David Shoebridge (NSW, Australian Greens) Share this | Hansard source

Sorry; it is astounding the way Labor has delivered government and political direction to Mr Peter Dutton and his mates over there. It is just an astounding national surrender, not only to surrender the direction of government to the coalition, led by Mr Peter Dutton, but to attach onto this noxious legislation two of the most appalling provisions that offend pretty much every legal principle in the book.

The first one is future crime, also called preventive detention. The second one is mandatory sentencing. They are two things that Labor, in opposition and even as recently as in their 2023 national platform, rejected and said are offensive to the legal system and have the impact of reducing the independence of the judiciary. They are two things that Labor said, in opposition and even as recently as in the 2023 national platform they adopted, they'd never do. And now, as they follow on meekly behind Mr Peter Dutton and the coalition, with their heads bowed in political surrender to the coalition, they're putting both those things in the one piece of legislation, which is targeted overwhelmingly at refugees. You couldn't make up a bigger political surrender, a bigger moral surrender, a bigger surrender of principles than what Labor is doing with this legislation, the Migration Amendment (Bridging Visa Conditions and Other Measures) Bill 2023.

Did I mention that they gave the whip hand to the coalition throughout all this? We're only having this debate now because they just collapsed; they wilted in the face of the slightest pressure from the coalition in the chamber today. They wilted like a lettuce leaf on a hot lawn. That's Labor and its principles when the coalition and Mr Peter Dutton just press their buttons—utterly pathetic!

What is wrong with preventive detention, better known as future crime? One of the key problems is that that's not what our courts are designed to do. In our legal system, courts are designed to find out what happened in the past and determine matters of fact. Never, until Labor and the coalition started experimenting with it in the last two decades, did courts and our legal system engage in predicting future crime. It's just not what our courts do. It's not their fact-finding mission. They don't have skills and they don't have legal structures to enable them to work out future crime. You can hear this said by senior members of the judiciary both current and retired.

What is the tool that the Commonwealth has been using to predict future crime and handing up to judges as though it's actually credible? It's called VERA-2R. It is some kind of assessment matrix that was initially an international design. The VERA-2R model is partly funded by Home Affairs—that home of Pezzullo integrity! It is funded by Home Affairs, promulgated and handed out by Home Affairs and tended to courts by Home Affairs. VERA-2R is this assessment tool of our future crime.

What do we know about VERA-2R—the thing that, no doubt, is going to be relied upon by Home Affairs and the Commonwealth DPP when they're trying to keep people in jail under this new, preventive detention regime? The VERA-2R report has been found to be grossly wanting. There is a previously secret review of VERA-2R called the Corner report, commissioned by Home Affairs and done by Dr Emily Corner and Dr Helen Taylor. Home Affairs had the report for months and months and refused to give it to courts, because it was inconvenient for them—misleading courts. The Corner report, paid for by the Commonwealth government, reviewed VERA-2R and another even more flawed tool called Radar in detail and said this:

The lack of evidence underpinning both instruments has potentially serious implications for their validity and reliability. Without a strong theoretical and empirical basis for factor inclusion, it is not reasonable to anticipate that the instruments are able to predict their specified risk with anything other than chance.

It is no better than a guess as to whether anybody who is covered by this preventive detention regime is likely to commit a future offence. It's just pure guessing. The tool that's used by the Commonwealth in doing this is a joke. It's a joke, except it has real-life impacts, because they come up with this matrix, they go up through the VERA-2R assessment tool and—pop!—out pops a number. If it's over a certain level, they say, 'Oh, well then that person is at risk of future offending, and they should be kept in jail.' You may as well just roll a dice. If it's four, five or six, you stay in jail, and if it's one, two or three, you get out. That's what the VERA-2R assessment tool is. It's no better than rolling a dice.

Is it any wonder that the legal system says, 'Actually, this degrades us'? Making them guess based upon grossly flawed assessment tools about whether or not someone is going to commit a future offence degrades the judiciary. It brings into disrepute the legal system. But, because Labor is so spineless, it is just signing on to preventive detention. They're scared about a Ray Hadley rant or a Daily Telegraph rant. Whatever the coalition wants, Labor will deliver—and they will deliver it quickly and fast, because they just want to be done with this. If they have to put a couple of people in jail for the rest of their lives, even though there's no evidence about future offending, well, Labor are willing to pay that price. Labor will keep a couple of people in jail forever based on a flawed tool and broken legal reasoning because they want to get out of a political mess. They haven't got the spine to stare down the coalition's scare tactics. That's what's happening here.

And then we get to mandatory sentencing. If the future-crimes abuse of the legal system isn't enough—did I mention the use of the Pezzullo-credible VERA-2R assessment tool?—Labor has decided to go the coalition's extra beat-up-on-refugees step. That is to put in mandatory sentencing. Labor's own 2023 national platform said, 'Mandatory sentencing is wrong in principle and wrong in practice.' You said you wouldn't do it, because it removes judicial discretion, erodes the independence of the judiciary and provides unfair outcomes. That's what you say on the national platform, delivered, apparently, by Labor Party members across the country. It was signed off just a few months ago. But, of course, the parliamentary Labor Party don't feel constrained in any way by the principles of their party members, and they just come in here, sell their members, the national conference and the public down the river, and whack in mandatory sentencing. They are willing to put people in jail for a guaranteed year if they're late back home by 15 minutes one night. Those people will go to jail for a year, with no discretion. If you're home late by 15 minutes, you will be subject to mandatory sentencing and will go to jail for a year. This is brought to you by the Labor Party as the subcontractors of the coalition—the wholly owned subsidiary of the coalition.

Why not just open a sort of Liberal-light branch and have a quiet rule in the next Labor Party national conference, with a little asterisk at the top, saying, 'Whatever we say here, if Mr Peter Dutton puts the heat on us, we'll just junk it'? You should have that little asterisk and exemption on the next national platform: 'Whatever our principles and whatever we say in the election or in opposition, if Mr Peter Dutton puts a blowtorch on us, we'll just junk it.' Just be honest, because that's what's happening here. This is a gross surrender of principle, it's a gross surrender of political direction and it's one of the worst examples of government I've seen.