Julian Hill (Bruce, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The Minister for Home Affairs is now fighting a ridiculous legal battle to see whether he has the power to deport Aboriginal people from Australia—that's right. It sounds absurd, and it is. There is a High Court case scheduled for Wednesday this week. It wouldn't be happening if the Minister for Home Affairs had any decency or sense of judgement.

The case concerns an Aboriginal man who the minister is trying to deport from Australia. The man the minister wants to deport, Mr Thoms, is an Aboriginal Australian who was born in New Zealand. He is a common law holder of native title rights—those most unique, ancient and Australian of property rights. His parents never filled in the relevant paperwork to formalise his citizenship in Australia, but he has lived here since he was a child as part of his local mob—the Gunggari people. Mr Thoms committed a crime and was sentenced to 18 months imprisonment. What he did was wrong, and our judicial system rightly punished him for it. But now the minister, acting as God, wants to punish him a second time and is seeking to kick this Aboriginal man, this native title holder, out of Australia and send him to New Zealand. This never should have happened.

The minister could simply exercise his discretion right now, stop wasting taxpayers' money on unnecessary legal costs and stop wasting the High Court's precious time by releasing Mr Thoms from detention. What is wrong with the Minister for Home Affairs's judgement? This man is an Aboriginal Australian, and New Zealand is not a penal colony.