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

Rather than a question, this is a political attack that the opposition has been engaging in over the last few days. They seem to not appreciate the central point of the High Court judgement, which is that the decision as to the detention of one of these individuals is a matter that must be made by a court rather than by a minister, so it would be completely irresponsible to ignore the High Court ruling for me or any other minister to give the number of people who are expected to be covered by this regime, because we would then be getting back to exactly situation that existed under Mr Dutton as the minister, which was found to be unconstitutional and unlawful by the High Court.

The whole point of the decision of the High Court was that decisions as to the detention of these individuals must be made by a court rather than a minister. On a number of occasions over the last few days, in their desperate desire to score political points, the opposition have either wilfully ignored the High Court judgement or failed to understand it, and that is exactly the problem that got us where we are. The problem that we've had is either the former government's wilful ignorance of the law or their contempt for it and desire to override it.

As to the number of people who are expected to be captured by this new regime, I'm not in a position to give that number, because that would be flying completely in the face of the High Court reasoning. What I can say is that the Department of Home Affairs will engage with law enforcement authorities in relation to each NZYQ decision-affected noncitizen who has committed serious violent or sexual offences to determine the risks they pose to the Australian community and consider making applications to the court for orders based on the available evidence. I'm sure Senator Cash is aware of the eligibility requirements for someone to be issued with one of these orders. I wouldn't expect that it would be every single individual in the cohort, but these sorts of orders could be made in relation to people who have, for example, committed serious, violent or sexual offences, and there are other eligibility criteria that need to be fulfilled before one of these orders can be sought by the minister or granted by a court.

As I've said before, this regime that we are putting forward is modelled very closely on the high-risk terrorist offender regime that the former coalition brought in. Just as that regime did not allow for the preventive detention of every single convicted terrorist offender or other category of offender—it applied to particular types of people rather than an entire cohort—I would expect similarly that a regime that here is based on and modelled on the coalition's regime for high-risk terrorist offenders would apply to some but not all of the people who have been released into the community as a result of the High Court decision.