Peter Dutton (Dickson, Liberal Party, Leader of the Opposition) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

This is a very dark day for our country. The Prime Minister's not here to deal with one of the most significant domestic issues in recent time. The Prime Minister should be here, in the chamber here in Canberra, instructing the public servants to do what it was that should have been instructed six months ago.

Milton Dick (Speaker) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Order, member for Swan.

Peter Dutton (Dickson, Liberal Party, Leader of the Opposition) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

It's important to recap as to why we're here today. This legislation has been drafted overnight, so thank you to the drafters and to the public servants who clearly have worked through the night to cobble this piece together. The fact is that this bill should have been drafted months ago. It's inadequate in its current form. There are amendments, which I'll go to in a second, that I would otherwise have sought to move but the contingency motion that's just been moved and passed and rammed through this House by the Leader of the House means that, in an almost unprecedented way, we are not permitted to move amendments to this bill. The government might disagree with the amendments that we seek to move, but it's their prerogative, particularly in a parliament where they have an absolute majority, to vote down those amendments and then to support their bill to safe passage through the House. But that's not what they've chosen to do; they've chosen to close down debate in relation to this most important issue.

In June of this year, the High Court, through Justice Gleeson, gave a very clear indication to the minister for immigration that the government was on shaky ground. The government had the ability, in June of this year, to respond by way of legislation or other administrative changes to deal with this very real threat to the Australian community. Was legislation drafted in June? Was it drafted in July? Was it drafted in August? Was it drafted in September or October? It wasn't even drafted 24 hours ago.

The fact is that Australians are being put at risk. This is a very serious matter. We're now talking about 84 hardcore criminals because another one has been released overnight. As the West Australian rightly points out, these people are now staying in motels at taxpayers' expense. They've been given per diem assistance in terms of their out-of-pocket living expenses. They're being given welfare support. These are people who have murdered Australians. These are people who have raped young children. These are people who are serious domestic violence offenders. These are people who are of the worst character, and they are noncitizens. We're not even talking about Australian citizens here. These are people who do not deserve to live in our country. Had they committed these offences overseas in their country of origin, they would not have been granted a visa in the first place. Let's be clear about that.

How does the government respond? They could have responded with legislation, which we were told by the Prime Minister, by the Minister for Home Affairs and by the hapless immigration minister was not an option. In question time this week and in media interviews, that was their response. Yet today we have before the parliament urgent legislation that has been drafted overnight to try and provide some response, which is totally and utterly inadequate.

I want to be clear to the Australian people today: the Prime Minister has taken a decision not to re-detain these 84 serious criminals. But it's worse than that. We were asking for a briefing on this matter, which was provided at 7.15 this morning. The minister has given an undertaking to this House to add to an answer and to provide a breakdown of each category of offending. It has still not been provided. We didn't get any update or any briefing at the start of this week—not on Tuesday, not on Wednesday—but this morning, at 7.15, we get the hapless immigration minister and the hopeless Minister for Home Affairs in there, who move from one disaster to the next. They throw the bill onto the table and say: 'Here's the bill. Will you support it? We want your bipartisan support?' We said, 'There are countless provisions in this bill, and we want more than an hour and a quarter to look at it and take legal advice and decide our position.' We think, even on the first quick read of it, that it is completely and totally inadequate.

So they come in here and move a motion which doesn't allow us to amend their bill at all, but I'll tell you what else we found out during the course of the meeting this morning. We already have 84 people now out in the community, with the prospect of eight more being released imminently. These are people with adverse security assessments—national security risks—murderers, rapists and paedophiles. As I point out, they are the most serious of offenders against Australian citizens. But we are not just talking about the 84 who are out now and the eight about to be released. We're now talking about a pipeline of 340 people and, potentially, more beyond that. What we do know in some of these cases—and I won't go into them individually, but I was the minister at the time who took a decision to keep them in detention, on multiple occasions in some cases—is that these people have offended against multiple Australians. We're not talking about some people who have had some indiscretion under the law. These are people who have committed serious offences. The likelihood of them reoffending is very, very high.

I think it is completely and utterly unconscionable that the Prime Minister has not been here to deal with this matter. The safety and security of the Australian population is the first charge of any leader of this country, and this Prime Minister is missing in action. I would have been happy to sit down with the Prime Minister at any time during the course of this week, including overnight and this morning. Was he at the briefing? No, because he's on his plane to another overseas destination. I would have been happy to sit down with him and negotiate a regime that we could pass by legislation that would see these people come back into detention—to see the threat that is imminent, to see the threat that is real to women and children in our country, dealt with and dispensed today. But the Prime Minister has taken a deliberate decision to abandon the Australian people when they most need him. I think there are many Australians at the moment who are shaking their heads in disbelief at a Prime Minister who has the opportunity to address this—and has had the opportunity since June to address this so that these people would not have been released in the first place—and has chosen other priorities over the Australian public.

We're seeing already some of the victims of these particular hardened criminals out there telling their stories. We know, for example, that there are particularly egregious cases that we're talking about here. We know in one circumstance that one individual has committed a crime of this nature—and this is not easy to read nor hear, but it's necessary to be said. One person killed a pregnant woman and then blew up her body with military-grade explosives. I think the Australian public is rightly outraged at a government that sees fit to let that person back out into the community.

This government has had months and months and months to deal with these issues, and they have chosen not to do so. Why? Because they believe that the rights of these individuals trump the rights of the victims of these crimes, and the rights of the future victims of these criminals as well. I don't believe that the Australian public voted for that in May of last year. I think it doesn't matter where you look at the moment across this government: the wheels are falling off. They have decisions before them. They either delay the decisions until the problem compounds into something that they can't manage, which is exactly what has happened in relation to this matter, or they make decisions which adversely impact the Australian public. They don't have the experience or the competence to lead this country. When the Prime Minister's over in China walking in the footsteps of Gough Whitlam, he's doing it here domestically as well. That is hurting Australian families.

This minister stands condemned for releasing these people into the community when he had a choice to do completely the opposite. This minister had the choice, and he has done nothing since being advised of the High Court's concerns in June of this year. This minister misled this parliament and misled the Australian public when he said that people had been released on visas, when it turns out they had not. We had the Deputy Prime Minister out yesterday again misleading the Australian public, and we've had this rushed response overnight which is inadequate. The amendments that we seek to move in the Senate that we can't move here will be moved today, and this parliament should sit until these matters are resolved today.

Clare O'Neil (Hotham, Australian Labor Party, Minister for Home Affairs) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I want to thank the parliament for this opportunity to support Minister Giles in putting this bill forward to the parliament. It is part of the government's response to a High Court decision that was made last week. I want to come back to that decision because the Leader of the Opposition has come forward to the parliament and made a series of statements in his speech just now that he knows to be untrue. He knows them to be untrue, I know them to be untrue and a grade 6 student who is studying politics in a primary school can tell you that they're untrue. The consistent falsehood that continues to be put forward by the Leader of the Opposition is that this a choice by the government. I will say again to you, Speaker, that one thing I actually agree with the Leader of the Opposition about is that some of the people at the heart of this decision have committed deplorable crimes; disgusting crimes—crimes that no-one in this parliament, surely, would accept. That is why we kept them in detention and that's why the people opposite kept them in detention. What we had last Wednesday was the High Court telling us that we must remove those people. We only do so for that reason.

I have said it before, and I will say it again: if I had any legal power to keep these people detained, I would. I would do it. We do not have that power—that is what the High Court has told us. That is why we are putting forward a comprehensive response which deals with the community safety implications of this problem, which are real. That is why we released people in detention on the strictest-possible legal conditions. That is why we set up a joint ABF-AFP operation which is case managing these people in detention. That is why we are bringing forward a bill to the parliament which gives our government powers that no government has ever had before to manage community safety risks from people in detention.

The Leader of the Opposition loves to present himself as a tough guy on borders. He never wrote laws as tough as this. These laws will allow the Commonwealth to make sure that we have electronic monitoring of people.

Opposition Members:

Opposition members interjecting—

Milton Dick (Speaker) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Order on my left!

Chris Bowen (McMahon, Australian Labor Party, Minister for Climate Change and Energy) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Tell us about the Nixon review.

Clare O'Neil (Hotham, Australian Labor Party, Minister for Home Affairs) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Exactly. These laws allow us to do things that no government has ever been able to do before: to put ankle-monitoring bracelets on people we are concerned about; to require approval for employment for people who are going to work in some types of industries; and to apply curfews to people. What's really important about this bill is that for the first time we criminalise people who do not follow these visa conditions. This is something that the Leader of the Opposition could have done in the long years that he was home affairs minister, but he chose not to do so. We are putting forward what are extremely tough conditions, and the legal advice that we have been given is that we are going as far as we can in order to manage the issues that are before us.

The opposition has a real choice to make here. They have a real decision to make and, frankly, it shouldn't be a difficult one. They should come into this parliament and do everything they can to facilitate the fast passage of this bill through the parliament—everything they can. They have been saying all week that they want us to bring forward legislation—well, here it is. Here is the legislation; what we need from the Leader of the Opposition is to come forward and say that he'll support it. But I haven't heard that, and I'm not sure if my colleagues have heard that. What I've heard from the Leader of the Opposition is a bunch of bluff and a bunch of bluster, that we heard for the long years while he told us he was doing a good job of managing our borders and utterly failing to do so.

I would say to those opposite that we need to move quickly on this. I was very disturbed earlier to hear the shadow minister for home affairs say that the opposition was in no rush to deal with these laws. I object to that; we are in a rush. I would like to get this through the parliament today and I need the opposition's support to do so. What I want to know is why the opposition is not actively working with the government to facilitate the passage of this legislation. The opposition has sat through the parliament all this week, asking the government to do exactly what we are doing right now. So this is the test for the opposition: is all the political posturing that we see through question time just that, or do they actually care about the safety of the Australian community? If they actually care about the safety of the Australian community then we've got a clear decision to make here, as a parliament.

Opposition members interjecting—

We can make our country safer today, but we need the Leader of the Opposition to come in and cooperate with us. We can make our country safer today, but we need the Leader of the Opposition to come in here to support us and help us do that. I'd say again to the Leader of the Opposition, 'You can pretend to be a tough guy all you like, but words don't make our country safer—good laws do.' That is why I implore the parliament and I implore the opposition to help us make our community safer. We can do it today.

Milton Dick (Speaker) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Order. There was far too much noise during that contribution.

The member for Hume! While I'm speaking is definitely not the time to interject.

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

This amendment bill, the Migration Amendment (Bridging Visa Conditions) Bill 2023, is too little too late. It bells the cat on the incomprehensible failure of this government to undertake its No. 1 priority, which is keeping the community safe. They have had over six months to get this right, and what we have seen is just incomprehensible—delays, mistruths and misleading of this parliament from the government.

Let's look at just this week alone. This is what the Minister for Immigration, Citizenship and Multicultural Affairs said on Monday:

… we were prepared for this outcome due to the case's significance.

He also said:

I don't forget you asked about the number of people who've been released. That number is 80, all of whom are on appropriate visa conditions.

This is what he said on Tuesday:

Our focus throughout—in anticipation of the decision and since—is on ensuring the safety of the Australian community. That includes looking at all options we have to ensure safety.

Then, on Wednesday, the Minister for Home Affairs said:

The first is that we are releasing people under the strictest possible visa conditions …

We now know that is not true, because right here before us now the government is acting to do what we were asking for on Monday.

The Minister for Home Affairs has just said that we weren't cooperating. That is an absolute nonsense. On Monday, we wrote to them. We didn't get a response to that letter until today. What they said to us was: 'Here's a piece of legislation. Take it or leave it.'

As we will demonstrate, there are amendments to this amendment that would strengthen this. It's not only that. The biggest failure is that they don't have before us today a new regime which would allow us to lock those detainees back up. That is the greatest failure. The Australian people need to know that the government has misled them and not acted in their best interests. It has not acted to keep them safe. We could be debating, in this chamber this morning, a preventive detention regime which would allow those people to be locked back up.

Why is this so serious? Thanks to some incredible reporting through the week, we have learned of the consequences of the decisions—or lack of decisions—that the government has made. We heard and read today about a domestic violence victim who has had to go to the police and ask: 'Please, what are the protections that I now have? What are the protections that are being put in place to protect me, because I have just found out the person who perpetrated domestic violence against me is now out in the community, free?' That person should not have to go through that. We have learnt through other reporting that in Queensland there was a lady who was raped who has now found out that the person who raped her is free in the community. She had to go and ask the police, 'What protections are being put in place to protect me?'

In our country, those people should not have to be going through that. This government should have undertaken this as their first priority and been focused on that first priority of keeping the community safe. In June last year, they knew that this decision was possible. As a matter of fact, they had a briefing in 2021, when they were in opposition, which showed that this decision was possible, and yet we are here now and they are rushing this amendment through the parliament. It is the greatest shame of all time.

As the Leader of the Opposition has said, where is the Prime Minister? Where is the Prime Minister when it comes to him undertaking his No. 1 priority? Jim Chalmers said of the Prime Minister—

Milton Dick (Speaker) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Order! I remind all members to use correct titles.

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

Sorry. The Treasurer said of the Prime Minister when he was failing to address the cost-of-living crisis that it was like Driving Miss Daisy. What we have seen from the Prime Minister when it comes to keeping Australian people safe is like 'Flying Miss Daisy' because he's not here to keep the Australian community safe. It is absolutely deplorable.

He sat in that chair this week while the minister for immigration refused to answer question after question as to whether the visa arrangements were put in place before the people were released or after they were released. We still haven't had that question answered. Just remember that these are rapists, these are child molesters and these are murderers. It now seems from the once again excellent reporting that they were released without visas. We asked the minister three times yesterday and he refused to rule that out. If that is not the greatest failing of a government to keep the community safe, I do not know what is.

We just heard the minister for immigration say when he introduced this bill that this is an immediate response. Those were his words—'This is an immediate response.' An immediate response would have taken place last Wednesday before you let them out, not here now. I appeal to the government. What we need to see before this parliament goes anywhere this week is a new regime put in place that allows for preventive detention, which allows for those 84 to be redetained. I say to the minister: 'Say to your department that you want that outcome. Don't sit there and listen to all the reasons why it might be difficult or there might be trouble in doing it. Learn to be a minister. Actually direct your department to get you the outcome that the Australian people want.' It's very clear what the outcome is that the Australian people want. They want these people redetained. Let's not beat around the bush on this. What do the Australian people want? They want these people redetained.

What we want and need from this government—and it's why the Prime Minister should be here to direct his ministers that this is the outcome we want—is a new regime in place to do it. We learnt today that the government have asked for some sort of new regime. They've asked for that. We can't understand why that wasn't asked for in June so that we would be prepared today and would be debating today the new regime that would allow those 84 to be redetained. As the Leader of the Opposition has mentioned, we're about to see an additional 340 released into the community. So we have 84 now and potentially 340 more while the government is completely asleep at the wheel and is sitting on its hands and not doing enough to make sure the community is safe. Their No. 1 priority is to keep the Australian community safe. They have failed and they should be ashamed of their failure. (Time expired)

Matt Keogh (Burt, Australian Labor Party, Minister for Veterans’ Affairs) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The safety of the community remains the utmost priority for our government, as it should be for any government. It is my priority too. Yet, what we've just had disclosed by the shadow minister for home affairs was that, when the opposition leader was the Minister for Home Affairs, he apparently received advice in 2021 in relation to these issues that they thought should have been undertaken then and they failed to implement when they were in government. So we get a lot of fluff and cluck and bluster from the shadow minister for home affairs and the opposition leader about things that we are doing in the first week that parliament is sitting immediately after a High Court decision, yet they took no action when apparently they had advice when they were in government.

Over the weekend, 32 detainees were released from the WA immigration centres in Yongah Hill and Perth. This was a result of a High Court ruling that declared that the detention of a plaintiff in immigration detention was unlawful. Following that ruling, that individual was released immediately, and I stress, while our government argued against this in the court, we were prepared for the outcome due to the case's significance. Complying with an order of the High Court is not optional. Governments are required to act in accordance with the law. That is what the fundamental principle of the rule of law is all about, and that is what we have done and will continue to do.

Since that ruling, 84 people have been released who are owed Australia's protection. They're stateless, or their removal from Australia is intractable for some reason. They are of varying backgrounds. Those that have committed crimes have all served their sentences before going into immigration detention. These individuals have been placed on bridging removal pending visas with conditions. In this way, they are similar to Australian criminals that have been convicted, finished their jail terms and faced similar restrictions to other people that have gone through the Australian legal systems.

Border protection and law enforcement agencies have been working together to make sure that the strictest possible conditions are placed on these individuals. Each individual offender is being case managed. They have been and continue to be the subject of a range of strict mandatory visa conditions. These conditions include restricting types of employment, requiring regular reporting to authorities and requiring released detainees to report their personal details, including their social media profiles, which are being actively monitored. Additionally, the government has imposed daily reporting requirements for those with the most serious criminal histories. We continue to work around the clock with agencies and law enforcement to uphold the safety of our community.

The bill before this House today strengthens those regimes even further, and the government will continue to consider what further it may do once we actually finally receive the reasons for decision from the High Court. That has not yet been provided to government.

This law creates a number of new and amended mandatory conditions to be imposed on these individuals' release and any further people required to be released on these visas. These conditions include reporting household, work, finances, memberships, associations and travel to appropriate authorities. The law will also allow for the imposition of curfews and the use of electronic monitoring.

To support the enforcement of these visa conditions, the bill creates several criminal offences for breaching conditions, including for a failure to wear electronic monitoring devices, for a failure to follow an authorised officer to maintain their monitoring device or to make sure that it can be maintained. It will be a criminal offence to fail to comply with a curfew and fail to comply with reporting requirements.

I know many people in my community are concerned about this situation. West Australian police and federal authorities are monitoring this very closely. The Albanese government is committed to the rule of law. We are committed to maintaining the integrity of our migration system and keeping the Australian community safe. I am committed to this for my community. This bill delivers on that, and I commend the bill to the House.

Adam Bandt (Melbourne, Australian Greens) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Labor is dancing to the Liberals' tune. Labor is letting the Leader of the Opposition write anti-refugee legislation and then rush it through parliament. A man who has built his career on punishing refugees and dividing the community, now is able to scare and spook Labor into rushing legislation through this parliament.

We are dealing with a High Court decision where the High Court has said that the system of taking someone and indefinitely detaining them—locking them up forever—is unlawful, and, in the face of that, the opposition has run a fear campaign, demanding that things be done that the High Court has just said you can't do. The opposition has been taking instances of crimes that we would all agree—everyone in this chamber would agree—are abhorrent, and then using that to demand the government do something the High Court has just said it can't do.

Instead of saying, 'Well, let's see what the High Court has said,' and accepting the fact that in Australia the High Court has now ruled you're no longer able to lock someone up indefinitely, and saying, 'Let's work out what a proper system of detention would look like,' Labor has been panicked into coming back here with legislation that looks like it's designed to get around the High Court and may well end up back in the High Court being ruled invalid again. The opposition's arguments are despicable, because they are demanding something be done that they know can't be done. But instead of saying, 'No, let's abide by the rule of law and work out now how to deal with this complex decision,' Labor's giving in to them. I've got a piece of advice for Labor: Labor, don't engage in a race to the bottom with the Leader of the Opposition, because there is nowhere he won't go. We've already seen that. Labor has been pressured into bringing legislation here, and already the opposition is saying, 'We're going to come back for more and we're going to come back for more and we're going to come back for more.'

Now, there's a reason that the Human Rights Law Centre has said that this kind of legislation is very likely to end up in the High Court again, because it looks like the government is trying to introduce detention by another name. I repeat the point that none of this is about defending the actions of the people that we have seen stories about in our media and that have been the subject of debate here. None of this is about that. The question is: how do you lawfully deal with that, given what the High Court has said? That's the question that we've got to deal with. What the Human Rights Law Centre has said is: 'This way of doing it is probably going to end up back in the High Court, because you're not listening to what the High Court has said.'

If we were to come back here and have a reasoned debate about how you deal with a significant decision of the High Court, then I think everyone in this parliament would engage with it. Instead, what you have is legislation that was rushed and drafted overnight, and, when you try to stand up in this place and say, 'A Labor-Liberal deal to pass legislation should not be rushed through,' Labor gags you. Labor is trying to silence people who want to say: 'Maybe there are some serious legal questions that need to be asked about this. Maybe this response is going to be ineffective because the High Court is going to overturn this as well.' This is a political response that has been driven by the Leader of the Opposition's fear campaign, and, when Labor members stand up in this place and say that this is tougher legislation than anything that the Liberals ever introduced and they try to out-tough Peter Dutton, they are going down the wrong track, because, as I say, there is nothing that the Leader of the Opposition won't do in trying to divide the Australian community. And instead of standing up to it, Labor is folding and giving in to him. This is only going to give succour to the Liberals, who will come back again and again and again and try and divide this community.

We cannot be party to rushing legislation through parliament that we've seen for the first time this morning and that has serious constitutional implications, when this should be the subject of sober consideration by this parliament on a matter as important as this—and you may end up with legislation that everyone in this parliament can support. But, when you try and silence even people who say, 'We want to have a debate about it', and when Labor silences any debate on the deal that they've done with the Liberals because they've been spooked by the Liberals, that is a dark day in this parliament.

David Coleman (Banks, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Communications) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

This is absolutely shameful—the conduct of the Albanese government. The people who have been released into the community are the worst of the worst—murderers, rapists and paedophiles, released into the community. The ministers in the Albanese government knew in June that there was a strong chance this would happen. So what did they do in June? What did they do in July? What did they do in August? What did they do in September? What did they do in October? What did they do for the first two weeks of November? Nothing. They knew that this was probably coming for months and months and months, and did nothing. Let's just pause and reflect on that, because that is what this government has done.

The minister for immigration knew there was a strong chance this would happen. The Minister for Home Affairs knew there was a strong chance that this would happen. The Prime Minister, presumably, was advised that there was a strong chance that this would happen. What action did the Albanese government take, during those 5½ months, to protect the Australian community and ensure that preventive orders were put in place to stop these people from being released into the community? Nothing.

The government can't say this is the High Court's fault. The High Court has its role, and it will do what it will do. Governments, ultimately, are responsible for the safety of the Australian people. Here, we've got ministers who knew for months that 80 or 90—and we learned today it could be hundreds of people—of the most serious criminals in this nation were going to be released as a consequence of this High Court decision. What did they do? Nothing. Who's responsible for the situation we face today? It's the Albanese government.

We saw, in the West Australian, a couple of days ago, the reality of the release of these people into the community. There's talk of conditions and so on, but what did the West Australian find? They are coming and going as they please on the streets of Perth with no supervision. They have the capacity to go out there and do, frankly, whatever they want to do. These ministers come into parliament and say that there are conditions and say that they're taking steps, but the West Australian found absolutely the opposite. We also know, from the reporting by the ABC that numerous people were released into the community without visas at all. Poor old Minister Giles, the minister for immigration—we need to extend the definition of the word 'hapless' for that individual, because what we have seen in this chamber in the last few days has just been shocking, and I think it will be remembered for years and years to come. He has refused to provide clarity to this parliament, despite saying that he would, about the precise nature of the individuals that have been released into the community.

We see them come in today with the Migration Amendment (Bridging Visa Conditions) Bill 2023. A few days ago they were saying, 'Look, there's nothing else that we can do,' despite having had six months to think about it. A couple of days later, they're saying, 'Well, there is something we can do, so we're to going bring something in.' But the bill they bring into parliament is weak and ineffectual and goes nowhere near far enough.

Australians need to know this government had five months, at least, to prepare for this. This government didn't do that. They can't get around that; it's on the public record. The High Court of course will make decisions, as courts do, but governments are here to lead. Governments are here to protect the safety of the Australian community. They've shamefully failed to do that, and they must be condemned.

Zoe Daniel (Goldstein, Independent) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I'm not in the habit of supporting this kind of legislation which seeks to control refugees. Humanity must be at the centre of all policy. However, let's be quite clear about why we're here today discussing the Migration Amendment (Bridging Visa Conditions) Bill 2023. It was the High Court—not the government nor the parliament—that was responsible for the release of these people. Many of them have been convicted of very serious crimes including rape, murder and paedophilia. It was the High Court—not the parliament nor the government—that failed to provide reasons for its decision. I am extremely disappointed, I will say, that many in my old trade, journalism, have reported what happened a week ago and what's happened since as if it was the government's decision, but we are where we are.

The High Court has made it clear in this decision that punishment is a matter for the courts, not any minister. Therefore, the opposition's suggestion that these individuals should be redetained is at best misinformed and at worst an attempt to manipulate public opinion on something it knows can't happen. The task before us now is to ensure community safety right now, within the boundaries of human rights, given that these people have been released. It's a time for this parliament to act in the interests of community, not to seek to divide once again and to weaponise issues around refugee policy.

The High Court is not likely to deliver its reasons for this decision until early next year, and I'm assured by the two ministers involved that that means there will be further amendments to this legislation. This is an accountability piece for the crossbench, and there will be close eyes on that from this part of the chamber. We need to be able to see whether the legislation is fairly achieving what the government says it will do.

I will say that I believe that the government is working with state jurisdictions to get as many of these people as possible into rehabilitation programs. There is an innate danger that people who've been held in immigration detention, rather than correctional institutions, have not been offered rehabilitation support. The psychological condition that that's created likely means that they will be more difficult to rehabilitate. Wellbeing and rehabilitation of these people must be a consideration.

I continue to have concerns that some of the people in this cohort should not be in it, and this is something that should be carefully considered when it comes to proportional responses to the people in this group. That said, the government submitted to the High Court that the vast majority of this group are serious offenders. The vast majority are offenders in areas of national security, cybercrime, gang activity, sexual and violent offences, crimes against children, domestic violence, and it goes on. So here we are yet again this week with another moral quandary.

I hear the concerns of refugee advocates who worry about overreach. This is an extremely fine balance. On balance, I will support the bill in the knowledge that there will be further changes to it when the High Court publishes its reasons in the new year. I want to say very clearly here that indefinite detention is fundamentally wrong. This was always going to happen. This government and the previous government should have been prepared for this. Now the High Court has forced the issue. We must now work to protect our communities, while adhering to basic human rights for people who are refugees. This legislation must be neither misused by the government nor weaponised by an opposition that plays politics with people's lives.

Andrew Hastie (Canning, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Defence) Share this | Link to 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.

Keith Wolahan (Menzies, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Thank you to my colleagues who have spoken on the Migration Amendment (Bridging Visa Conditions) Bill 2023 before me. There are many times in this place where we get told to jump with short notice. Often we do that because there are various bills that have been brought on because there's a gap. But we shouldn't be doing that for such urgent business when we could be fixing this. This bill is flawed, and the government, when it had a chance to fix it, has said no. They don't even want to have that debate. We're going to have to have that debate in the Senate, but we could have had it here. But, more than that, this is a new government. It's still on its training wheels when the Australian people expect better. But on this side there are serious, experienced former ministers who offered the hand of friendship to fix this and were turned down. The shadow minister wrote a letter on Monday, and it was only responded to today.

We believe in the separation of powers—we support it and we defend it—and the High Court has created a bind for this government. It has made a decision without reasons. When you don't have the reasons, it makes it hard to draft legislation—of course it does. We don't know when exactly those reasons will be released. It was indicated that it could be in February next year. The High Court hasn't always done that. It's a discretion of the court. In the Pell case, it didn't. In Love and Thoms, it didn't. But it has here, and it has here in a really significant matter, and it has significant safety consequences for the community. I don't say that as a criticism of the High Court—no-one should come up here and do that; that's not what we're doing. But the onus now is on the government for how they react. How you react is that you, as the executive members of government, come up with a way to keep people safe.

The bill as proposed—I've only just got it for the first time here—hasn't had a chance to be considered properly. The amendments that we have and would like to debate with you haven't been properly considered. I note here that the Australian public might think that we know there are serious criminals who are about to be released and the government is proposing a regime that will keep you safe. The proposals here are about breaches of visa conditions and include things like ankle bracelets and consequences for not doing what the terms and conditions of a visa say. Sentencing practices have changed in the last few decades. You might think that a breach of one of those conditions is going to lead to a serious criminal being put in jail, but that's not how sentencing practices work in Australian courts at the moment. Breaching a condition like that isn't an automatic visit to your local prison. It doesn't take you off the streets. It doesn't protect people.

There are many other things that could have been considered if the government had reached out and responded earlier. We live in a Commonwealth and, as a Federation, there are other state based mechanisms that could help. For example, a lot of the states have apprehended violence order provisions. They have domestic violence provisions. There are, I assume—I don't know the details of the individuals—people who are personally fearing for their safety. I hope that the minister, who does know the details, will be liaising or having the department liaising with state based authorities to make sure that those people are kept safe and that the released individuals go nowhere near exclusion zones, schools or people who have been put at risk. Those are some of the things we need to make sure are included in a bill like this. It should not just be at your discretion, Minister; it should be mandatory. You should be making sure that those people are kept safe.

Furthermore, you should be regularly updating the parliament as to the status of those released individuals. We saw in question time, when questions were put to you, that you were drip-feeding the number of people that were being released. You were drip-feeding what particular people were being put into the community. We had to rely on the press, who are the fourth estate of government, to tell us the actual details and circumstances of where people are in this country.

My good friend the member from Canning is from WA, and a lot of the WA members of this place were quite surprised to see that their state had a disproportionate number of those people in their community. So they are quite rightly concerned about the families that live in Western Australia. We would like to know where else in Australia these have people gone. Who else is at risk? Members before me have quite rightly said that our No. 1 priority is to keep our community safe, and this government and this minister have failed in that duty.

Keith Pitt (Hinkler, National Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

What we see here is an indication of the inability of this Labor government to actually defend the Australian people and their interests. Our job in this place is to act in the interests of the Australian people, not others. It's their safety and protection. To give you an indication of what the Australian people are thinking, this was correspondence I received in my office yesterday from an individual. I'll give you the summary version. They said: 'I was at one of my craft groups this morning. We don't usually talk politics, but I can tell you everyone was disgusted about murderers and rapists not only being released from prison but being given all of this aid at a time where we have people who are living in their cars.'

The response so far from the Albanese government has been completely inadequate. Let's look at the timing of the response. This was a decision that was taken last week. With the resources of the government—the Australian Government Solicitor, the Public Service and all the available extra support that can be provided given the government has access to the Treasury and the budget—in the time between last Wednesday and 10 o'clock Monday morning, this legislation could easily have been drafted and been drafted in consultation with the opposition and its shadow ministry. There were no restrictions on that. There was no inability for the government to come forward with a proposition and have that discussion. And, of course, we stood ready to work with the government on what is a matter of public interest—protecting the safety of the Australian people, every single individual. Instead, we have a situation where not only have 80-plus criminals been released into the community; we hear this morning there could be another 300-plus. This is an outrageous proposition.

The High Court has made a decision. The Minister for Immigration, Citizenship and Multicultural Affairs was in the chamber yesterday effectively saying in the matters of public importance debate: 'There's nothing we can do here.' And yet, overnight, legislation—the Migration Amendment (Bridging Visa Conditions) Bill 2023—has been rushed into the parliament which could have been developed much earlier. It could have been introduced on Monday. It's been rushed in. It was provided to the opposition at quarter past seven this morning and now we found out that we can't even put forward amendments which we believe would actually make it a better proposition, would strengthen the proposition and would help defend the Australian people, who are at risk. They are at risk from these individuals—there's no doubt about that whatsoever.

The government extended the sittings on their closing the loopholes bill, which is a list of union demands. That was the priority during the week. There were extended sittings of the House of Representatives to deal with those demands, but not to deal with this. This issue is front of mind for the Australian people. They are struggling with the cost of living and are bogged down in their own issues, but they know that this matters.

This parliament deals with difficult issues. That is why we were elected. We were sent to this place to represent the interests of our communities and the Australian people. The Labor government rolled this through this morning with such little notice—it was 7.15 am—for our people to get across this bill without the ability to consult with others. It is just outrageous. How is it possible, firstly, that it has taken this long and, secondly, that it is being done in such a short time that we have little time to consult with individuals who could put forward changes? We now find that that is blocked and we can't even do that. So the Labor government, firstly, failed to act; secondly, said yesterday that there was nothing that could be done here; thirdly, rolled up today with this proposition; and, fourthly, said the opposition can't put forward amendments, changes and better propositions. This bill will go to the Senate, where it will be debated and, as the Leader of the Opposition said this morning, we will attempt once again to put forward what we think are improvements.

Instead, we have an inadequate proposal to keep the Australian people safe. We have limited time in which to put forward amendments that we think will strengthen the proposal and the proposition in the interests of the Australian people. What will happen this afternoon or tonight? Who knows? Perhaps we'll find that it is important and we'll be back tomorrow to look at this again in the House of Representatives. What we do know is that this Labor government has its priorities wrong on this matter. The Australian people deserve to be protected. We are here to act in their interests. We are here to defend them. The decision to release these individuals has to be addressed and it has to be addressed now.

Luke Howarth (Petrie, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Defence Industry) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The Labor government has failed to make sure that a migration amendment was introduced six months ago when they had an opportunity. These serious offenders—murderers, rapists and child sex offenders—have been let into the community. It is totally unacceptable. The member for Goldstein said before that indefinite detention is wrong. The community would want to see people like that in indefinite detention. They do not deserve to be let out.

This government could have made tougher legislation back in June. We're now in November. Nothing was done. No amendments are able to be put forward by the coalition. What are they afraid of with tougher amendments? What is it? The community expects the coalition, a decent opposition, to put forward amendments, but the Albanese Labor government are not allowing that to be done, to the shame of the Albanese Labor government. The Australian community need to know that. They do need to know that this parliament isn't being treated with the respect it deserves. This is totally being rushed at the last minute. This could have been introduced on Monday. We're now on Thursday. Nothing had been done.

Steve Georganas (Adelaide, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The time provided for this debate has expired. The question is that this bill be now read a second time.

A division having been called and the bells having been rung—

Milton Dick (Speaker) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

As there are fewer than five members on the side for the noes in this division, I declare the question resolved in the affirmative in accordance with standing order 127. The names of those members who are in the minority will be recorded in the Votes and Proceedings.

Question agreed to.

Bill read a second time.