Peter Dutton (Dickson, Liberal Party, Leader of the Opposition) Share this | Hansard source

It's important to recap as to why we're here today. This legislation has been drafted overnight, so thank you to the drafters and to the public servants who clearly have worked through the night to cobble this piece together. The fact is that this bill should have been drafted months ago. It's inadequate in its current form. There are amendments, which I'll go to in a second, that I would otherwise have sought to move but the contingency motion that's just been moved and passed and rammed through this House by the Leader of the House means that, in an almost unprecedented way, we are not permitted to move amendments to this bill. The government might disagree with the amendments that we seek to move, but it's their prerogative, particularly in a parliament where they have an absolute majority, to vote down those amendments and then to support their bill to safe passage through the House. But that's not what they've chosen to do; they've chosen to close down debate in relation to this most important issue.

In June of this year, the High Court, through Justice Gleeson, gave a very clear indication to the minister for immigration that the government was on shaky ground. The government had the ability, in June of this year, to respond by way of legislation or other administrative changes to deal with this very real threat to the Australian community. Was legislation drafted in June? Was it drafted in July? Was it drafted in August? Was it drafted in September or October? It wasn't even drafted 24 hours ago.

The fact is that Australians are being put at risk. This is a very serious matter. We're now talking about 84 hardcore criminals because another one has been released overnight. As the West Australian rightly points out, these people are now staying in motels at taxpayers' expense. They've been given per diem assistance in terms of their out-of-pocket living expenses. They're being given welfare support. These are people who have murdered Australians. These are people who have raped young children. These are people who are serious domestic violence offenders. These are people who are of the worst character, and they are noncitizens. We're not even talking about Australian citizens here. These are people who do not deserve to live in our country. Had they committed these offences overseas in their country of origin, they would not have been granted a visa in the first place. Let's be clear about that.

How does the government respond? They could have responded with legislation, which we were told by the Prime Minister, by the Minister for Home Affairs and by the hapless immigration minister was not an option. In question time this week and in media interviews, that was their response. Yet today we have before the parliament urgent legislation that has been drafted overnight to try and provide some response, which is totally and utterly inadequate.

I want to be clear to the Australian people today: the Prime Minister has taken a decision not to re-detain these 84 serious criminals. But it's worse than that. We were asking for a briefing on this matter, which was provided at 7.15 this morning. The minister has given an undertaking to this House to add to an answer and to provide a breakdown of each category of offending. It has still not been provided. We didn't get any update or any briefing at the start of this week—not on Tuesday, not on Wednesday—but this morning, at 7.15, we get the hapless immigration minister and the hopeless Minister for Home Affairs in there, who move from one disaster to the next. They throw the bill onto the table and say: 'Here's the bill. Will you support it? We want your bipartisan support?' We said, 'There are countless provisions in this bill, and we want more than an hour and a quarter to look at it and take legal advice and decide our position.' We think, even on the first quick read of it, that it is completely and totally inadequate.

So they come in here and move a motion which doesn't allow us to amend their bill at all, but I'll tell you what else we found out during the course of the meeting this morning. We already have 84 people now out in the community, with the prospect of eight more being released imminently. These are people with adverse security assessments—national security risks—murderers, rapists and paedophiles. As I point out, they are the most serious of offenders against Australian citizens. But we are not just talking about the 84 who are out now and the eight about to be released. We're now talking about a pipeline of 340 people and, potentially, more beyond that. What we do know in some of these cases—and I won't go into them individually, but I was the minister at the time who took a decision to keep them in detention, on multiple occasions in some cases—is that these people have offended against multiple Australians. We're not talking about some people who have had some indiscretion under the law. These are people who have committed serious offences. The likelihood of them reoffending is very, very high.

I think it is completely and utterly unconscionable that the Prime Minister has not been here to deal with this matter. The safety and security of the Australian population is the first charge of any leader of this country, and this Prime Minister is missing in action. I would have been happy to sit down with the Prime Minister at any time during the course of this week, including overnight and this morning. Was he at the briefing? No, because he's on his plane to another overseas destination. I would have been happy to sit down with him and negotiate a regime that we could pass by legislation that would see these people come back into detention—to see the threat that is imminent, to see the threat that is real to women and children in our country, dealt with and dispensed today. But the Prime Minister has taken a deliberate decision to abandon the Australian people when they most need him. I think there are many Australians at the moment who are shaking their heads in disbelief at a Prime Minister who has the opportunity to address this—and has had the opportunity since June to address this so that these people would not have been released in the first place—and has chosen other priorities over the Australian public.

We're seeing already some of the victims of these particular hardened criminals out there telling their stories. We know, for example, that there are particularly egregious cases that we're talking about here. We know in one circumstance that one individual has committed a crime of this nature—and this is not easy to read nor hear, but it's necessary to be said. One person killed a pregnant woman and then blew up her body with military-grade explosives. I think the Australian public is rightly outraged at a government that sees fit to let that person back out into the community.

This government has had months and months and months to deal with these issues, and they have chosen not to do so. Why? Because they believe that the rights of these individuals trump the rights of the victims of these crimes, and the rights of the future victims of these criminals as well. I don't believe that the Australian public voted for that in May of last year. I think it doesn't matter where you look at the moment across this government: the wheels are falling off. They have decisions before them. They either delay the decisions until the problem compounds into something that they can't manage, which is exactly what has happened in relation to this matter, or they make decisions which adversely impact the Australian public. They don't have the experience or the competence to lead this country. When the Prime Minister's over in China walking in the footsteps of Gough Whitlam, he's doing it here domestically as well. That is hurting Australian families.

This minister stands condemned for releasing these people into the community when he had a choice to do completely the opposite. This minister had the choice, and he has done nothing since being advised of the High Court's concerns in June of this year. This minister misled this parliament and misled the Australian public when he said that people had been released on visas, when it turns out they had not. We had the Deputy Prime Minister out yesterday again misleading the Australian public, and we've had this rushed response overnight which is inadequate. The amendments that we seek to move in the Senate that we can't move here will be moved today, and this parliament should sit until these matters are resolved today.

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