Australian Security Intelligence Organisation Amendment Bill 2020

The majority voted in favour of a motion to read the bill for a second time. In other words, they voted to agree with the main idea of the bill. The Senate can now consider the bill in more detail.

What does this bill do?

According to the bills digest:

The purpose of the Bill is to amend the Act to replace the existing framework for questioning warrants and questioning and detention warrants with a revised questioning warrant framework, make related changes to the Act and other legislation, and amend provisions in the Act relating to the use of surveillance devices.

Changes include:

• expanding the purposes of questioning from terrorism offences to politically motivated violence, espionage and foreign interference
• lowering the minimum age for the subject of a warrant from 16 to 14 years of age
• having the Attorney-General issue warrants directly in place of an issuing authority
• allowing for requests for warrants to be made, and warrants to be issued, orally in some circumstances
• creating a new framework to allow the use of certain tracking devices by ASIO with internal authorisation from higher level officers (currently the use of such devices requires a warrant)