Robert Oakeshott (Lyne, Independent) Share this | Hansard source

I acknowledge it is the end of a long two weeks of sitting and most members want to go home, but I also acknowledge that this is important legislation that government does need certainty on. I would hope that the House acknowledges the responsibility of dealing with it, no matter how long it takes this evening. I do not support the Labor Party or the Liberal Party or the National Party or the Greens on this issue in the way it has been framed to date. I do support and strongly back a nine-year regional cooperative process, started by Alexander Downer in 2002, known as the Bali Process. If we place an emphasis on that and codify that, we will start to clean up bad law domestically, which I think was reflected on and interpreted by the High Court ruling last month. I think it is the roadmap and the process for the future in starting to, in the long term, clean up bad law regionally.

It is for that reason that I flag that I will be moving an amendment to this legislation that does the following. Under subsection 5(1), I will be looking to insert a definition of the regional cooperation framework, with the following:

'Bali Process' means the process known as the Bali Process, established at the Regional Ministerial Conference on People Smuggling, Trafficking in Persons and Related Transnational Crime held in Bali in February 2002.

I also will be looking to insert, at schedule 1, page 3, after item 4:

'Regional cooperation framework' means the framework agreed to in the co-chair's statement issued at the 4th Regional Ministerial Conference on People Smuggling, Trafficking in Persons and Related Transnational Crime held in Bali on 30 March 2011.

I will be looking to insert at schedule 1, item 25, page 6, after paragraph 198AA(a)—

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