Paul Fletcher (Bradfield, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Government Services and the Digital Economy) Share this | Hansard source

I'm pleased to rise to speak on the Migration Amendment (Bridging Visa Conditions and Other Measures) Bill 2023. Let's be clear. The reason we are here, the reason we are debating this, the reason that Labor is seeking to rush through this legislation and has guillotined debate for an hour, is the woeful mismanagement of this very important area of public policy by the Albanese Labor government. There is no more important responsibility of the Australian government than keeping the Australian people safe. If it is your objective to keep the Australian people safe, that is not an objective which is achieved or advanced by throwing open the gates of detention facilities and releasing into the community what we were initially told would be some 81 people. Each day that number rose and rose and rose, and we learnt that, amongst these people who have been released, are murderers, rapists, people who have committed sexual assaults on children—in one case on a 10-year-old.

This is a group of people who have been released into the community by the Albanese Labor government, putting the Australian people at risk. And it is far from clear that this government knows where those people are. It is far from clear that it has actually yet managed to execute one element of the policy approach—which was agreed at short notice, thanks to Labor's mismanagement, just over a week ago—which was that every one of these people would be required to wear an ankle bracelet so that their locations could be monitored, in the interests of public safety.

The root cause of what has happened here is that the Albanese Labor government completely failed to make contingency plans for what was, on any view, a highly foreseeable contingency—that the High Court would rule in the way it did just two and a bit weeks ago—with the consequence that it was urgent that the government have a contingency plan in place to avoid the scenario in which this group of dangerous and highly undesirable people were released into the community with no measures being taken to protect the safety of the Australian community.

What we now know is that the government has drafted further legislation which will amend provisions which were agreed by the parliament and legislated a little over a week ago. The opposition was provided with this bill at eight o'clock this morning. We have a number of questions about it. We want to be satisfied, for example, that it does not amount to a winding-back or a weakening of measures which were legislated by the parliament just a week and a bit ago.

That is what we want to be satisfied of on behalf of the Australian people. We want to know whether the measures in this bill could include the potential watering down of strict visa conditions agreed just under two weeks ago.

There are a range of other questions that we want to be satisfied on. What arrangements are in place to ensure that state and territory police are able to exercise relevant powers in relation to the cohort of released detainees? Do state and territory governments need to give their consent before powers can validly be conferred on authorised officers who are state or territory officials? Are state or territory officials empowered by this legislation and its interaction with other relevant legislation, including state legislation, to apply, remove, maintain and reapply electronic monitoring devices? So there are a range of questions that the government needs to provide satisfactory answers to. Sadly, this is a rushed and chaotic process, and the opposition certainly calls for those answers.

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