Joe Ludwig (Queensland, Australian Labor Party, Minister for Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry) Share this | Hansard source

If I can just inject some facts into this debate, I know that Senator Cash has made a range of unsubstantiated statements and claims about the regulation. I did listen intently to it. I was wondering at one point whether we were talking about the same regulation. I came to the conclusion that we were not. Be that as it may, can I say that much of the hyperbole that Senator Cash went to about what the regulation will or will not do is erroneous; I leave it at that. I can try to explain what the regulation does do and let people who listen to this make up their own minds about it.

What the regulation does is to reduce an unnecessary logistical and administrative burden on the Department of Immigration and Citizenship by allowing the department to manage irregular maritime arrivals in line with normal status resolution procedures—nothing more and nothing less. Previously the Minister for Immigration and Citizenship would use his personal non-compellable power under section 195A of the Migration Act to grant a bridging visa to an IMA for a specified time to release them from immigration detention while their claims for protection were being considered. However, as this power is available only if a person is in immigration detention as an unlawful noncitizen, when a person's bridging visa ceases—if you follow me to that point—what happens is that they have to be detained. They have to be gone after, got and put back in detention before they can be granted a new bridging visa. So the minister, under 195A, releases them for a specified time whilst their claims for protection are being considered—so they have already gone through their health, identity and security checks—and they are simply at one point of many on a positive pathway. But in this instance, when the time is finalised, they have to be detained and the minister, in this instance, has to reissue a new bridging visa.

These regulations enable the department to grant subsequent bridging visas to people for whom the minister has already personally granted a bridging visa prior to the expiry of their original visa, meaning that they do not have to be unnecessarily redetained and reducing the burden on both the department and the individual. This also enables the department to more effectively manage people within normal status resolution procedures, allowing appropriate conditions to be applied to bridging visas to encourage voluntary removal from Australia where a person has been found not to be a refugee.

Following on from the regulation itself, if it is disallowed then you will not have all of the issues that Senator Cash raised occurring, because they are fanciful. What you will have is that hundreds of people currently on bridging visas will need to be redetained in order to have their bridging visas renewed, at a significant inconvenience for the client. And for what purpose? Many of these people are already on a positive pathway, and there is an administrative burden in redetaining them when they have already had a health check and a security check, their application is currently being assessed and the minister has made the initial decision to put them on a bridging visa for a specified time. So all of that has already been undertaken. In many cases, redetaining can take several hours and require people who have found employment to take the day off work, and any children to take the day off school, simply to have their visa renewed. You wonder why Senator Cash would want to intervene in such a forceful manner, stop people from continuing their employment and continuing to manage their family and their children, and make them go through this hoop again—other than that perhaps she might enjoy having them go through an administrative hoop twice. I do not think that is true.

On that basis I think that what has happened here—and it sometimes does happen—is that you read a conspiracy theory into a regulation and after a while it becomes truer the more times you read it. Can I again simply dispel that. Many of the allegations made (1) are completely unfathomable to me, (2) are wrong and (3) are, I think, not straw man reasoning either. I do not think that Senator Cash was actually trying to build a case that was wrong and then cut it down.

I think that where she has gone in this was just a mistake.

This regulation relates to the pre 13 August group. It is a change in the administrative arrangements only, and that is all. Let me say that again so that no-one misses this point: this regulation relates to the pre 13 August group. It is a change in the administrative arrangements only, nothing else. It is a very short, very sharp statement. It is a way of ensuring for these groups of people that the administrative burden, which I went through very carefully, is reduced. It actually means that the department, the person who is subject to the bridging visa and the general public will not be inconvenienced by this. It is a very easy regulation to read and understand. Surprisingly, all of what I have just said is said in the explanation issued by the Minister for Immigration and Citizenship, Mr Bowen.

I am at a loss, quite frankly, to understand where Senator Cash read all her lines from. I think I have addressed much of what she asked me to address in the short, simple statements that I have had an opportunity to add today to this debate, because without the regulations people must be redetained every time their bridging visa expires. They must be physically redetained for the minister to renew their bridging. Why would you put people through this if you could, through regulation, change it? Fundamentally nothing else changes. Just so that we do not miss the point, 195A, the substantive provision under the act, does not change. There is no change to that. The form does not change; the criteria do not change; the grounds do not change; the process does not change, save for this one piece: the minister after initially issuing the first bridging visa can delegate to the department to do the remainder while the person is in the process. That is quite a simple thing. It is quite an easy thing to grasp. I fail to understand why the opposition have not grasped that, but I do not hold out much hope that they will or even that with my explanation they will acknowledge what 195A and these regulations say.

Finally, there is no appeal. There are no changes to the appeal mechanism, so all of the things that I listened very carefully to Senator Cash saying are wrong. Nonetheless, I am sure she believes them. With those short words, I commend that we should not have this regulation disallowed. It is a sensible change. I would ask those in the chamber who perhaps are a little more rational on this issue to agree that—