Michael Keenan (Stirling, Liberal Party, Minister for Justice) Share this | Hansard source

I really need to respond to that, because, quite frankly, that was just 10 minutes of incoherent rambling from the shadow minister for transport, who really has absolutely no clue what he is talking about. The reason we opposed these amendments is that, obviously, we have advice from our agencies that this would restrict the scope of the application of what we are trying to achieve here—as the shadow minister for transport should know, but if he does not know it is quite remarkable. He is either wilfully ignorant of the argument that has been made here or he is just not concerned about the truth. I understand that the minister has tried to reason with him, has tried to explain the situation and has actually sat down with him and said that this is the reason the government wants to proceed in this way. The reason is very clear: it is because we have strong advice that 'serious and organised' crime has the potential to not capture the scope of individuals that we want to capture under this legislation. Within his contribution, the minister has actually provided examples of where that could happen.

By proceeding the way the government is proceeding—by using the definition of serious crime—we will make sure that we are not going to have the wrong people working at our ports and our airports. We cannot have a situation in Australia where we have criminals, who associate with other criminals, who may not have been convicted of crimes but on whom we have sufficient criminal intelligence to understand that they present a significant security risk for us—

Mr Albanese interjecting—

This is the whole point. You have absolutely no idea what you are talking about. You have absolutely no understanding of what the government is trying to achieve here. I understand that the minister has been very patient in explaining what the government is trying to achieve. What we are trying to achieve is to make sure that we have appropriate people working within sensitive areas at our ports and airports, and people with criminal backgrounds, people who are associating with criminals and people who are members of bikie gangs, for example, are not appropriate people to be working at our ports and airports.

This shadow minister has come up with some ridiculous argument to say that the government is not adhering to the advice we received. We have been given firm advice that we need to tighten up what is happening at our ports and airports and to tighten up on the people who are getting access to them through the MSIC and ASIC regimes and to make sure that people who have criminal associates and people that we understand are not the right people to be working there should be denied access to those secure areas. It is clear from the member for Grayndler's contribution that he really does not understand what the government is trying to achieve here. We engaged constructively with the opposition. We sat down with him and explained why his proposal will weaken what we are trying to achieve—

See this speech in context