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

There was obviously a whole lot of rhetoric in there from the Greens party and only one question. I won't deal with all the rhetoric from the Greens party, but I certainly and utterly reject the suggestion that what we're doing here is empowering a minister to imprison someone, which Senator McKim either expressly alleged or certainly implied. That is utterly wrong. But what would you expect from the Greens party? They've never seen an opportunity to exaggerate a situation that they haven't taken.

The question that was buried deep within the Greens party rhetoric, as I recall, went to the point about the minister's ability to set curfew times, effectively. The question was whether the minister had the power to impose a curfew of 24 hours on one of the people concerned, and the answer to that question is no. I refer Senator McKim to the bill itself—not to the amendments—which deals with the curfew power. Item No. 8620 on page 16 of the bill deals with the curfew power. Essentially, it says that the times that the minister can impose must not be more than eight hours apart. That answers Senator McKim's question.

While I'm on my feet, I might take the opportunity to say that the reason the government is acting on the situation is that, as a result of a High Court decision which overturned 20 years of precedent, we now have a situation where a number of people have been released from detention, including convicted rapists. According to newspaper coverage that I've seen, there are some other very unsavoury characters. While, in the short time that we've had since the High Court decision, the government has taken as much action as was possible to place restrictions around the activities of those people, it is our view that more needs to be done to keep the Australian people safe than to simply take those steps that we have.

If Senator McKim and the Greens party want to tell the Australian public that it's completely fine not to take further steps to limit the movements and activities of the types of people we're talking about, then I'll let him go have that debate with the Australian community. But the government, the Labor Party, have a different view. We've said that we want to get this legislation passed as quickly as we possibly can. Given the Greens party made it clear from the outset that it has no interest in working with the government to protect the Australian people in the way that we think should happen, the obvious option is for us to seek agreement with the opposition. That's why a lot of work has been undertaken over the course of today, in particular, to come up with legislation that can be passed by both chambers of this parliament so that we can take additional steps that are necessary and that the Australian community expects us to take as a government to keep them safe. That's why we hope to have this legislation passed tonight.