Jenny Ware (Hughes, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

I rise to speak on this matter of public importance regarding the multiple and repeated failures by the Minister for Immigration, Citizenship and Multicultural Affairs to keep Australians safe. I thank the honourable member for Wannon, the shadow minister for immigration and citizenship, for bringing this MPI to the attention of the House. I did wonder whether I was in fact speaking on the same MPI as the member for Bruce, who, during his five minutes, at no time attempted to, at any stage, defend the immigration minister. He didn't even speak about immigration but spoke about a whole range of other issues. So it needs to be said that not even those on that side can defend their own minister.

The first priority of a federal government must always be to keep our citizens, our communities and our streets safe. This immigration minister has demonstrated repeatedly that he is unable to do that, and he has done that in two main actions: his response to the High Court decision of NZYQ and his direction 99.

I note that the member for Bruce did say that the minister was here today and answered questions in question time. By my count—and I asked one of those questions—he was given seven questions from our side. At three minutes each, he was given the opportunity to respond for 21 minutes. I don't think that for any of those answers he went for longer than 30 seconds. So to say that he was here and he answered questions is simply not the case.

The NZYQ decision was a decision of the High Court. We, on our side, know that and we have never said that the minister responsible for the High Court decision; however, we live in a Westminster system of government. What the minister is responsible for are things that happen in his portfolio—and just to reminder the minister: that is immigration. The minister—as a responsible minister—was responsible for knowing what legal risks were coming up and to ask his department, for example, 'What court cases do we have coming up?' He was responsible to have been aware that, as his department had apparently told him months out from when the High Court handed down its decision, it was likely to find against the Commonwealth. It also did not help that, during that case, the minister put in a statement of agreed facts that NZYQ could not be removed from Australia. So, while the minister may say that he did all he could to defend that case, his direction to his own team of lawyers flies in the face of that.

It was incumbent upon him to have legislation to deal with that decision ready to go the minute that the judgement came down. Instead, we then saw over 150 very serious offenders released into the community. These included seven murderers, 37 sex offenders and 72 violent offenders, and many of these have again committed heinous crimes within our community. Nobody who has seen the photos of poor Ninette Simons, a cancer survivor and grandmother, will be anything but repulsed by what has occurred there. For the minister to still fail to front up and apologise for this is completely wrong and shows that he will not take responsibility for his own actions.

Minister Giles has blamed the High Court, he has blamed the AAT, and he has blamed his own department, but we need to look at ministerial direction 99. This is a direction that the minister himself has signed. He has now signed a document that says that a decision-maker must show greater tolerance to noncitizens if he or she has lived in the Australian community for a long time or could show a connection to Australia. That is signed by Minister Giles. That is not anything to do with the High Court. It's not the AAT. It's not the department. His department and the AAT have the obligation to have regard to that direction when they're making their decision. So how then can the minister say: 'Oh, this is not me. This is on somebody else'? In all of these circumstances, the immigration minister has failed to keep Australians safe.

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