Jacqui Lambie (Tasmania, Jacqui Lambie Network) Share this | Hansard source

I rise to speak on Senator Paterson's matter of urgency. This government is dropping the ball on national security, and the government's most important job is to keep us Australians safe, but, because the High Court deemed indefinite detention to be illegal, we now have criminals out in the Australian community. Worse, we have been hearing reports today that the government doesn't know where all of them are.

Now, to be clear, I'm not talking about innocent asylum seekers; I'm talking about detainees who are convicted criminals. In 2019, I agreed to vote with the Morrison government to repeal the medevac bill. At the time, I was accused by refugee advocates and the media of doing a dirty deal. But I didn't get anything for Tasmania for my vote. The deal was simply this: that the Morrison government would get all of the remaining asylum seekers off Manus and Nauru in two years.

At the time, I was told that there were about 80 people who couldn't be returned to their own countries because they were deemed a safety risk. At estimates, I asked the department what had happened to those 80 people deemed a safety risk. I was told they didn't know, but I had heard from a very good source that these people had been quietly taken from Nauru to Australia in the last six months.

So, when the news broke two weeks ago that the High Court had ruled that indefinite detention was illegal, my first thought was: 'What about the last detainees that no other country would take?' In the last sitting, I asked the minister if the government knew where these people were, and again I didn't get an answer.

The government claimed to be shocked by the High Court's decision to overturn indefinite detention, but legal observers have since told the media that they did expect the High Court to rule the way they did. The minister's next move was to throw her department under the bus, telling the media that it was public servants who told her that the Commonwealth would be successful.

On 13 November, immigration minister Giles insisted that the government had oversight of the detainees because they were on strict visas. Then the ABC revealed that some of the detainees had been released without a visa. And now there is one on the run, and we have no idea where they are—let alone the other 80. I'm still waiting for an answer from the government as to where those 80 most-at-risk people are that were left on Nauru, that you've flown in, under the cover of darkness, at night, in the last six months. Where are they? (Time expired)