Adam Bandt (Melbourne, Australian Greens) Share this | Hansard source

Parliament is being treated with contempt. We are dealing with serious issues of terrorism; we are dealing with the serious issue of the relationship between parliament, the executive and the courts. We are dealing with one of the most fundamental issues: when someone, who is a citizen and who might even have been born here, loses their citizenship. In walks the minister with 14 pages of amendments to some of the most fundamental laws in this country at a time when we are dealing globally with one of the most serious questions about how to deal with terrorism and how to make Australia safer. He says, 'Pass this now—I want you to trust me that it's all going to be okay.'

These provisions have not been the subject of any inquiry by this parliament. These provisions have not been looked at by dispassionate experts in the field who know that when emotions are running high it is often the worst time to be making decisions about fundamental principles of the rule of law and to be giving the executive more powers. These have not even been looked at by the closed shop of a joint committee, which Labor and the coalition set up to deal with this matter in the past. Instead, the parliament is told just to accept this on trust and that a backroom deal has been done. Parliament is about more than backroom deals between Labor and the Liberals. Parliament is about giving an opportunity to scrutinise what a government is doing when it is trying to use national security issues to gain votes. Blind Freddy can see that that is what has been going on, certainly under the previous regime. What we have here is a Tony Abbott era bill brought back up and given life and now being pushed through the parliament, and it is being done, sadly, with the support of the opposition.

The Greens have said from the beginning that this bill will do nothing to make us safer. We have stuck with a fairly straightforward principle, which is that if someone breaches the laws of this country and take steps that indicate they are going to attack us and attack our people and potentially kill people, if they commit acts that are tantamount to murder and break laws, then you prosecute them in the courts and whatever punishment the courts mete out is what they get. If someone comes to Australia or if someone is born in Australia and wants to bomb us or wants to attack us and they are convicted, then send them to jail. As to the suggestion that someone who is so motivated that they are prepared to blow themselves up and take others with them is somehow going to be persuaded by the fact that they might have their citizenship affected, from the beginning we have said to show us the evidence. The government has none, and it has none because this has been an ideological bill from the start. That is why organisation after organisation that is concerned about safety, that is concerned about terrorism but above all is concerned about the principles that define a democratic society have lined up to say there is nothing in this that will make us safer and it might not work. It suggests that we were onto something. It suggests that we were onto something when we said this bill will not make us safer, and in fact it might contravene some of the fundamental principles of rule of law in this country.

The government comes in here with 14 pages of amendments and tells us to take them at face value because they will tidy things up. Have these amendments been drafted so recently, and is there some urgency that means the legislation has to go through now? No. The footer of this document suggests that these amendments were prepared on 27 November at 5.12 pm. They were done last Friday—they could have been out in the public domain and open to scrutiny from commentators, from academics, from journalists and from people who are going to be asked to vote on it but, no, as is the case with everything with this government, transparency is a foreign concept—secrecy rules the day: hold onto these amendments, do a backroom deal and then come here and ask us to pass them. I am very proud that at least on this the Greens will be part of the opposition, because this is a Tony Abbott era bill that will do nothing to make this country safer. I urge Labor: please stop rolling over for the government on this stuff because if you give them an inch they will take a mile. There is nothing that they will not do. They will talk about dual nationals, they will come after sole nationals next and this country will not be any safer for that. I will not be a party to this process of passing bad laws quickly. We do not know what is in these amendments, and 25 per cent of the population do not vote for either Labor or the coalition and they and their representatives in this place deserve to be treated with respect. You cannot come in here on such a fundamental matter and ask us to pass amendments and laws like this.

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