Dan Tehan (Wannon, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Immigration and Citizenship) Share this | Hansard source

Thanks, Speaker. Yes, I'm happy to make it relevant to the bill. It's this part of the bill where we're just worried about unintended consequences where, rather than the minister making those final decisions, the department will initially make decisions and then ultimately they would go to the minister, and those unintended consequences we're seeing in other areas, like what the government has been doing with the labour migration agreement that they're putting in place with the aged-care sector, which we think will be detrimental to that sector and we wouldn't like to see the unintended consequences that we're seeing there occurring in this bill. There are other areas also, which I pointed out, where we're seeing unintended consequences as well—for instance, with the 'big Australia' approach which is being taken.

So we will await further advice on the last element of this bill. We appreciate the fact that the government has provided us with a briefing on this bill, and we look forward to the second briefing on this specific section of this bill that we have concerns on, and then we will notify the government on what our final position will be with regard to this bill.

Debate adjourned.

See this speech in context