Clare O'Neil (Hotham, Australian Labor Party, Minister for Home Affairs) Share this | Hansard source

Exactly. These laws allow us to do things that no government has ever been able to do before: to put ankle-monitoring bracelets on people we are concerned about; to require approval for employment for people who are going to work in some types of industries; and to apply curfews to people. What's really important about this bill is that for the first time we criminalise people who do not follow these visa conditions. This is something that the Leader of the Opposition could have done in the long years that he was home affairs minister, but he chose not to do so. We are putting forward what are extremely tough conditions, and the legal advice that we have been given is that we are going as far as we can in order to manage the issues that are before us.

The opposition has a real choice to make here. They have a real decision to make and, frankly, it shouldn't be a difficult one. They should come into this parliament and do everything they can to facilitate the fast passage of this bill through the parliament—everything they can. They have been saying all week that they want us to bring forward legislation—well, here it is. Here is the legislation; what we need from the Leader of the Opposition is to come forward and say that he'll support it. But I haven't heard that, and I'm not sure if my colleagues have heard that. What I've heard from the Leader of the Opposition is a bunch of bluff and a bunch of bluster, that we heard for the long years while he told us he was doing a good job of managing our borders and utterly failing to do so.

I would say to those opposite that we need to move quickly on this. I was very disturbed earlier to hear the shadow minister for home affairs say that the opposition was in no rush to deal with these laws. I object to that; we are in a rush. I would like to get this through the parliament today and I need the opposition's support to do so. What I want to know is why the opposition is not actively working with the government to facilitate the passage of this legislation. The opposition has sat through the parliament all this week, asking the government to do exactly what we are doing right now. So this is the test for the opposition: is all the political posturing that we see through question time just that, or do they actually care about the safety of the Australian community? If they actually care about the safety of the Australian community then we've got a clear decision to make here, as a parliament.

Opposition members interjecting—

We can make our country safer today, but we need the Leader of the Opposition to come in and cooperate with us. We can make our country safer today, but we need the Leader of the Opposition to come in here to support us and help us do that. I'd say again to the Leader of the Opposition, 'You can pretend to be a tough guy all you like, but words don't make our country safer—good laws do.' That is why I implore the parliament and I implore the opposition to help us make our community safer. We can do it today.

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