Thursday, 14 November 2019

 Mr LIMBRICK (South Eastern Metropolitan) (18:37): My adjournment matter is for the Attorney-General in the other place. The federal Attorney-General’s office has disgracefully pushed an ex-Prime Minister of Australia to register as an agent of foreign influence and is threatening a conference organiser, who is also the president of an Australian political party—coincidentally, my party—with jail if he does not hand over a large amount of private communications, some of which do not even involve him and are not in his possession.

Perhaps while this is happening to the Liberals and Liberal Democrats it does not strike Labor as concerning, but let me paint you a picture. Earlier this year there was the Australian Clean Energy Summit. That conference was run by the Clean Energy Council, an organisation that the Andrews government worked with for solar panel installer accreditations. Some of the sponsors of the conference were international corporations. Some of these corporations openly engage in political activism. The Danish company Vestas, for example, a platinum sponsor of the conference, is also a member of the Getting to Zero Coalition. By the standards the federal Attorney-General’s office appears to be applying, a conference like this could attract their attention in the same way the Conservative Political Action Conference did. An Andrews government minister spoke at that conference. I request that at the upcoming Council of Attorneys-General meeting later this month our Attorney-General call upon the federal Attorney-General to do whatever is necessary to ensure that such ludicrous actions are not taken again in the future. Who knows who they will come after next?