The Labor MP Melissa Parke emerged as a sole voice of dissent among the major parties as the Australian parliament approved a vast expansion of the powers of spy agencies, and criminalised reporting on special intelligence operations.



Parke told the House of Representatives the bill could have a chilling effect on journalism and she warned of the dangers of trading freedom for security.

“I do not support a number of key elements in this bill,” she said.

“Contrary to the reductive argument that says we’re making a straight trade of less freedom for more safety the reality is likely to be and indeed has proved to be many times in the past that constraining our fundamental liberties achieves nothing more than making us less free and in fact does ourselves more harm by licensing the abuse of powers.”

The only MPs to vote against the second reading of the bill in the lower house on Wednesday were the Greens deputy leader, Adam Bandt, and the independent MPs Andrew Wilkie and Cathy McGowan. It appears Parke abstained on the vote.

Bandt and Wilkie attempted to move amendments to address some of those concerns.

The bill – the first in a series of national security bills – passed through the Senate last week with support from the Coalition, Labor and the Palmer United party.

The attorney general, George Brandis, described the legislation as the most significant reforms to the powers of security agencies since the 1970s.

It enables the Australian Security Intelligence Organisation (Asio) to obtain intelligence from numerous computers, including a computer network, under a single access warrant, and allows the agency to use third-party computers to gain access to a target computer.

It also seeks to toughen penalties for intelligence agents for removing or leaking sensitive information.

It creates offences for any person who discloses information about special intelligence operations, a new category of covert activity in which Asio officers are granted immunity from criminal or civil liability as long as the conduct does not involve causing death, serious injury, sexual offences, torture, or significant damage to property.

Unauthorised disclosure of such information will be punishable by a five-year jail term.

There is no limitation on whom this provision can be used against, with media organisations and lawyers raising serious concerns about the potential for a journalists to be jailed and a “chilling effect” on reporting about intelligence matters.

The legislation includes a second, aggravated category of this offence with a 10-year jail term for disclosures that would either endanger the health and safety of any person or prejudice the effective conduct of an operation.

Parke said there were numerous examples of governments, defence, intelligence and law enforcement agencies abusing their powers which had only came to light only because of WikiLeaks, Edward Snowden and other whistleblowers.

“I’m particularly concerned that this bill entrenches and amplifies the lack of protection for whistleblowers regarding intelligence information and penalises with up to 10 years jail the legitimate actions of journalists and others doing their jobs in holding the government to account in the public interest,” she said.

Labor and the Coalition both support the legislation, although the shadow attorney general, Mark Dreyfus, said on Wednesday the opposition would closely monitor its implementation to ensure it did not limit rights.

Dreyfus also moved to head off concerns about the potential reach of Asio’s spy powers, saying it was absurd to suggest the attorney general might approve a warrant relating to the entire internet.

“No attorney general of Australia will authorise a warrant for Asio to access the whole internet,” he said.

Bandt said Labor was “keen to sign up to the prime minister Tony Abbott’s khaki campaign and can’t move quickly enough to get these laws through parliament”.

Bandt questioned whether the bill would actually increase community safety.

“Unscrupulous governments use people’s legitimate fears to illegitimately take away their freedoms,” Bandt said.

Wilkie also spoke out against “the most sweeping reforms to Australia’s national security legislation probably since federation”.

“It is clearly overreach by the security services,” he said.

Wilkie said Australian security services did a good job most of the time, but sometime they erred or were instructed to do things that must be brought to light by whistleblowers.

He also raised concern over use of force provisions in the bill. He said this could lead to situations involving “spies kicking in doors and using force with no police alongside them; that is another step towards a police state”.

McGowan said she would not support the first bill at this stage.

“I say it may be the legislation that is needed but my biggest concern is the people have not been effectively consulted or included in the development of this bill,” she said.

Several MPs made the point that the major counter-terrorism raids conducted recently in Australia were able to be done effectively without the new laws being in place.

The justice minister, Michael Keenan, said the bill contained a “series of targeted reforms” needed to modernise laws and “appropriate safeguards” were in place.

Keenan said the bill was in response to a bipartisan report of the joint parliamentary committee on intelligence and security presented last year.

He said none of the provisions in the bill would prevent an intelligence whistleblower from making a disclosure to the inspector general of intelligence and security or reporting the matter to federal police.

Keenan firmly rejected any suggestion of political motivation in the conduct or timing of the raids, which agencies had decided to launch to preserve community safety.