Anne Ruston (SA, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Health and Aged Care) Share this | Hansard source

I'm standing to speak to the Australian Citizenship Amendment (Citizenship Repudiation) Bill 2023. What are we seeing here today? We're seeing a bill again being brought into this place, as we saw yesterday with a bill being brought into this place, that continues to highlight the fact that this government was asleep at the wheel when it came to protecting Australians—completely asleep at the wheel. Whilst the opposition is more than happy to facilitate the passage of legislation that will assist in making sure that Australians are kept safer, I think that the Australian public needs to be really aware of the fact that much of this didn't need to happen in the way that it's happened. If we actually had a government that was in control of the situation, we would have had this done well before the decision of the High Court in the NZYQ case came down, which has now facilitated the need for this particular legislation to occur.

On 8 June 2022 the majority of the High Court of Australia invalidated the ability of the Minister for Home Affairs under the Citizenship Act to determine that a dual national who had engaged in terrorism related activity or conduct is no longer an Australian citizen. It had pretty significant implications for the government and the ability of the government to be able to revoke the citizenship of a dual national who had been alleged to have engaged in terrorism activity. We're not talking about some small, insignificant breach of Australian law. We're talking about terrorism related conduct. If the government had actually acted more quickly at the time and responded to the decisions, then we would not be standing here today, with this continuing some 17 to 18 months later, having this conversation. I think a lot of what we're talking about today actually points to the credibility of the government to actually be able to govern this country.

If you look at the Minister for Home Affairs and the Minister for Immigration, Citizenship and Multicultural Affairs, they have both been caught flat-footed when it comes to issues of citizenship, which we're discussing today, and in terms of migration and, particularly, the continuing, ongoing detention of somebody who presents a significant safety risk to the Australian public. A government's first responsibility is always to its own people and its own nation. Whilst this extraordinary situation has been playing out, we have seen the Prime Minister spending more of his time overseas than in this country. He's got a couple of ministers that have shown a level of incompetence that is almost eye watering, yet he's left them here.

Over the previous few days we've seen a number of instances where people who have been let out of detention, and we now know from the decisions and the ruling from the High Court that they did not need to have been let out of detention, because the ruling of the High Court related only to NZYQ and the specifics of that particular case. There have been over 140 detainees with various previous convictions let out into the community, from rapists and paedophiles to murderers and even a contract killer. It's just extraordinary. We've seen that all happen when it actually didn't need to happen. We've seen two ministers showing great incompetence, but, at the same time, we've got a Prime Minister who seems to think that it's more important for him to be overseas on the international stage than actually being in the country and making sure that the people that he has delegated responsibility to, to keep Australians safe in regard to immigration and home affairs, are actually doing their job of keeping Australians safe. Clearly over the last few days we have seen that that has not been the case.

As I said, whilst the opposition is going to support actions that are taken that are going to toughen the laws in Australia around making sure that Australians are able to be kept safe, particularly from some of the most unsavoury characters that you could possibly imagine, we still stand here today with a great inadequacy in the response that the government has provided. We see people talking about Benbrika. This doesn't even impact Benbrika, because of the inability to draft things from a retrospective perspective. I condemn the government for their lack of action, but we will be supporting this bill. (Time expired)