Dan Tehan (Wannon, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Immigration and Citizenship) Share this | Hansard source

as 'the subtle art of not giving a'—I won't use that unparliamentary language. It talks about the complete and utter mess the government is making of its attempts to deal with this High Court decision—so much so that now they've rushed these further amendments into the parliament when we've just found out that the High Court are going to give us the reasons for their decision tomorrow. At a minimum we should be waiting until we get those reasons to see whether these amendments go far enough.

As we know, last week, or the week before, when they introduced their amendments we said at the time, 'Too little, too late.' That's exactly what they were, and we had to strengthen them for the government. We should be sensible about how we proceed, not be told as an opposition that the government is going to introduce these amendments and there will be a meeting at eight o'clock in the morning, and we get handed the bill with the amendments which was finished at 4.17 pm last night—rushed. And they expect the parliament to just say they're the government and they should be listened to, and this is what they should do, when their track record when it comes to keeping the community safe is deplorable.

I think there is one reason and one reason only why we are here today with these amendments before us—that is, the government is using them as a distraction to take the focus off their track record. Let's have a look at the track record currently: 138 former detainees now free in the community. Four of them, we know, have not complied with the amendments which went through the House over a week ago, and one of them is AWOL; one of them can't be found and hasn't been contactable. We don't know anything about that person. The other three have been referred to the AFP. We don't know the exact status of that.

Everything that we've had from this government when it comes to this issue has shown how ham-fisted their response has been. They had nearly six months to prepare for the High Court decision, yet all we got immediately after the High Court decision was: 'Oh, it's all too hard. We're going to have to wait for the reasons. There's nothing we can do.' Well, the community said that wasn't good enough, the media said that wasn't good enough and the opposition said that wasn't good enough, and eventually the government was forced to act in a way where they led completely with their chin by introducing legislation which they said were the toughest laws that had ever been introduced.

Yet, within the space of about 12 hours, they'd actually had to bow to opposition pressure and make the laws and give them real teeth because of their inept handling of this issue.

There are still many, many more questions that need to be answered by the government when it comes to this issue. For instance, why did the government concede on 30 May it was not possible to deport NZYQ when it only approached Bangladesh, Saudi Arabia and the Five Eyes nations after that date? The minister for immigration said on 30 May it was not possible to deport NZYQ. So he almost threw in the towel on 30 May. Then it seems that, after that date, the government decided: 'This could work against us. This could work against community safety.' They then tried to fix it up by approaching Bangladesh, Saudi Arabia and the Five Eyes nations after that date to see whether they would take NZYQ. Why did Minister O'Neil, in complete contradiction of the minister for immigration, say last week that she had operational advice 'it was likely' the government could deport NZYQ when this case indicates the precise opposite? We saw questions along these lines asked of the government today, and they didn't want to go anywhere near answering them.

The other question we need answered is: did the minister for immigration, in making that call on 30 May, get that signed off jointly with the Minister for Home Affairs, the Attorney-General, the cabinet or the Prime Minister? Or was the Prime Minister's lack of attention to detail also exposed in this? There are so many answers that we need to hear from the government, and yet they refuse to give them to us.

Only this morning, when we had our briefing, which was then followed by another briefing because we couldn't get the answers that we wanted, we put to the government serious questions about these amendments. We still haven't got very clear-cut answers from the government on these. These are serious issues that we need answering. The Prime Minister has received a letter from the Leader of the Opposition talking about the issues that we think need addressing if we are to support this bill.

My understanding is that we are still waiting to hear clearly about the approach that the government will take. But, if the government were serious, it would enter into a proper bipartisan process with the opposition to do this properly. It would not just drop a letter on a Sunday night and then say, 'You have to be at a briefing at eight o'clock' and then—this is what the government did—not even have the head of the Australian Border Force turn up. But guess when he did turn up? They then did a press conference half an hour later, and guess who was there to answer questions on operational matters? The head of Border Force. This is the type of bipartisanship that the government is seeking.

We have to remember what this is about. This is about the No. 1 priority that any government has, which is keeping the community safe. You will remember that 10 days ago we had to remind the government that there were victims out in the Australian community of some of the people that they had released and that those victims didn't know what was happening. They didn't know what protections were going to be put in place for them.

They were scared. They were themselves having to ring up to find out information about what the government is doing.

I say this to the government: rather than rushing these amendments through and treating us as if we have to either put up or shut up, when the real expertise lies on this side of the House when it comes to keeping the nation safe, why don't you, in the very first instance, put all your focus on finding out where that one detainee whose whereabouts they don't know is? That should be the government's No. 1 priority. The next should be making sure that the amendments we put through the week before last are fully implemented and then working with us to get through proper amendments which will keep the community safe.

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