Andrew Hastie (Canning, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Defence) Share this | Hansard source

The No. 1 priority for any government is to keep Australians safe from threats external to our borders and safe from threats internal to our borders. We're here today debating this new legislation, the Migration Amendment (Bridging Visa Conditions) Bill 2023—this half-baked, rushed legislation—because the Albanese government has been caught flatfooted by the High Court judgement handed down last week. It has shown that the Albanese government is unable to manage an unfolding situation and is unable to impose itself on that situation and protect the Australian people. We know that since June this government was aware that this judgement may have been handed down, so they've had five months to come up with a plan to mitigate the risks posed by this decision. What we've seen over the last week is 80 to 90 hardcore criminals, including child sex offenders and murderers among them, released into the Australian community. We now know that there are perhaps hundreds more to follow, with up to 300 who may well join them in the community.

That why we're here today, because we have a government that is distracted. We have a Prime Minister, yet again, who's flown overseas and left it to his hapless cabinet to come up with a legislative fix to a problem they should have been across five months ago. This points to an absence of leadership. It's a failure of leadership. The new visa conditions that are being introduced today—the wearing of electronic monitoring devices, the curfews being imposed on people and the basic stuff: making sure that they have a working with children permit, the fact that they have to let authorities know if there's interstate travel or that they are working with vulnerable people—are pretty straightforward. They should have been thought of five months ago in preparation for this decision. It's just not good enough.

All week we've had the Minister for Immigration, Citizenship and Multicultural Affairs stand up and um and ah and hedge his way through question time, unable to give the Australian people the clarity and the certainty that this government is working to protect their interests and uphold the public good, the public order and the public safety by taking actions to protect them. There are a number of options that I can think of that we've passed through legislation over the years. There are control orders, preventive detention orders and continuing detention orders. There are a number of law enforcement tools that this government could have used to mitigate the risk of these 80 to 90 people being let into the community, but they've failed.

This government is on notice. They should be ashamed of this lapse in leadership, of their failure to impose themselves on this situation and come up with solutions to protect the Australian community. It's not good enough. Once again, in a moment of crisis, in a moment where we really need leadership in this country, what does the Prime Minister do? He heads over to the US and leaves it to his ministers to fix up. Even now, with this half-baked legislation, I don't have any assurance that the Australian people are going to be kept safe. We don't have any assurance that the Australian people are going to be kept safe. This government should hang its head in shame.

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