Coalition backs One Nation bill + Harry Potter and the undersea cables

**Chris Spyrou** (0:08)
Hey, it's Chris Spyrou with you. Welcome to The Briefing. A military alliance with the US and UK has recently turned its attention towards one of the world's most utilized, but least known assets, our undersea cables.

**Dean Veverka** (0:21)
They underpin everything we do in our modern life. So anything that can be digitized, so voice, emails, social media, banking and finance, carry trillions of dollars worth of transactions daily. All of that is digitized and transmitted on these fiber optic cables.

**Chris Spyrou** (0:36)
So what are undersea cables? What do they do? And what happens if they're targeted by malicious actors? That's coming up in the second half of this episode. First, though, let's get into the headlines for Sacha Barbour Gatt on Wednesday, the 12th of August.

**Sacha Barbour Gatt** (0:51)
Thanks, Chris. Good morning. We're starting in Canberra, where the coalition looks set to back a Pauline Hanson bill to stop Australians who were fought for terrorist groups overseas from coming home. The coalition has been promising to fight One Nation as support for their own party slides. But opposition leader Angus Taylor and Nationals leader Matt Canavan have both now signalled support for the bill. It'll hit the Senate tomorrow, aimed at making it easier to cancel Australian passports while creating new penalties for anyone who helps a terror-linked person return.

**Chris Spyrou** (1:23)
Shadow Minister John O'Donniam says the coalition spent years trying to shut the door on terrorists and wants legal experts to make sure the bill holds up. And that matters because we have heard from legal experts who say this bill wouldn't survive a high court challenge. Home Affairs Minister Tony Burke agrees, and he's argued previously that Australia has to deal with its own citizens even when they're overseas, and that locking them out could push them beyond our security agency's reach, making them more dangerous, not less. Now, even with coalition backing in the Senate, the bill still needs Labor to reach the House of Reps, which is very unlikely.

**Sacha Barbour Gatt** (2:00)
Yes, it's probably worth noting here Labor's existing kind of response to overseas terrorist fighters or people with links to terrorist groups. So of course, we've had the so-called ISIS brides saga very recently over the last few months with a couple of different groups of women and children trying to return from Syria where they were married to ISIS fighters. Now, we have seen the Australian government use existing exclusion orders to temporarily bar one Australian woman who was linked to ISIS from returning. But the government says it doesn't have the ability to permanently lock citizens out. And that's the whole issue is that you can't tell a citizen that they can't return to their home country. So that is where the legal issue exists where you can't say that to someone who has citizenship in Australia. So like you mentioned, there could be high court pushback. You could expect high court pushback to this bill if it did get over the line. Yeah.

**Chris Spyrou** (2:57)
And interestingly, the coalition and the messaging from the coalition has been very clear that this is something they've had in the works for a while. And they've kind of like found a friend in Pauline Hansen. It's not that they're being pushed by Pauline Hansen, rather, she's come up with this bill. They like this bill because it's very much what they've wanted for a while. So interesting to see how that plays out tomorrow and whether or not it gets through the Senate in the first place.

**Sacha Barbour Gatt** (3:24)
Sticking with politics and the melons saga continues to roll on with pressure mounting on Anthony Albanese to apologize. Now this comes, of course, after the comments he made on the satirical Bushdeep podcast a month ago about a gift brought by the Japanese Prime Minister on a diplomatic visit to Australia. Here is a reminder if you need it.

**Dean Veverka** (3:44)
The Japanese Prime Minister brought a melon here.

**SPEAKER_4** (3:48)
How did he get that through customs?

**Chris Spyrou** (3:50)
See, it's a royal melon.

**Sacha Barbour Gatt** (3:52)
Oh, she smuggled it.

**SPEAKER_4** (3:53)
It was a she.

**Dean Veverka** (3:54)
She?

**Sacha Barbour Gatt** (3:54)
Did she smuggle it?

**Chris Spyrou** (3:55)
I don't know.

**Sacha Barbour Gatt** (3:56)
I don't know. Oh, I'm expecting. Got a couple of melons. She brought two.

**Dean Veverka** (4:00)
She brought two, as you do.

**Sacha Barbour Gatt** (4:02)
She just came in looking like Pamela Anderson.

**Dean Veverka** (4:04)
She brought two.

**SPEAKER_4** (4:05)
Yes.

**Sacha Barbour Gatt** (4:05)
Now, the Coalition has used the first day back in parliament following the winter break to pile pressure on the PM to say sorry. And yesterday, for the first time, he did address the comments.