Slade Brockman (WA, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

I too rise to speak on the Migration Amendment (Bridging Visa Conditions) Bill 2023. I want to compliment my colleague Senator Bragg for his very fine summation of the issues involved. In particular, he went to an area that I think needs exploration and consideration in this place, which is the potential massive loophole, as Senator Bragg described it. It is a huge moral hazard that the legislature—this place and the other place—now faces following the High Court's decision. There is now an active incentive in the system for people to appear to engineer a stateless situation to achieve an outcome. If you followed the Greens' prescription—and, quite frankly, seemingly the Labor Party's prescription until 24 hours ago—you would have effectively had almost no control as a country on those people entering society.

Whilst those opposite may disagree with that, I'm going to go to an article published in the West Australian. A journalist, Caleb Runciman, spent a night at a Thornlie motel. He went to the motel after the decision to release inmates from Yongah Hill—inmates that were supposedly, according to the Labor government, going to be closely monitored. He decided to check into that motel and see what would happen. Far from it being closely monitored, he found absolutely no monitoring at all. There were around 30 detainees staying at the motel. Twelve, after a night's sleep at the motel, were taken to the airport, where they jumped on planes to the eastern states. How much knowledge, control and scrutiny of those movements was there? We don't know.

On the night they were released, four actually sourced a car before hitching a ride away from the motel in the middle of the night. Is that being 'closely monitored'—sourcing a car and hitching a ride away from the motel in the middle of the night? According to this journalist, again, the gates to the motel were constantly unlocked during the night and, in his words, the property became 'a hive of visitor activity late into the night'. This is extraordinary. This is extraordinary in this country.

Remember—for those listening—the government had had a six-month warning that this judgement from the High Court was a possibility. Later in the article—it's a long article, and I urge all those listening to go and read it—the journalist says that when he arrived at the hotel there were no staff or security present, none. There were just the detainees and perhaps some other guests.