Sharon Claydon (Newcastle, Australian Labor Party) | Link to this | Hansard source

During question time, the Leader of the Opposition proposed a motion to suspend standing and sessional orders. The Leader of the House required under standing order 47(e) that further proceedings take place after the matter of public importance. Does the mover wish to speak to the motion?

Peter Dutton (Dickson, Liberal Party, Leader of the Opposition) | Link to this | 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.

Hon. Members:

Honourable members interjecting—

Sharon Claydon (Newcastle, Australian Labor Party) | Link to this | Hansard source

I'll ask everybody to keep the interjections down.

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

Did they prepare for it? No, they did not prepare for it. They didn't prudently have a look at the options available to them.

Sharon Claydon (Newcastle, Australian Labor Party) | Link to this | Hansard source

That includes you, Member for Deakin.

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

They allowed the High Court to hand a decision down, and what happened in that circumstance was that the court handed down a decision—

Stephen Jones (Whitlam, Australian Labor Party, Assistant Treasurer) | Link to this | Hansard source

We allowed them to hand it down?

Sharon Claydon (Newcastle, Australian Labor Party) | Link to this | Hansard source

Ministers at the table, please.

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

without any options on the table for the government to turn to. They knew a decision was coming from the court and they knew that they could address it somehow through legislation or through support from a third country to export people. They took up none of those options. They decided instead—in all their incompetence and because of their ideology—that they didn't want to see these people locked up. They wanted these people released. What has happened is that these people have now committed offences against Australian citizens. That is a very serious claim to make against a government and against a minister.

We move today in this parliament that the minister should be dismissed, and so he should. His incompetence has resulted in Australians falling victim to crimes by these offenders. Do you think that the Prime Minister could be here to defend his minister? Do you think that he could have taken this suspension of standing orders during question time to defend his minister? No, he could not, because he knows that this minister is not worthy of defence, and he doesn't want to tarnish his own reputation with what the minister has presided over here. I have not seen anything like this in my time in parliament. During my time in parliament it is hard to imagine a more incompetent act from a minister.

We know that these criminals, 149 of them, will go on to commit further offences. We can say that much with certainty. The minister was asked if he knew where these 149 were. He was asked, 'Could you tell me where they are?' It was a simple question. No answer. He didn't know where they were. He then carried on with this fiction that people are being continuously monitored. He repeated the statement that the 149 criminals out in the community were continuously monitored. What happened when they were committing the offences? Were they being monitored while they committed offences against Australian citizens? If that's the revelation, it's even worse than we first thought. We know that the minister hasn't taken one case to the Federal Court to make an application regarding one of these individuals—not one of these sex offenders, not one of these paedophiles, not one of these rapists. He has not sought to petition the court to return one person to immigration detention—not one of them.

I think the Australian public, at the moment, is rightly concerned about a wave of crime across our suburbs in many of the capital cities. Many Australians are falling victim to crime rates that, frankly, are completely and utterly unacceptable. Many older Australians are worried about their homes being broken into, their keys being stolen and their car being stolen. We know that many of these young offenders, in particular, will post Instagram photos of themselves standing in someone's bedroom or making sure that they're taking a car so that they can get a photo—

Stephen Jones (Whitlam, Australian Labor Party, Assistant Treasurer) | Link to this | Hansard source

You're in the wrong parliament, mate!

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

You'd be better suited to state parliament!

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

The Assistant Treasurer and the Minister for Home Affairs yell out, 'You're in the wrong parliament!' It doesn't matter in relation to these matters. 'We don't care about those victims of crime.' That shows how out of touch you are with the Australian public. The Australian public want their parliamentarians at a federal and state level to do something about the crime being committed. They don't want some soft touch as minister out there telling criminals that they can be released into the community. That's exactly what has happened on his watch. That's why this minister should go.

The minister refuses to provide details to the parliament about why many of these criminals don't have ankle bracelets and why the government had no preparation in place to deal with mitigating the risk that these people presented as they were released. We've got a government here that's telling victims of crime across the country, 'There's nothing to see here,' and 'You're on your own.' You've got the Prime Minister, the Assistant Treasurer and the Minister for Home Affairs telling people across the country who are worried about their homes being broken into that this Albanese government can do nothing for them.

This government and this Prime Minister have demonstrated themselves to be weak and incompetent on many fronts. This Prime Minister has promised many things to the Australian public. He has broken promises on reducing power prices. He has broken promises on reducing the cost of mortgages. He's broken promise after promise, and this is the latest.

This Prime Minister has been as weak as water. At a time when Australians need their leader to stand up on their behalf, fight for them and be prepared to stand up against criminals—the most basic ask of any prime minister—he's been found wanting yet again. The Australian public are completely and utterly dismayed by the impotence of this Prime Minister. He cannot stand up and support them in their hour of need. He and the minister stand condemned— (Time expired)

Sharon Claydon (Newcastle, Australian Labor Party) | Link to this | Hansard source

Is the motion seconded?

Dan Tehan (Wannon, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Immigration and Citizenship) | Link to this | Hansard source

I second the motion. The hopeless and hapless minister needs to go. The Australian people want answers to very serious questions, and the minister cannot give them. The first question we asked in question time today was: can the minister confirm, as he'd said in the parliament last year, that all those victims had been contacted by the department? Could he answer that question? No, he couldn't. The second question we asked was: are the 149 hardened criminals being continuously monitored? Could he answer that question? No, he couldn't. We know that 36 of those hardened criminals don't have ankle bracelets, so how could they be continuously monitored? Yet he said in this parliament that they were being continuously monitored. He misled the parliament in doing that.

We asked him: are those 149 hardened criminals being continuously monitored? He couldn't answer it. We then asked him: how have 18 of those people committed crimes in the states and territories? They've reoffended. How could they have been continuously monitored? He couldn't answer that. It's damning, and it's continuously damning. We asked the minister why he didn't attend crucial meetings in the lead-up to the decision to let the 149 hardened criminals go. On 14 September, his office met with the legal counsel of his department. On 12 October, his office met with the legal counsel of his department. On 31 October his office met with the legal counsel of his department. Where was the minister? He was completely absent.

As a matter of fact, we found out from Senate estimates last night that in June the government was warned that they were likely to lose the case, yet the minister did not meet once—not once—with the legal counsel from his department until after the High Court had handed down its decision. He stood in here and said his No. 1 priority was to keep the Australian community safe. Is that keeping the community safe—not turning up to one meeting with the legal counsel? That is a dereliction of duty. That means nothing else than that the Prime Minister should sack his minister. We cannot get a straight answer out of this minister.

The last question today was a very simple one: are all the people that have been released from the NZYQ cohort on bridging visas R? The home affairs minister laughs about this. Are they on bridging visa R?

Well, he couldn't answer that question, and that question is important because that's the visa that has the conditions on it. The hapless and hopeless minister cannot answer all of these questions, yet he is responsible for keeping the Australian community safe. The No. 1 responsibility of any government is to keep the Australian community safe. If you cannot do that, you do not deserve to govern this country.

I say this: the home affairs minister wants everyone to look here, look there, look in the past and look over here because she doesn't want to own up to her incompetence or the incompetence of the minister for immigration. She doesn't want to deal with the fact that under her watch—

Sharon Claydon (Newcastle, Australian Labor Party) | Link to this | Hansard source

I'll ask the member to direct comments through the chair.

Dan Tehan (Wannon, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Immigration and Citizenship) | Link to this | Hansard source

She does not want to deal with the fact that, under her watch, there are victims of crime.

Sharon Claydon (Newcastle, Australian Labor Party) | Link to this | Hansard source

Don't you start, Member for Petrie.

Dan Tehan (Wannon, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Immigration and Citizenship) | Link to this | Hansard source

Under her watch, people have been harmed because she and the minister for immigration failed to keep the Australian community safe. That's why I'm happy to support the Leader of the Opposition in saying the minister for immigration should go.

Sharon Claydon (Newcastle, Australian Labor Party) | Link to this | Hansard source

I just remind people that the pile-on of interjections is not appreciated by me or the members of the public listening.

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

Let's see if we can lift the standards a bit. That was 15 minutes of just about the greatest incompetent drivel and hypocrisy that I've ever heard in this parliament. The way that this important national security problem for our country is being relentlessly politicised by those opposite is disgraceful.

I want to speak a little bit first about the substance of the matter, the government's NZYQ response, and I want to start with some home truths, because the mistruths that are being told on that side of the chamber about this case are very, very important and, importantly, very, very wrong. The first thing I want to say is: let's just be very clear about one important point here. Our government did not want these people released from detention, and the proof is in the pudding there, because, when we had the power to keep these people in detention, that's exactly what we did. That is why all these people were in a form of detention when NZYQ was brought down.

The High Court had a case before it brought by NZYQ, and I will remind the parliament at this point that the reason that NZYQ was still in our country is that the Leader of the Opposition, who sits opposite me here, took a personal ministerial intervention and lifted the bar, allowing NZYQ to apply for a protection visa, which he then proceeded to do. But that's not the only culpability of the Leader of the Opposition here. Do you know what would have really helped with NZYQ? It would have really helped if some attempts had been made to remove this person from the country before Minister Giles and I started to get onto that part of the problem. We would not have had an NZYQ case if the Leader of the Opposition had just done his job and made that remote effort to approach other countries and remove NZYQ from the country, as a good minister would have done and as Minister Giles and I did.

The High Court made a decision that our government did not agree with. We went before the High Court and we argued against the decision they made. But governments do need to manage changes in the law that are made by the High Court of Australia. That includes a Liberal government, a Labor government or government of any stripe. So what does a good government do in the face of these decisions?

Hon. Members:

Honourable members interjecting—

Maria Vamvakinou (Calwell, Australian Labor Party) | Link to this | Hansard source

Order! The minister can't be heard. Tone it down a bit, please.

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

They move quickly to make alternative arrangements, and that's exactly what we did. What you saw within a few weeks of the decision was that the government put in place four layers of protection for the Australian community—four parts of our immigration system that didn't exist before. This included, as the immigration minister has laid out really clearly for the parliament this week, electronic monitoring bracelets and curfews for people; a $250 million investment in Operation Aegis, which is a joint Australian Border Force and Australian Federal Police operation; a preventive detention regime; and the Community Protection Board, which for the first time has really brought people from law enforcement into the immigration part of our work and is advising us on conditions.

Maria Vamvakinou (Calwell, Australian Labor Party) | Link to this | Hansard source

The Manager of Opposition Business is not to interject.

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

I'd say to the parliament that I have been here now for 10 years—not as long as some of those who are yelling at me opposite—and I can say with absolute honesty that I never saw the former government act with this speed and substance on anything that they did. I never saw it. There are a lot of people around politics at the moment taking a little bit of interest in a little program called Nemesis that runs on Monday nights on ABC, and I can tell you why. We now all understand why the former government was incapable of achieving anything at all: because they were all too busy fighting amongst each other, bitching like a bunch of mean girls to each other and trying to claw and hang on to power. I have to say it was unedifying but, importantly, it made me really bloody angry, because we went from a decade of continental drift under those opposite, and now they're coming in and trying to give us a lecture about how to run the Australian government.

I am not going to take a lecture from the Leader of the Opposition, this week of all weeks, on the management of our migration system. I'm just not going to do it, because this week we received the third of three reports by eminent Australians, which makes hundreds of pages of evidence of what a disaster area the Leader of the Opposition was when he ran our migration system.

I want to speak first about the Richardson review, a truly extraordinary report that was released this week. I have it here; I'm going to table it into the public record. This landmark review by Dennis Richardson, an eminent Australian, shows us—the Leader of the Opposition laughs. I assume he agrees with me that Dennis Richardson is a person of unbelievable integrity.

He's calling him a Labor hack. I wonder about that! This is a landmark report, and what it shows is that under the Leader of the Opposition the home affairs department paid hundreds of millions of dollars in taxpayer money on companies and individuals that dealt in arms and drugs and trafficked in human beings. This all happened under the watch of this supposed tough guy on the borders, this person who's coming into the parliament today and giving us all a lecture about how tough he is on crime. Well, under his watch, hundreds of millions of dollars were funnelled into these companies.

A lot of people out there will be thinking: 'What the hell? How did this happen under his watch?' We got a little bit of insight into that this week during estimates. What we heard in estimates is that the department actually raised these issues with the minister. They raised issues about a company that was about to be awarded a contract worth more than half a billion dollars for the management of an offshore processing centre. He was told in a report that the company had never been awarded work of anything like this kind. I understand that this company was actually headquartered in a beach shack on Kangaroo Island. Under him, they got a half-a-billion-dollar contract.

Honourable members interjecting —

Maria Vamvakinou (Calwell, Australian Labor Party) | Link to this | Hansard source

Order! I really can't hear.

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

Any minister faced with this kind of issue would ask more questions. Surely any minister would ask more questions. But what did the Leader of the Opposition do? He didn't ask a question. He didn't ask for a meeting. He didn't ask for a further briefing. He just said, 'Noted,' and on he moved. And after that, half a billion dollars went into that company.

There are many other examples, but I don't want to dwell just on the Richardson review, because there are many other things that need to be put onto the public record here. I want to talk now about the report that Christine Nixon wrote into the exploitation in our migration system, and again I table that for the parliament. In some ways, this is actually the most damning report into the Leader of the Opposition. For almost the whole time he has been in parliament, his whole public persona has been puffing himself up as a big tough guy on the border. But what did the Nixon review find? It found that there were serious and systemic problems with exploitation in the migration system. It found that the system had been used to perpetrate some of the worst crimes that there are—sexual slavery and human trafficking—under the watch of the Leader of the Opposition, our so-called tough guy on the beat. She found there was delay and dysfunction in the system. She also found something very interesting: for all the tough talk that we have heard over previous years from the Leader of the Opposition, he halved immigration compliance funding to the Department of Home Affairs. Have you ever heard of anything more hypocritical than that?

I don't want to finish without talking about the Parkinson review. In fairness to the Leader of the Opposition, I don't think he has ever pretended to actually care about the central importance of migration to the future of our country. It has just never been a particular interest of his. And, of course, the Parkinson review told us that our migration system is fundamentally broken. Martin Parkinson said that this was due to a decade of deliberate neglect under the Leader of the Opposition. We've got some critiques today for the Leader of the Opposition. I want to table for the parliament—

An opposition member: Another one!

Yes, another one, mate. That's how bad it was. We have hundreds of pages here, which—for the HansardI now table, which are an unbelievable indictment of the entire record of the opposition leader.

But don't let me just stick with Home Affairs, because of course the wreckage and ruin that the Leader of the Opposition left is actually strewn all over the Australian government. Speaker, let me remind you about defence. This is a guy who likes to think of himself as a real tough guy on national defence, but what did he do when he was minister? He left behind a litany of delayed projects, which I believe were up to 97 years late by the time Labor came to office. Seriously, what a fraud.

Let me not forget the most important one of all, perhaps, for many Australians, which is the catastrophic failure in our healthcare system. There is only one person in this parliament who has been voted the worst health minister in the entire history of Medicare, and he sits in the chair opposite me. This is someone who tried to trash Medicare, and it's only because of Labor that Australians are not paying $5 on top of every other fee every time they go to the doctor. He shakes his head, but it's a matter of public record that this is what he did.

We shouldn't suspend standing orders, at least not for the substance of the matter that has been brought forward, because the truth is that the person with questions to answer here is the Leader of the Opposition. But what we see time and time again is that he is a pretend tough guy who's afraid to answer the tough questions.

Milton Dick (Speaker) | Link to this | Hansard source

The question is that the motion be agreed to.