Simon Birmingham (SA, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Foreign Affairs) Share this | Hansard source

My question is to the Minister representing the Prime Minster, Senator Wong. Minister, both Senator Paterson in this place and the Leader of the Opposition quickly called for a preventive detention regime to be put in place to protect the Australian community since your government decided to release detainees including paedophiles, rapists, murderers and a contract killer into the Australian community following the NZYQ case. Again, you had five months of warnings that this case might not go your way, but when the orders were handed down the only thing the Albanese government was ready to do was to release detainees into the Australian community.

It's now almost a month since the decision was handed down, and only this week is your government finally ready to introduce into the parliament the preventive detention regime called for by Mr Dutton. Why weren't you prepared earlier to take the most basic steps to protect the Australian community?