Julian Hill (Bruce, Australian Labor Party, Assistant Minister for Citizenship, Customs and Multicultural Affairs) Share this | Hansard source

I do appreciate the intent, but the government won't be supporting the amendments, and I'll touch on a few of the reasons in summary form. The change to the threshold that you outlined at the start would, in the government's view, render the provision practically unworkable. And I'd make the point that the entire visa system—every day, the judgements that the Department of Home Affairs make when issuing temporary visas or refusing them—rests on risk based judgements. You can never know things with certainty in advance. That's the operation of the entire visa system.

With respect to the question of safeguards, the government's view remains that the safeguards that are provided for in the bill are appropriate. I'd restate that the bill doesn't affect or restrict the ability of a permanent visa holder of any kind to travel to Australia. It exempts very explicitly people who are already in Australia within the migration zone, their immediate family and any holder of a temporary humanitarian visa or a bridging visa associated with those temporary humanitarian visa classes. There are additional safeguards such that the exercise of the power by way of legislative instrument requires the written agreement of the Minister for Foreign Affairs and the Prime Minister and therefore the involvement and scrutiny of their officials in those ministries. It also requires, with respect to parliamentary scrutiny, that the instrument and the associated reasons be tabled in both houses of parliament, which provides, in the government's view—given that this is a rarely used power for significant events—the appropriate level of parliamentary scrutiny. It provides for a maximum of six months, following which there is the ability to remake but not to extend or vary a previously made determination, and it would need to be remade at the point in time based on new facts and circumstances. It also provides the power for the minister to exempt individuals from the arrival control determination.

Finally, with respect to the definition of families, the bill's definition of immediate family members aligns with common and well-established practice in such situations. It provides for the spouse or de facto partner and their dependent children or for the parents where the children may be Australians but the children are under 18. So, they are well-established definitions. Those you mentioned—the broader definitions—are not considered immediate family under the well-established rules; they're close family or extended family members. So these are the very common practices. The final point I'd make is that extending visas in the way proposed would undermine the integrity of the visa system.

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