Australia’s attorney general, George Brandis, has criticised a senator for celebrating “the American traitor Edward Snowden”, arguing the disclosures about western intelligence gathering has “put Australian lives at risk”.



Brandis asked in parliament how the Greens senator Scott Ludlam could hold his head up high while honouring the former US National Security Agency contractor’s “criminal conduct and treachery”.

The trigger for the criticism was a question from Ludlam about “indiscriminate government surveillance” and whether the government recognised the legitimate concerns of Australians and the need to follow the US in reforming intelligence practices.

Brandis began his response by criticising Ludlam’s opinion piece, published by the Guardian Australia on Tuesday, in which he told of how more than 6000 websites were blacked out for a day in a “fightback” against excessive government surveillance. Ludlam wrote that Brandis had denounced Snowden as a traitor, or “baddie” to use Tony Abbott’s parlance, and called for Australians to “raise the IQ of the debate here”.

The attorney general told parliament on Tuesday: “I note that Senator Ludlam has today published on the Guardian website an article in praise of the American traitor Edward Snowden, displaying a photograph of a bus bearing the signage ‘Thank you, Edward Snowden’ and under the headline ‘Today is the day we fight back’.

“Senator Ludlam, you celebrate and make a hero of this man who, through his criminal dishonesty and his treachery to his country, has put lives, including Australian lives, at risk. I wonder how you can sit in this parliament and hold your head up high when you celebrate a man who, through criminal conduct and treachery, has put Australian lives at risk.”

Brandis said the Australian intelligence agencies operated “under a strong framework of surveillance and under very strong statutory obligations and accountability obligations”.

This included being responsible to parliamentary committees of which Ludlam was a member, the Senate standing committee on foreign affairs, defence and trade and the Senate standing committee on legal and constitutional affairs.

Brandis said the intelligence agencies were also responsible to the parliamentary joint committee on intelligence and security and to the inspector general of intelligence and security, an independent statutory officer.

Ludlam said the attorney general had provided “a chilling response”.

“I thank Senator Brandis for the bluntness of his answer,” Ludlam said, raising a supplementary question. “Senator Brandis, are you aware of, and have you or your office evaluated, any of the proposals for serious law reform put to President Obama in the case of indiscriminate surveillance by the NSA, and does the attorney believe that any of those proposals could be relevant here in Australia?”

Brandis said he had studied Obama’s remarks carefully and Australian governments of both political persuasions were “always alert to ensure that the statutory framework which undergirds and provides for the accountability mechanism of our intelligence agencies is as appropriate and relevant as possible”.

“Nobody says that the laws should never be reformed – they should always be kept under review,” Brandis said.

Asked whether he would commit to amendments to the Five Eyes agreement on acceptable limits to data collection and storage, Brandis said the Australian government was “certainly not going to be commenting publicly on what discussions it may have with other nations in relation to the operation or the scope of intelligence services”.

Ludlam later characterised Brandis’ comments as “embarrassing and borderline hysterical”. He told the chamber the highest law officer in Australia was “behaving like an infant” and millions of Australians with legitimate concerns deserved better than such a contemptuous display.

“Senator Brandis accused Mr Edward Snowden, a whistleblower whom I hold in extremely high regard – as do, I imagine, a majority of Australians and millions of people around the world – of being a traitor. You could almost see the spittle flying from his lips,” Ludlam said.

“No evidence or justification was provided for the accusation that the revelations put into the public domain by Mr Snowden – through the Guardian, the New York Times, the ABC and other news organisations doing their job around the world – had created risk for Australians.

“No evidence at all was provided. They said exactly the same thing about the WikiLeaks revelations: the state department cables, the war logs that disclosed war crimes, the cables that disclosed illegal activities by the US state department in the UN.”