A Liberal senator who crossed the floor to vote against expanding ASIO’s compulsory questioning powers has vowed to use his position to challenge the longstanding bipartisan consensus on national security.
The laws, introduced after the September 11 attacks of 2001 in New York, allow the domestic spy agency to issue a questioning warrant requiring a person as young as 14 to give information or produce material that may assist in a serious investigation.
The government planned to make the laws permanent, but dropped that bid after an outcry and agreed to continue “sunset provisions”, which require a review every three years.
The bill, passed by parliament last week, expands the scope of adult questioning warrants to include sabotage; the promotion of communal violence; attacks on Australia’s defence system and serious threats to Australia’s territorial and border integrity.
The powers could previously only be used for investigations into espionage, politically motivated violence and acts of foreign interference.
Two Liberal senators, Andrew McLachlan and Alex Antic, crossed the floor to vote against the legislation, which was also opposed by One Nation, the Greens and independent senator David Pocock.
While ASIO insists the legislation is needed to respond to evolving security threats, McLachlan said he believed the balance had shifted too far away from individual liberties.
“I think these laws are particularly oppressive, and I’ve always been uncomfortable with their breadth,” McLachlan told this masthead.
“I understand the rationale for the powers, but it’s just too much.
“I’m not comfortable that both parties keep giving this power to the state. I think it’s time for a strategic review on whether the balance is right or wrong.”
National security legislation is often agreed upon in advance through the powerful Parliamentary Joint Committee on Intelligence and Security, which is only open to Labor and Coalition MPs.
While not necessarily opposed to bipartisanship, McLachlan said there was a need for more scrutiny and contestability when extraordinary powers are being given to national security agencies.
“Governments of any persuasion come up with a security law and oppositions are too scared to oppose,” he said.
“There needs to be a greater and wider debate on where civil liberties begin and end, and where the power of the state is necessary.”
McLachlan, one of the Liberal Party’s most moderate remaining MPs, previously crossed the floor to censure One Nation leader Pauline Hanson for claiming there are no “good” Muslims in Australia and opposed dumping the commitment to net zero carbon emissions.
The former lawyer crossed the floor as a South Australian state MP on legislation banning some bikie clubs from recruiting and gathering in public.
McLachlan indicated he would again be willing to cross the floor on national security now he is no longer deputy president of the Senate, a position he held from 2022 to 2025.
“Drawing on my life in the law and defending the rights of the individual, there is good chance you will see more of it,” he said.
ASIO’s compulsory questioning powers have only been used an estimated 20 times since they were introduced in 2003, reflecting the agency’s view that they should only be used as a matter of last resort.
Although rarely used, ASIO has argued they are valuable and extending their scope would help the agency collect crucial intelligence.
“This is particularly critical in an environment where traditional distinctions between threats are blurring,” ASIO said in an October 2025 parliamentary submission.
“For example, an attempt to physically damage a nuclear-powered submarine could simultaneously be an act of sabotage, an act of politically motivated violence, an act of foreign interference and an attack on a defence system”.
In a fiery speech to the Senate, Greens senator David Shoebridge accused the government of “ramming through laws that are going to supercharge the ability of ASIO to literally pluck you off the street, hold you in secret detention for 24 hours, interrogate you and force you to answer every question with a threat of going to jail if you don’t.”
“You don’t even have to be suspected of anything. You just might be someone they want to talk to,” he said.
Pocock said he had received a deluge of concerns from constituents about government overreach and could not support what he described as a “deeply flawed bill”.
Chris Taylor, a senior fellow at the Australian Strategic Policy Institute, defended the legislation “as an appropriate and proportionate enhancement of the tools available to Australia in the face of an increasingly challenging security environment”.
The Law Council of Australia opposed the bill as an “extraordinary further expansion of ASIO’s compulsory questioning remit”, adding: “We query this ever-growing normalisation of extraordinary powers, which were intended for anti-terrorism purposes.”
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Matthew Knottis the foreign affairs and national security correspondent for The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age.Connect viaX,Facebookoremail.
