McKee NicoleNICOLE McKEE (ACT): Thank you Madam Speaker. I stand on behalf of the ACT Party to continue to support what is now two bills the Security Information in Proceedings Legislation Bill and the Security Information in Proceedings (Repeals and Amendments) Bill.I would like to start off by doing what every colleague across this House has done so far which is to thank those on the Justice Committee for working so well together. For me this was an area that I was not that familiar with and it was an area that I had to learn a lot in.And I just wanted to take this opportunity to thank not only the officials but also our chair Ginny Andersen Vanushi Walters Chris Penk as well Simon O'Connor when he came in because they helped me to learn and understand the severity of what has been happening and what we can do together to try and fix it. I believe that this is a really good start partly because this legislation is about restoring liberties to people and we are all about doing that in the ACT Party.So protecting our national security interests is imperative. And how we do that while we're still allowing for the flow of information is really quite important. How we do that while we ensure that there is still natural justice for a defendant is also extremely important.These bills have gone quite a long way towards addressing that. It will actually maintain integrity of the system that we have and it allows open justice by using special advocates. This is a new thing that we have here—is the special advocates which allows a defendant to be able to have somebody who has been given security clearance to be able to access information that may be being used against that defendant. It means that that defendant will have all of that information.This is important because right now they're unable—under present law—to challenge the outcomes and they find it hard to challenge the outcomes because they don't know all of the information. So having a special advocate that can tell them what is relevant and what isn't is going to be important to ensure that we do have natural justice.The courts being allowed to close through civil proceedings is also a new clause that we have and it's important so that information on security can be addressed in the civil jurisdiction as well as the criminal. So having the ability to actually close the courts and civil proceedings so that information can be shared securely is important again for open and natural justice.This also means that participants will not be excluded and that they do get to know the information that's being used against them. It addresses how the information will be handled so that we can get consistency in how it is disclosed how it is discussed and how it is used in proceedings. Because at the moment the regime that is in place is not only ambiguous but it's uncertain and it certainly is inconsistent.In a free and truly democratic society we are in support of the bills that extend civil liberties for all. We believe that these bills allow fairness in that access to information that is used against a person. It can still be used it can be known and it can be heard while still securing our national security information and interests. And in that regard we do commend these bills to the House.