Peter Dutton (Dickson, Liberal Party, Leader of the Opposition) | Hansard source

Indeed I do wish to speak to this motion, because there is national significance and importance attached to this issue. As we know, it's the first charge of any government to make sure that they take decisions to keep their people safe. Every prime minister should have that as their first charge. Yet the reality is that this Prime Minister, a weak prime minister, has a minister who is not up to the task of keeping Australians safe. This minister, during the course of court proceedings, has ceded ground that should not have been ceded and has given weak evidence which has resulted in the High Court directing the release of an individual. From there the government has decided to release, in total, 149 hardened criminals into the Australian community. That makes the Australian public less safe than if those people had been kept in detention. We are talking about people who have serious and questionable backgrounds. We're talking of 149 criminals. We have seven who have been convicted of murder—seven murderers. We have 37 sex offenders. We have 72 other violent offenders, including offenders who have committed repeated acts of domestic violence.

We further learned from estimates this week—the government wasn't forthcoming with the detail, but the bureaucrats were able to provide us with some detail, although they took a lot on notice, I might say—that 18 of these criminals have been arrested and charged by state and territory police for reoffending. So we know that there are further Australian citizens who have fallen victim to these criminals. These criminals should not be on the streets. They should be in immigration detention awaiting deportation. Look at the inept performance of the Minister for Immigration, Citizenship and Multicultural Affairs today. The Minister for Home Affairs is completely and utterly out of her depth and completely and utterly incompetent. They are presiding over a situation where they have allowed these hardened criminals to commit offences against Australian citizens.

In June of last year, the Attorney-General was informed of the prospects in this matter by his department, and the prospects were weak because the immigration minister and the home affairs minister are weak. The reality is that they knew that this bad decision was coming from the High Court.

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