Kim Carr (Victoria, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister Assisting the Leader for Science) Share this | Hansard source

Minister, the difficulty here is that there is a profound lack of trust and therefore we will be moving an amendment to give effect to the commitment that you have made in the chamber. Could I indicate to the chamber that, with regard to the provisions that the minister has outlined, the opposition will reluctantly support the government amendments on sheet HA108; however, we recognise that the amendments are incredibly weak but better than nothing. They will be improved when we are able to move an additional amendment specifying the precise numbers and, if the minister wishes to provide assistance, we would be delighted, to make sure we get exactly the right numbers that are consistent with what she has given a commitment to tonight.

We have to acknowledge though that this is a humiliating admission by the immigration minister. It is of great concern that he cannot be trusted to honour any commitment to the crossbenchers on the issue of visa protection and has had to provide these public assurances. I am sure we will all feel a lot better if they are written into the act itself. I suppose we should not be surprised about that, given the long litany of broken promises that this government is able to display. The immigration minister has repeatedly demonstrated that he is willing to exercise his powers—I say he is willing to exercise his powers in a quite capricious manner—and he regularly needs to be called to account by the courts. While these amendments will not provide us with enormous satisfaction, they at least will do something to ensure that the minister is held to his commitments.

We cannot support the government amendments on sheet GH118, in essence, because the fast-track arrangements that the government has proposed do not provide sufficient security for proper administrative practice.

We will be opposing the amendments on sheet HA110 simply because the Labor Party is concerned that the SHEV proposal fails to provide adequate security of a pathway to permanency, and, while people are judged to be genuine refugees, we think they are entitled to that. There is a very clear policy that this opposition Labor Party opposes temporary protection visas because they leave people in an unfair state of limbo. They are unable to put down roots and establish themselves in this country and they are unable to become fully functioning contributors to Australian society while they are left in that period of limbo. Our policy is that asylum seekers ought to have a pathway to permanency. The view of the opposition is that the government's proposals fail to meet that test, so we will be opposing those amendments.