David Feeney (Victoria, Australian Labor Party, Parliamentary Secretary for Defence) Share this | Hansard source

I will seek to respond to some of the points made by Senator Cash. Firstly, Senator Cash, you are quite right. This bill does have a narrow goal, if I can put it in those terms, and that is to deal with questions pertaining to persons in detention. It is not seeking to deal with the much wider class of persons that can be described as non-citizens. That is deliberate on our part and it is our continuing intention that that is the appropriate way for this legislation to operate.

On the question of boat arrivals and the workload of the department, I guess I would simply make the point that we believe the bill that we are offering to the Senate is practicable. We think that the amendment you are proposing would have a number of consequences, as I have already outlined in my summation of the second reading debate, that would render this legislation gravely flawed.

With respect to section 8528, the government simply makes the point that legislation always overrides regulation. We think the phenomenon you described is in fact a strengthening rather than a weakening or a distraction of the legislation.

Finally, on your point of custodial sentences and our using the time-honoured test of 12 months or more for a custodial sentence, I simply make the point that that is commonly found across legislation. It has been commonly found across legislation for many years. It was the same standard that applied when the coalition was in office and when Philip Ruddock was the minister for immigration. We think it is an entirely sensible course of action to continue to use that standard.