Josh Burns (Macnamara, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

On behalf of the Parliamentary Joint Committee on Human Rights, I present the following reports: Human rights scrutiny report: report 3 of 2024, incorporating dissenting reports, and Human rights scrutiny report: report 4 of 2024, incorporating a dissenting report.

Reports made parliamentary papers in accordance with standing order 39(e).

by leave—I'm pleased to table the Parliamentary Joint Committee on Human Rights' third and fourth scrutiny reports of 2024. In these two reports, the committee has considered 24 new bills and 308 new legislative instruments and has substantively commented on four new bills and eight new instruments. For example, the committee has considered the Migration Amendment (Removal and Other Measures) Bill 2024 and raised a number of human rights concerns and suggested a number of amendments to the bill that will assist with human rights compatibility.

In addition, the committee has considered a number of migration instruments that also raise human rights concerns. For example, in relation to the Migration (Code of Behaviour for Public Interest Criterion 4022) Instrument, the committee is seeking further information about the human rights compatibility of requiring certain visa holders to sign an enforceable code of behaviour where breach of the code could lead to immigration detention or reduction in social security benefits.

The committee has also commented on the Counter-Terrorism Legislation Amendment (Declared Areas) Bill 2024, which seeks to extend the operation of declared area offence provisions for a further three years. These offences criminalise entering or remaining in an area declared by the Minister for Foreign Affairs, unless the person can raise evidence to demonstrate it is for a legitimate purpose. The committee considers it has not been demonstrated that extending these offences for a further three years is compatible with multiple human rights.

Finally, the committee has considered the National Disability Insurance Scheme Amendment (Getting the NDIS Back on Track No. 1) Bill 2024, which seeks to make various amendments to the NDIS Act. The committee considers that the National Disability Insurance Scheme promotes multiple human rights, and seeking to improve the scheme is an important objective, particularly having regard to the recommendations of the recent NDIS review. However, the committee is seeking further information with respect to various measures in the bill to better understand how they will work in practice and to what extent they may limit rights.

I encourage all members to consider the reports closely. I thank the secretariat. They have been doing an enormous amount of work with both of these reports, over the period in which we haven't been in parliament, while also working diligently to collate all of the different inputs ready for our inquiry report into the human rights framework. There have also been a number of other bits of work that the committee has been doing. To the secretary, to the deputy chair and to my committee members—I thank them all for their contribution and I commend the committee's scrutiny reports 3 and 4 of 2024 to the House.