Murray Watt (Queensland, Australian Labor Party, Minister for Employment and Workplace Relations) Share this | Hansard source

Thanks, Senator Shoebridge. The practical reality that the government is encountering is a series of High Court decisions that need to be responded to. As Senator Shoebridge would be well aware, this parliament has debated a number of bills and passed a number of bills, not with the support of the Greens, to deal with some unusual situations in immigration law, but there have been at least two High Court decisions in recent times that I can think of that have found deficiencies in that legislation and that have called into question various immigration practices of this country.

A responsible government, when faced with that situation, has a choice: to rectify those issues to accord with community standards about these issues or to ignore them. I understand that the Greens political party would choose to ignore those practical realities, but this government understands that, when the High Court makes decisions, then governments need to act.

Senator Shoebridge asks why the government chooses to seek agreement with the opposition on these matters, and it is the case that there have been discussions with the opposition around these matters. One of the reasons we do that is that, whatever the subject matter, we can rely on the Greens political party to say no. This week we've seen it again, with the Greens political party finally caving in on housing. But we see it on every single issue: that the Greens political party have made a political judgement that it's in their political interests to oppose what a Labor government is seeking to do. If the Greens political party decided to have a different political strategy and were prepared to work with the Labor government, rather than block us, then maybe we'd be in a different situation.