Rex Patrick (SA, Centre Alliance) Share this | Hansard source

No, I'm just foreshadowing a second reading amendment. The government has demanded that the Senate pass this legislation this week. The opposition has spoken out loudly about the flaws of the bill, the government's refusal to adopt all of the PJCIS's recommendations and the importance of bipartisanship in national security policy. The government has refused to engage and has said, 'Take it or leave it.' As I've said, no-one should be rushing to pass this legislation, especially when the bill deals with national security and the fundamental rights of Australian citizens. The PJCIS should do its job and review the legislation again, and the Senate should do its job properly as well.

Labor should do its job and not just talk and pontificate but oppose measures that they have said are flawed, likely unconstitutional and, consequently, unlikely to properly support national security. I seem to recall, when we were talking about the media raids, Mr Albanese saying to the media that no longer would the Labor Party just tick and flick legislation. They know there are problems with this bill, yet they're going to tick and flick it. They know there are problems; I listened to Senator Keneally's speech. We'll be supporting their amendments because they seek to rectify the bill. And, if those amendments are successful, we will support the bill.

I get what we're trying to do here. We're trying to stop those bad eggs getting to Australia and causing security issues. What Centre Alliance is concerned about is the innocent person who might just happened to have been in Jordan doing some work with a mission and happened to be photographed in a bar—probably not a bar, there, but in a place or at an event—where there might be people who are bad eggs. That photograph is then presented to the minister. That person may be completely innocent but the way it works at the moment is that the minister can make a determination and that determination gets reviewed, but not on the merits. There's no challenge to whether or not the photograph is correct. The review authority simply says, 'Did the minister make his decision informed by an ASIO brief?' That means that that very innocent citizen is now in a position where, in order to challenge the TEO, in order to challenge the re-entry permit conditions, they have to take the matter to the Federal Court or the High Court, at great expense.

In every other scenario where we have the executive making a decision, we give them an avenue like the AAT so they can present their position. There's not even a chance for the person subject to the TEO to put up a case and say, 'That photograph was taken, but I don't even know these people.' That's the problem that Centre Alliance has. It's not about the way in which you're trying to stop bad eggs getting to Australia and making sure we control them if they're Australian citizens; it's about protecting the innocent people. As such, we won't be supporting the bill. We will be abstaining unless the amendments Labor have moved are passed.