Clare O'Neil (Hotham, Australian Labor Party, Minister for Home Affairs) Share this | Hansard source

I'll speak to the substance of the issue, but first I want to place on record how completely disgraceful I find the opposition's trying to link what is a really serious issue, antisemitism in our community, with a High Court decision which is profoundly and thoroughly unrelated to it and somehow trying to make politics out of this.

Surely we, as a parliament, and those opposite, as an opposition, are better than that. I find trying to take the human experience of people in our country who are seriously feeling under threat and are seriously being discriminated against and trying to use that to score points on the government disgraceful. I find that crass. I see some disgusting things in this parliament, but I have to say that this is right up there.

It tells us a lot about the way in which the opposition leader would run this country if he were ever given the opportunity to do so. What we know about the opposition leader is that the way this disgraceful politicisation has occurred in the chamber this afternoon is exactly on point with the sort of leadership that we have come to expect from him. What we see every day, throughout a 22-year political career, from the Leader of the Opposition is a constant instinct for division. That is what he tries to do every time an issue comes before this parliament. It's division, it's politicisation, it's hypocrisy and, frankly, in the work that I do, it is sheer incompetence. That is exactly what the country does not need right now. What I do agree with the opposition on is that there are serious issues in our country right now with social cohesion. The impact of the war in the Middle East is causing serious issues and deep-seated emotional reactions from people who are living in our country. They are reacting because of what they see overseas. They have deeply personal connections into this region, and it is affecting them and their lives here.

We heard about what happened in Caulfield on the weekend. Antisemitism has no place in our country. One of the beautiful things about Australia, one of the reasons that our nation is such a beautiful country, the very best in the world, is that we are able to live in a cohesive community yet celebrate those differences that make us so strong. We as a political party and as a government condemn antisemitism and stand with Jewish Australians as they experience what is an unspeakable rise in this horrible and one of the oldest forms of hatred in the world.

Many of us represent communities which have large Muslim populations, and I am one of them. The Islamophobia that is experienced by those communities is also real. If you want to hear about discrimination in this country, sit down with a woman who wears a hijab, and you will hear things that you would not believe are occurring in this beautiful nation: women being spat on on public transport; women being abused because they choose to wear a headscarf. We as a political party and as a government have a consistent principles based commitment: we oppose discrimination. We take it seriously. We know that to fight it we need leadership that brings our country together, and that is what the Prime Minister has shown us in the parliament this afternoon.

Let me turn to the issue that was also raised by the Manager of Opposition Business, and that is the question of the court case in the High Court that was decided last Wednesday. Let me share a little bit of background with the parliament. On Wednesday last week, the High Court overturned a 20-year precedent that has governed how successive Commonwealth governments in our country have managed the detention of noncitizens. What the High Court has told us is that it does not want ministers of any political persuasion in this country to make decisions that are akin to punishment. I make that point to the parliament. I want the parliament to understand that this was a full court decision of the High Court of our country, and it was made on a constitutional basis. The idea that our government has any choice whatsoever about whether we comply with the High Court's decision is absolute garbage. Anyone in the parliament or outside of it who is arguing any different needs to go back to grade 6 and take a little bit of constitutional law in.

Our system is built on the separation of powers. That means that, as a minister, just like anyone who is sitting in the public gallery, I am required to abide by the law of the land. The law of the land in this instance has been set down by the High Court, and our government has no choice but to follow it. The implication of this is that a group of people have been released from immigration detention. I don't mind telling the parliament that, if it were up to me, none of those people would have been released from immigration detention—none of them. It is not up to me. The High Court of Australia has given a direction to our government that we must release these people from detention, and we have no choice but to follow that direction.

When we undertake the following of that direction, we do so with one priority in mind: the safety of the citizens who elected us here to this parliament. That is why the way we are managing the release of these people from detention, something we did not want to do, is by following that dictum of caring about community safety. That is why people are being released with strict visa conditions. That is why we have set up a police response, Operation AGIS, a joint operation between the Australian Federal Police and the Australian Border Force, which is literally case managing each individual as they are removed from detention. As has been foreshadowed by other ministers, legislative options will be brought forward.

I want to address a number of falsehoods that have been raised by the opposition in this debate. The first is one that I've heard directly from the Leader of the Opposition. What he has come out today with is something which, just frankly and very directly, is incredibly stupid. He has come out today and said: 'Don't worry about the Constitution. Just pass a law to put them all back in detention.' I want to remind the Leader of the Opposition, who has been here for 22 years, that he knows and I know that the Australian Constitution and a full court decision of the High Court cannot just be overturned by a decision of this chamber. That is not the political system in which we operate. I know it and he knows it, and pretending any different is a plain falsehood.

The second is that, in some way, this a consequence of choices or decisions that have been made by our government, and I just want to make something really clear. We have been in government now for 18 months. Do you want to know how many of the people who've been released arrived while we have been in government? It is precisely zero. This range of people who arrived under former coalition governments of every political stripe is a problem that we inherited. I just want to remind the parliament that none of these people arrived while Minister Giles and I have been managing the migration system.

Finally, I just want to reiterate to the parliament that the assertion continues to be made by those opposite that this was somehow a choice of our government and the implication continues to be made that this somehow reflects a different view about the crimes that have been committed here, so let me be absolutely clear with you: the crimes that have been committed by some of these people disgust me. They disgust me; they disgust the Prime Minister; they disgust the Minister for Immigration, Citizenship and Multicultural Affairs.

I am a parent of three young children who are growing up in this country and I personally am deeply offended by anyone in this parliament who is suggesting that I have, in some way, a different view on child sexual abuse to that of the Leader of the Opposition or anyone else who speaks on this matter in this chamber. Let's show each other the most basic of human dignity and agree that child sexual abuse is an abhorrent crime. If it were up to me, I would put some of these people in jail and throw away the key forever. It is not up to me. That is because it is not the role of a minister in this parliament to decide how long people get shut away in prison. But the implication that somehow there's a different view about how to deal with child sex offenders is baseless, is debasing and should not be made in this parliament.

I have talked at length in this chamber about the record of the Leader of the Opposition in completely breaking our migration system, and that is a very important piece of context here. We have the Nixon review, the last in a series of pretty much relentless reports which tell us that the Leader of the Opposition profoundly mismanaged the migration system. They tell us that he built a public profile that saw him pretending to be a tough guy on borders, all the while allowing to come into the country people who set up criminal gangs, trafficked in humans and sexually and violently abused women. Then he went out to the public and sold a completely different public image. We have the reports. They are on public view. They are available for everyone to read.

Everyone should understand that, in the context of all the debates that we have about immigration in this country, the Leader of the Opposition ran this system for a long time under the previous government. He broke that system due to lack of focus, lack of energy, lack of attention and lack of resources. Now it is left for me and the immigration minister to fix up this disgusting mess, and that is what we are doing. That is why, in the 18 months that we have been in government, you have seen, essentially, a litany of significant reforms to this system to try to keep Australia safe.

Those opposite have had a go today—a pretty awful go—at trying to make politics out of this. I'd just say: get over yourselves. As a country, we have a real problem to fix here. We have a broken immigration system, and I'd like to see the parliament come together and work on those issues together.

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