Kate Lundy (ACT, Australian Labor Party, Minister Assisting for Industry and Innovation) Share this | Hansard source

In response to the last question that Senator Milne put, I have already made extensive reference to the means by which the minister would exempt a vulnerable unaccompanied minor. With respect to the time frame, the principle of no advantage applies, so it would be any time frame, and we are not able to answer that with any specificity other than to say a time frame commensurate with the time frames that would be experienced in the region.

I would like to go back to your previous point, again choosing to interpret the answers I have provided in a way that I think carries a very strong political message. It is completely untenable that a minister would attempt to bring before the parliament an incomplete or inadequate set of documents to withstand political scrutiny. I think it is absolutely the intention and the motivation that countries that we sought to designate for offshore processing would indeed fit the bill and stand the scrutiny of this parliament; otherwise it would be within the opportunity of the parliament, as we know, to move that they be not permitted to become a designated offshore processing country.

I am trying to respond systematically to each of the points Senator Milne and Senator Hanson-Young have made, and I would like to return to the issue of natural justice and the challenge by the senators as to what the circumstances are that allow it not to apply. The effective operation of the offshore processing scheme necessarily requires the ability to designate a country as an offshore processing country without it all being tied up in litigation about that process. It also requires the ability to quickly give directions that will enable transfer arrangements to be made where there are multiple offshore processing countries. The provision does not say that the minister will not accord natural justice, only that this cannot be a point of challenge for the designation. Natural justice would involve seeking and taking into consideration the comments of potentially affected individuals before any country was designated to be an offshore processing country under the new section 198AB and before the minister directed an officer to take a person to a specified country when there is more than one country designated to be an offshore processing country.

So I reiterate that if natural justice were not excluded as a ground of review it would in effect mean that the minister could not designate an offshore processing country or direct an officer to take a person to a specified country without seeking and taking into consideration comments in relation to every individual offshore entry person. This would inhibit the policy objective to arrange for persons to be taken quickly for processing offshore in order to break the people smugglers' guarantee that asylum seekers would have their refugee claims processed in Australia. I understand that the senators making their points have a very strong political point of view and they do not agree with this approach, but I am conveying the facts and interpretation, of course, of the scheme that we are putting forward, the motivation being smashing the people smugglers' business and thereby protecting the lives of people overseas.