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

You would want to characterise it however you would want to to support your extensive social media campaigns. The reality is that the government acted as quickly as possible when we last sat to pass laws so that we could put strict new conditions on the individuals concerned, including ankle bracelets.

Now, as was well traversed in the last sittings, the government was faced with a situation where we had a High Court decision which overturned 20 years of precedent. The reasons for that decision were not provided and have not yet been provided. So the options we had were to do what the Greens party would have done, which is do nothing, or to legislate as best we could in the absence of those decisions. We took the latter option because we take community safety seriously. We weren't prepared to sit back and do nothing, as the Greens party would have had us do, when we were faced with a situation where, now, a relatively large number of individuals, with, in some cases, serious criminal convictions, were released into the community as a result of a High Court decision.

We always said that the laws that we passed when we last sat were going to need refinement and amendment. And I dare say when we receive the High Court reasons, whenever that may be, there may need to be further amendments to ensure both the constitutionality of those laws and their full effectiveness. Senator McKim, if you want to go out to the Australian public and tell them that we don't need to worry about what is now 141 people in the community then be my guest. But we're not going to take that position, because the Albanese government does take community safety seriously, and we will do our best to make sure that the legislation we pass is effective.