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

Thanks, Senator Hanson. We're just trying to get an answer to your specific question, but I have to disagree with your assessment of the situation. What I think you've just argued is that, because of an earlier judgement—I'm not sure which judgement or which year it was in—a judge apparently, according to you, cast some doubt on whether it was legal to indefinitely detain these people, and you're saying that because of those previous comments this government should have known that it wouldn't win this case. I can't really see how that puts Mr Dutton in a better position, because he and his government were in power for 10 years and followed the same practice that we followed for, as you put it, about a year before this case started. So, if you're saying that this government made the wrong call to comply with the earlier ruling of the High Court in the Al-Kateb decision—I think that's what it's called—back in 2004, then I would expect that you would be equally critical of Mr Dutton for having done exactly the same thing.

Be that as it may, we make no apologies for having opposed this case in the High Court. It was brought, as I say, this year. We argued that the individual involved should remain in detention. That had been the understanding of the Australian law for at least 20 years, through both Mr Dutton's period in office and our 12 months or so before the case started, and we continued to argue that it was lawful to hold this individual in detention. The High Court, obviously, found a different way and they overturned that judgement from about 20 years ago. So, given we're a government that complies with the law, we've now followed the law and released that individual and the other people who were caught up in it.

I'm not sure that it's wise for me to give you the names of countries that were approached about the potential resettlement of this plaintiff. What I can say is that there were about six different countries that, since we came into government, we approached to resettle this individual. I haven't been advised of this, but I take it that the answer in each case was no. I can't speak to what efforts were made by Mr Dutton or the coalition to resettle this individual when they were in power, but what we do know is that when they lost office these 147 people had not been resettled. What we also know is that the former government rejected the offer of resettlement that New Zealand had put on the table for a whole bunch of different people. Perhaps, if they hadn't been so belligerent about that, we wouldn't be in this situation.