Andrew Hastie (Canning, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Home Affairs) Share this | Hansard source

Lives at risk—exactly, the member for Riverina. Sadly, these are just the latest in a litany of failures from the Albanese Labor government on immigration and community safety, including the former minister for immigration's direction 99 debacle, which saw 97 criminal noncitizens avoid deportation from Australia because of the government's capitulation to pressure from the New Zealand government, and the Minister for Home Affairs' humanitarian program on the run, wherein he admitted he had been personally interviewing Palestinian families before granting them humanitarian visas. This comes after the government granted thousands of tourist visas to people in a war zone controlled by a terrorist group before they were referred to ASIO for proper security checks.

The Albanese Labor government is undermining Operation Sovereign Borders by overseeing a 21 per cent decrease in aerial flying hours and a 16 per cent decrease in maritime patrol days compared to 2020-21. We've seen at least 35 illegal people-smuggling ventures carrying more than 600 illegal boat arrivals make the journey to Australia since the Albanese Labor government came to power. At least five ventures have made it to the Australian mainland, at least two of which deposited their passengers and escaped undetected by Australian authorities, something that was almost unheard of in the decade before Labor took government.

The current bill seeks to address legal arguments being used by NZYQ affected individuals to prevent their removal from Australia to Nauru under a third-country reception arrangement. They have mounted two types of legal challenge: firstly, by claiming that they were owed procedural fairness before the Commonwealth took the decision to apply for a Nauruan visa; and secondly, by claiming that there was an error in an old visa decision relating to them. The bill seeks to address these lines of argument by putting beyond doubt that the Commonwealth does not need to afford an individual procedural fairness when taking action in relation to third-country reception arrangements, disclosing information about removal-pathway noncitizens to foreign governments and issuing removal-pathway directions requiring noncitizens to take certain steps to facilitate their lawful removal from Australia. These provisions are primarily directed to noncitizens who have exhausted all legitimate avenues to remain in Australia and for whom removal is the only remaining outcome under Australian law. The bill also removes legal uncertainty created by the NZYQ decision by validating relevant visa decisions so they are taken, for all purposes, to have always been valid, as if they had been made in accordance with the current law established by NZYQ.

The coalition has always sought to work constructively with government to fix the immigration mess of the Labor government's own making. We'll always act in the national interest, and this is absolutely in the Australian peoples' interest. We cannot have criminals roaming freely without surveillance in our community any longer. I understand the net effect of this bill is to provide legal certainty which will minimise delays in removing NZYQ affected individuals from Australia, meaning that people with no legal right to be here will be removed as soon as possible. Basic rules of hospitality apply. If you're in this country, you do the right thing. If you don't, you're gone.

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