting which you require to be a soldier in the ADF or a employee in a government department is actually pretty quick. And it primarily looks at things like whether or not you have a criminal history, but as you get up to negative vetting, level one and two and then up to a top secret clearance, it becomes much more robust and asks much more detailed questions about you and your life and examines your finances and other things about you. Now, you could give an appropriate level of vetting to the appropriate level of staff, some staff would only need a baseline vetting, but some of them would need a higher level of vetting given the sensitivity of the work that their bosses do if they're members of committees like this.
PETERSON: Would you be taking this up in the Senate?
PATERSON: I certainly will be. I'll be taking it up with the government both in the Senate and upcoming in a few weeks, Senate estimates, although I really hope they act on it more quickly than that, because I think the need is self-evident. I mean we just saw what happened in the UK, we do not want to wake up to those headlines here in Australia and I hope they act promptly.
PETERSON: James Paterson, thanks for your time.
PATERSON: Thank you mate.
ENDS
