John Howard (Bennelong, Liberal Party, Prime Minister) Share this | Hansard source

Hang on, it gets even better. The deputy has asked me the question and she is going to have to get the answer. They also moved legislation—maybe she has forgotten this—to legitimise what were unlawful detentions by changing the law retrospectively, where the member for Reid made clear that the purpose of the bill was to legitimise the detentions that occurred between 1989 and 1992, because the government at the time acted in good faith in detaining people. In fact, the former member for Prospect, Janice Crosio, who was then the Parliamentary Secretary for Social Security, had this pearl of wisdom to say—which is so apposite and so relevant to the criticism we are now receiving from the Labor Party:

In this instance, the Commonwealth acted on a mistaken view of what the law was ... Should that custody prove to have been unlawful, it is as a result of an innocent and technical breach, and no more.

In other words, when Labor was in government—

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