Christian Porter (Pearce, Liberal Party, Attorney-General) Share this | Hansard source

I thank the member for his question. The requirement to return a person to a regional processing country and the power to achieve that return are both contained in a very specific section of the Migration Act: 198AD.

That is a very important section, because if someone doesn't volunteer to return to the offshore processing facility it is sometimes necessary to remove them and place them on a flight, and rarely, thankfully, to restrain them—although sometimes that does happen. To do these things, a member of Border Force has to be able to point to a specific statutory power. If they don't have a statutory power, then doing things like removing someone and putting them on a plane is effectively an unlawful act against that transferee.

Now, that very important return power in 198AD of the act only applies to the specific categories of transitory persons who are set out in another provision of the act, which is 198AH. The problem is, that section does not include a person transferred under Labor's new medevac transfer. It does not include that person. So what Labor has done is add in an entirely new medevac transfer process to the Migration Act but they've failed to link that entirely new medevac transfer process to the existing provisions that provide the minister with the power to return.

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