Michelle Ananda-Rajah (Higgins, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I was going through the Liberal legacy that we inherited. I will get to the point of this MPI, but I just want to remind everyone what we are dealing with and the context that we have inherited. It reflects the competency of those opposite when they were in government.

We had 28 major defence projects that were running a collective 97 years late, nearly a century. Let's not forget the secret ministries which almost certainly contributed to this disaster, a welcome mat that was laid out for corruption to bloom in this country thanks to a lack of leadership around legislating the National Anti-Corruption Commission, robodebt, reflective of a broken culture where the bureaucracy became hostile to the Australian public, and rorting of the migration system which allowed all kinds of criminals syndicates to flourish in Australia, including allowing modern-day slavery to thrive right under our noses. Let's not forget the trade embargoes, stagnant wages and, of course—the big one—inaction on climate change.

But why stop there? We now also have to deal with unconstitutional detention laws. We had to deal with the release of long-term detainees. This decision was not made lightly. It was made by the full bench of the High Court. It was a decision that we resisted, argued against and were disappointed was handed down. But we respect the decision. Why? Because we live in a country that respects the rule of law. The High Court determined that the minister could not be the judge, jury and proverbial executioner, that the minister could not be the one who could punt a person from this country, deport them. That was a decision made by the full bench.

The question is: where those opposite forewarned? It turns out they were forewarned. They were forewarned by our now Attorney-General, who raised questions of validity when these laws were crafted all those years ago under the stewardship of the current Leader of the Opposition. But did they listen? No. In characteristic style, they did not listen. They barrelled through, and now we are having to clean up this mess.

We as a government have acted swiftly, and we thank those opposite for cooperation in helping to enact these laws in a moment of crisis to keep the community safe. We brought in stringent post-offending controls, including electronic monitoring, individual case management, social media monitoring of these individuals and setting up exclusion zones around places where children frequent. We have also boosted the services of the AFP and Border Force as well as the Commonwealth public prosecutions office. But we need to do more, and we urge cooperation in order to keep Australians safe.

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