page_title: Anthony Byrne (politician)
section_title: Joint Committee on Intelligence and Security
hierarchical_section_title: Anthony Byrne (politician) / Parliamentary career / Joint Committee on Intelligence and Security
caption_attribution_description: English: Andrew Hastie MP, Chair of the Parliamentary Joint Committee on Intelligence and Security with Deputy Chair Anthony Byrne MP in February 2020 photo taken by D Birch
context_page_description: Anthony Michael Byrne is an Australian politician and an Australian Labor Party member of the Australian House of Representatives. He is one of the Federal Parliament's longest-serving members, having first entered Parliament in November 1999, representing the Division of Holt, Victoria. He is the Deputy Chair of the Parliamentary Joint Committee on Intelligence and Security providing oversight of Australia's security services.
context_section_description: Byrne has served on the Parliamentary Joint Committee on Intelligence and Security since 2005 and was described by a Sky News anchor as 'one of the best brains on intelligence and national security' in the Australian parliament. As chair of PJCIS in 2013, Byrne along with Deputy Chair Philip Ruddock, warned of the effect of the government's efficiency dividend on the operations of Australia's intelligence and security agencies after tabling a PJCIS report in May 2013 covering the administration and finances of Australia's six intelligence and security agencies in 2010–2011. Byrne likened the cuts to the US austerity measures which prompted warnings from US intelligence agencies, in the wake of the Boston bombings, that their ability to combat terrorism was at risk. Of the government's efficiency dividend, Byrne said "I find it frankly astonishing that these agencies would have been effectively sequestered from funding to perform their tasks" and that cuts to the agencies' funding was "disgraceful and it should be addressed."
  Nine months after PJCIS's release of its Report of the Inquiry into Potential Reforms of Australia's National Security Legislation authored under Byrne's term as Chair, the Daily Telegraph reported that the Abbott Cabinet had agreed to adopt almost all of the 41 recommendations included in the report in the face of heightened security fears over Australians engaged in fighting with terrorist groups overseas. Byrne went on the record as criticising the Abbott Government's delay in implementing the report's recommendations as "unconscionable", saying that legislation should have been brought before parliament much earlier.
  Two days after the biggest counter-terrorism operation ever conducted in Australia's history, Byrne was interviewed by Laura Jayes on Sky News' Saturday Agenda program where he said that the raids were clear evidence to the Australian public of the link between terrorism in Australian and IS in the Middle East, stating that Australian authorities had been concerned for sometime about the potential for an Islamic State-inspired planned mass-terror incident on Australian soil. The following week, Byrne appeared on Sunrise with David Koch to say that the terror threat in Australia was real as evidenced by the raids the previous week, and to praise the law enforcement agencies involved in the operation. On the same day, Byrne was interviewed by the ABC's political correspondent Sabra Lane in a segment for 7.30 on a fatwa issued by Islamic State to kill Australians, and potential for the Abbott Government to commit Australia to an international coalition to disrupt and degrade ISIL's operations inside Iraq in the wake of the first U.S.-led airstrikes in Syria. The next day, radicalised teenager Abdul Numan Haider attempted to kill two counter-terrorism officers outside the Endeavour Hills Police Station in Byrne's electorate of Holt. In Canberra at the time, Byrne was interviewed on national television where he thanked the officers involved in the incident and urged calm and for Australians to continue to go about their lives in their usual fashion, else they give in to terror.
  In the wake of the Endeavour Hills incident, Byrne was interviewed by Leigh Sales on 7.30 where he called on his constituency, and the wider national community, to band together, rather than allow suspicion to pull them apart as ISIS had intended. Presciently, Byrne was the first Australian politician of significant standing to warn of a potentially imminent terror attack by Islamic extremists on Australian soil when he drew attention to the rise of IS and the radicalisation of young Australians.
  Prior to changes being introduced, Byrne had been consistently critical of PJCIS's lack of a remit over the Australian Federal Police, citing the lack of such a thing as a significant flaw in the oversight powers of the committee. Byrne argued that as the intelligence and law enforcement agencies had been advising the government of the need for them to receive greater powers which may have had the potential to impinge on c
caption: Anthony Bryne MP, Deputy Chair of the Parliamentary Joint Committee on Intelligence and Security speaks with committee Chair Andrew Hastie MP in February 2020.
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