The Liberal senator Cory Bernardi has signalled he might back a Labor push to refer the police raids over leaks from NBN Co to parliament’s powerful privileges committee for further consideration.
Labor wants to send the national broadband network matter to privileges when parliament resumes next week to determine whether material gathered in controversial police raids during the election campaign and on Wednesday in Parliament House should be handed over to the Australian federal police.
The government has expressed the view the police investigation should run its course – but Bernardi is signalling he isn’t convinced, and says he’s seeking advice about how police were able to access the building and the parliament server during the raids on Wednesday.
“I’ve always been of the view that parliamentary privilege is inviolable,” he told Guardian Australia on Thursday. “I’m seeking advice about the events of the past 24 hours. Depending on that advice, it may be appropriate for the privileges committee to consider the matter further.”
Labor already has support from the Nick Xenophon Team Senate bloc, from the independent Jacqui Lambie and, most likely, from the Greens, for the referral to privileges on the basis that parliamentarians want to protect their capacity to deal confidentially with whistleblowers who approach them in the course of their parliamentary duties.
Many parliamentarians are distinctly uncomfortable with the AFP gaining access to the parliamentary server that stores their private communications and the communications of their staff.
Labor’s deputy Senate leader, Stephen Conroy, said the AFP had invoked national security grounds to prevent opposition staff from recording the police raids that stretched into the night.
Staff filmed the police action in Melbourne during the first raids – a development that helped them to identify that there was an NBN Co official present when confidential material was taken by the police.
Conroy told Guardian Australia when the police raided his Melbourne office: “They recorded the whole affair and we also recorded it.”
“That recording actually turned out to be very very important to us in establishing some facts that the police had not revealed to us at the time – that they had an NBN Co employee accompanying them in raiding my office,” Conroy said on the Guardian Australia podcast, Australian Politics Live.
“We sought to record [Wednesday’s] raid and my staff were informed that they were not allowed to record the event because there were national security matters at stake,” he said. “This is a mystery to me as the former minister.
“As the former minister I can assure your listeners there are no national security documents. This is emails between two Labor staffers in opposition and [the AFP] are pretending that there are national security matters.”
Conroy said NBN Co had invoked several different stories about the status of the documents now being sought by police.
“NBN Co have claimed the documents are top secret. I can assure your listeners as the former minister for communications and the minister who established the NBN Co there are no documents produced within the NBN Co that would come within a bull’s roar of top secret.
“They claim they are commercial in confidence. There is no commercial in confidence when you are established as a public-sector monopoly. They also claim they are stolen intellectual property. Theft is usually a state policing matter, so why the federal police are involved continues to be a mystery.”
Conroy also continued to insist that the AFP did not have jurisdiction to conduct the raids, because NBN Co staff were not commonwealth officers. He said as well as pursuing the issue in the parliament, Labor was reserving its legal rights in the case.
Speaking on Radio National on Thursday, the education and training minister, Simon Birmingham, said parliamentary privilege was “a very important principle” that ensured “people have confidence in their capacity to go to parliamentarians with information that is of critical importance”.
But he said it should “be used sparingly and cautiously”. “It is not there to simply cover up illegal activities, it is not there to cover up basic leaks of information.”
Birmingham said the government would look carefully at Conroy’s claim of privilege and the precedents for claims of that nature.
NBN Co says it is within its rights to refer theft or other criminal matters to the police. “NBN Co referred a case of theft to the AFP in December last year. It is a matter for the AFP as to whether they accept the referral and pursue any matter, based on their own independent advice and judgment.”
