James Paterson (Victoria, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Cyber Security) Share this | Hansard source

I want to echo the sentiments expressed by my colleague Senator Cash earlier in thanking the government for agreeing to the six principles that we set out to strengthen this bill to make sure that the most robust protections are in place for the community from the people who have been released. I will have a question in a moment, but, before I do that, I want to flag a couple of things. I'm pleased that the government has agreed to assist the opposition with the drafting of these and with bringing them forward as amendments. I'm grateful that the government is going to move five of those six amendments. The opposition will be moving the sixth of those amendments, which is the one that relates to mandatory detention, but the government has also provided assistance to the opposition in drafting it. That is very helpful. I think this is an example of the way in which the major parties can come together in the national interest when it is necessary to do so to protect our national security and community safety. And we will ensure that this bill passes not just the Senate but also the House and that nobody leaves until this matter is dealt with and those protections can be put in place for the community, because that is what Australians would expect of us. Australians would not accept the idea that people who have committed very serious violent crimes, including sexual crimes and crimes against children, should be out in the community without any meaningful restrictions on them. This bill will, at the very least, impose some meaningful restrictions on them, and I'm grateful to that.

I want to move to my question, now, and I don't mean to totally spoil the bipartisan sentiment of my previous remarks, but, Minister, I do have a question for you. After we met with the government this morning, we put on the record our concerns that the bill was not strong enough and told the government that we intended to move amendments to strengthen the bill. The Minister for Home Affairs went into the chamber and said:

We are putting forward what are extremely tough conditions, and the legal advice that we have been given is that we are going as far as we can in order to manage the issues that are before us.

Since the minister made that comment, the government has agreed to the opposition's suggestions in six areas to further strengthen this bill. So was it true when the minister said in the House that the government had gone as far as you could go, or was this bill able to have been strengthened and improved by the suggestions that the opposition has now put forward?