Defence Amendment (Parliamentary Joint Committee on Defence) Bill 2024

The majority voted against a motion "that the remaining stages of the bill be agreed to and the bill be now passed." In other words, the bill failed and will not be considered any further.

What is the purpose of the bill?

According to the bills digest:

A statutory Parliamentary Joint Committee for Defence modelled on the Parliamentary Joint Committee for Intelligence and Security (PJCIS), and that can receive classified information, has been a bipartisan recommendation of several past Parliamentary committee reports.

The Committee will be chaired by a Government member and have a majority of members from the Government. There is no requirement for the Committee to have members from the crossbench.

The functions of the Committee are considerably broader than those currently exercised by the Joint Standing Committee on Foreign Affairs, Defence and Trade (JSCFADT). As well as the traditional roles of reviewing administration and expenditure and examining matters referred to it; the Committee has specific functions in relation to considering strategy and planning, scrutinising capability development, and examination and monitoring of war, warlike operations, and significant non-conflict operations.

The Committee may not direct the activities of the Australian Defence Force (ADF), the Inspector-General of the ADF or an Australian defence agency. It also may not do anything within the functions of the PJCIS.

The Committee may request briefings from the head of an Australian defence agency, the Inspector-General ADF and the Director-General of National Intelligence.

The Committee may require the head of an Australian defence agency to appear before the Committee to give evidence or to produce documents. It may also require other people (potentially including public servants outside defence agencies, academics, and directors and employees of defence industry) to give evidence or to produce documents. Failure to attend or produce documents would be an offence.

The Bill inserts new offences into the Act which may apply to members of the Committee, staff of the Committee and staff of the members of the Committee as well as witnesses and other people.

At publication, the Bill had not been referred to or reported on by any parliamentary committee.