George Brandis (Queensland, Liberal Party, Attorney-General) Share this | Hansard source

I know the hour is late but I am afraid, Senator McKim, that your flights of rhetorical fancy are outpacing your judgement and reason. You have said that this legislation and this provision make Australians more at risk because, on your example, a person who has been convicted of a terrorist crime and serves 10 years or more in prison and has then been released will be deported overseas and then that person, you say, is somebody who could pick up a gun or throw a bomb in that foreign country. I would much prefer that they not pick up a gun or throw a bomb in Australia. I would much prefer that such a person who, on your hypothesis, has a continuing propensity to engage in further acts of terrorist crime to—to use your words—'pick up a gun or throw a bomb' does not do so in Australia. I would much prefer that they do not do so in Australia.

The fact is that this is not a case of double jeopardy. It is a case where the consequences of having been convicted of a terrorist crime will include now, and will include in relation to all convictions within the last 10 years for terrorist crimes, the capacity to remove that person's citizenship—a person who has been tried and convicted. Senator McKim, you asked a series of questions about the renunciation by conduct provisions of the bill last night and this evening, and your very point was: this is not a judicial process. But the provision you are now criticising is a judicial process. It depends on the precondition that there should have been a criminal prosecution and a conviction and that the person should have been imprisoned by a court for at least 10 years by reason of that terrorist crime.

So there has been no want of judicial process in this case. Nor is there retrospectivity in the classic sense of creating a liability which did not exist at the time the conduct was engaged in, ex hypothesi the conduct that was engaged in was a serious crime at the time it was engaged in. But the legislation does say in relation to somebody who does that, when they get out of jail if they have been sentenced to a period of imprisonment of at least 1 years, they can have their Australian citizenship rescinded by the minister and may then be deported—into the hands, by the way, of a foreign government; into the hands of the government of their other nationality.

That is the way this legislation operates, Senator McKim. It will keep Australians safe. Senator McKim, if you were to apply the famous pub test to this and you asked your average Australian whether they would feel safer or less safe if people who have been convicted and sentenced for more than 10 years imprisonment for committing a terrorist crime were to be booted out of Australia and whether Australians would approve of it, I dare say they would say yes.