John Faulkner prods parliament along fine line between security and liberty
Labor stalwart quotes history to remind MPs that political brinkmanship merely alienates voters
Australians are relying on the government and the opposition to get public policy right on security legislation.
Photograph: Dan Peled/AAP
John Faulkner once delivered his advice almost exclusively in-house,
in the quiet of a prime ministerial office, in the back of a
commonwealth car – the quintessential man in the room.
Since opting out of the room, a development coinciding more or less
with the room becoming uninhabitable courtesy of the rolling debacle
Labor visited on itself between 2010 and 2013, Faulkner delivers his
advice sparingly, and in public.
Over the past couple of weeks, the Labor man has made two substantial interventions. A couple of weeks ago, he reminded
colleagues that trust was currency in politics. Without trust,
governments lacked a community mandate, and without a community mandate,
politics could do little apart from posture, carve up the spoils and
further alienate the voters. Major party politics could wake up, or it
could self-destruct.
Now Faulkner has stepped into the national security frame, publishing a substantial essay
in the Australian Financial Review which looks calmly and resolutely
through the low-rent binary constructs, the intraday political tactics
and brinkmanship of the “conversation” Australia is having about this
issue.
Faulkner does what he often does in an effort to steady a listing ship – he looks to history.
The Labor man steps the reader through a century or so of
intelligence history in this country before building to his point, and
it’s a simple one: with great power comes great accountability. If the
security environment warrants a significant expansion of surveillance
powers, that is precisely when parliaments and the various agencies of
accountability need to step forward and assert authority, not step back
and leave it to the “experts”.
Hardly rocket science, this – in fact the checks and balances
proposition is generally held to be one of the basic tenets of a
functioning liberal democracy.
But thus far, this most basic principle has lacked forceful and
coherent articulation. Parliament’s role is not to rubber-stamp
wishlists from intelligence agencies and police – its role is to give
the agencies precisely the powers they need to do their job and, given
those powers are extensive and intrusive, parliament’s role is then to
ensure those powers are not abused.
The point of Faulkner’s intervention is to remind whomever might need
reminding that governments and parliament have two roles, and both are
important.
Governments and parliaments of course need to ensure everything
proportionate and necessary is done to allow police and intelligence
agencies to manage real, present and evolving security threats; and they
also need to safeguard us from potential abuses by these agencies.
The two recent contributions from Faulkner have a common theme.
Politics, when it has confidence in itself, the clarity to understand
its true purpose and the courage of its convictions, remains a powerful
agent of good, of public interest, of policy rationality, of human
progress. If politics doesn’t stand up for its own capacity to safeguard
and enhance democracy, then the voters are ultimately the losers. If
politics is always implementing someone else’s agenda, doing it without
careful reference to evidence, and doing it in a vacuum, then it is
little more than an empty vessel.
The security intervention also has a specific purpose. Faulkner, as a
senior man of the left, clearly believes he has a role to play in
setting out some terms by which the progressive wing of the Labor party
can remain critical, yet constructive, in the debate.
The recent break-out
by Anthony Albanese, who publicly disavowed security laws he had
recently helped pass, reflects (in part) the pressure progressive Labor
is under courtesy of Bill Shorten’s decision to play “me too” on
national security. The Greens are taking no prisoners at the local
level.
From my vantage point, it looks as though Faulkner is attempting to
stake out some basic intellectual territory which can provide heft and
focus to Labor’s response to legislation coming up before the end of the
year.
Labor people have been mouthing the balancing imperative as a
principle since Abbott first unleashed the debate, but seem not to
really comprehend what they are talking about. It’s clear from Shorten’s
airy, once-over-lightly and sometimes confused public performances in
this space that not nearly enough attention is being given to nuts and
bolts.
The shadow attorney-general, Mark Dreyfus, indicated clearly
that Labor would not allow a law to be passed that criminalised
reporting of special intelligence operations – then Labor duly passed a
law that criminalised reporting of intelligence operations. It’s still
not entirely clear how or why that happened.
Voters are relying on both the government and the opposition to get
this profoundly important area of public policy right, to hit the right
balance between security and liberty.
And that process might just require some constructive conflict.
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