Division Description Changes — Bills — Migration Amendment (Bridging Visa Conditions and Other Measures) Bill 2023; Second Reading — 27th Nov 2023

Change	Division
representatives vote 2023-11-27#7 Edited by mackay staff on 2024-05-31 11:29:54	Title Bills — Migration Amendment (Bridging Visa Conditions and Other Measures) Bill 2023; Second Reading Migration Amendment (Bridging Visa Conditions and Other Measures) Bill 2023 - Second Reading - Agree with the bill's main idea Description ~~<p class="speaker">Dan Tehan</p>~~ <p>The immigration mess keeps getting bigger and bigger by the day. Sadly, when it comes to community safety, it's the last thing on the government's mind. As a matter of fact, the <i>West Australian</i> newspaper summed it up pretty well—</p> ~~<p class="speaker">Milton Dick</p>~~ ~~<p>The member for Wannon will not use props during the debate.</p>~~ ~~<p class="speaker">Dan Tehan</p>~~ <p>as 'the subtle art of not giving a'—I won't use that unparliamentary language. It talks about the complete and utter mess the government is making of its attempts to deal with this High Court decision—so much so that now they've rushed these further amendments into the parliament when we've just found out that the High Court are going to give us the reasons for their decision tomorrow. At a minimum we should be waiting until we get those reasons to see whether these amendments go far enough.</p> <p>As we know, last week, or the week before, when they introduced their amendments we said at the time, 'Too little, too late.' That's exactly what they were, and we had to strengthen them for the government. We should be sensible about how we proceed, not be told as an opposition that the government is going to introduce these amendments and there will be a meeting at eight o'clock in the morning, and we get handed the bill with the amendments which was finished at 4.17 pm last night—rushed. And they expect the parliament to just say they're the government and they should be listened to, and this is what they should do, when their track record when it comes to keeping the community safe is deplorable.</p> <p>I think there is one reason and one reason only why we are here today with these amendments before us—that is, the government is using them as a distraction to take the focus off their track record. Let's have a look at the track record currently: 138 former detainees now free in the community. Four of them, we know, have not complied with the amendments which went through the House over a week ago, and one of them is AWOL; one of them can't be found and hasn't been contactable. We don't know anything about that person. The other three have been referred to the AFP. We don't know the exact status of that.</p> <p>Everything that we've had from this government when it comes to this issue has shown how ham-fisted their response has been. They had nearly six months to prepare for the High Court decision, yet all we got immediately after the High Court decision was: 'Oh, it's all too hard. We're going to have to wait for the reasons. There's nothing we can do.' Well, the community said that wasn't good enough, the media said that wasn't good enough and the opposition said that wasn't good enough, and eventually the government was forced to act in a way where they led completely with their chin by introducing legislation which they said were the toughest laws that had ever been introduced.</p> ~~<p>Yet, within the space of about 12 hours, they'd actually had to bow to opposition pressure and make the laws and give them real teeth because of their inept handling of this issue.</p>~~ <p>There are still many, many more questions that need to be answered by the government when it comes to this issue. For instance, why did the government concede on 30 May it was not possible to deport NZYQ when it only approached Bangladesh, Saudi Arabia and the Five Eyes nations after that date? The minister for immigration said on 30 May it was not possible to deport NZYQ. So he almost threw in the towel on 30 May. Then it seems that, after that date, the government decided: 'This could work against us. This could work against community safety.' They then tried to fix it up by approaching Bangladesh, Saudi Arabia and the Five Eyes nations after that date to see whether they would take NZYQ. Why did Minister O'Neil, in complete contradiction of the minister for immigration, say last week that she had operational advice 'it was likely' the government could deport NZYQ when this case indicates the precise opposite? We saw questions along these lines asked of the government today, and they didn't want to go anywhere near answering them.</p> <p>The other question we need answered is: did the minister for immigration, in making that call on 30 May, get that signed off jointly with the Minister for Home Affairs, the Attorney-General, the cabinet or the Prime Minister? Or was the Prime Minister's lack of attention to detail also exposed in this? There are so many answers that we need to hear from the government, and yet they refuse to give them to us.</p> <p>Only this morning, when we had our briefing, which was then followed by another briefing because we couldn't get the answers that we wanted, we put to the government serious questions about these amendments. We still haven't got very clear-cut answers from the government on these. These are serious issues that we need answering. The Prime Minister has received a letter from the Leader of the Opposition talking about the issues that we think need addressing if we are to support this bill.</p> <p>My understanding is that we are still waiting to hear clearly about the approach that the government will take. But, if the government were serious, it would enter into a proper bipartisan process with the opposition to do this properly. It would not just drop a letter on a Sunday night and then say, 'You have to be at a briefing at eight o'clock' and then—this is what the government did—not even have the head of the Australian Border Force turn up. But guess when he did turn up? They then did a press conference half an hour later, and guess who was there to answer questions on operational matters? The head of Border Force. This is the type of bipartisanship that the government is seeking.</p> <p>We have to remember what this is about. This is about the No. 1 priority that any government has, which is keeping the community safe. You will remember that 10 days ago we had to remind the government that there were victims out in the Australian community of some of the people that they had released and that those victims didn't know what was happening. They didn't know what protections were going to be put in place for them.</p> ~~<p>They were scared. They were themselves having to ring up to find out information about what the government is doing.</p>~~ <p>I say this to the government: rather than rushing these amendments through and treating us as if we have to either put up or shut up, when the real expertise lies on this side of the House when it comes to keeping the nation safe, why don't you, in the very first instance, put all your focus on finding out where that one detainee whose whereabouts they don't know is? That should be the government's No. 1 priority. The next should be making sure that the amendments we put through the week before last are fully implemented and then working with us to get through proper amendments which will keep the community safe.</p> ~~<p class="speaker">Adam Bandt</p>~~ <p>Labor is dancing to the Liberals' tune. Labor is letting the Leader of the Opposition write antirefugee legislation and then rushing it through parliament for him. This is the man who made a career out of attacking refugees and migrants and punching down, and he now gets to run the show. Labor might as well be done with it and just make Peter Dutton the Minister for Home Affairs.</p> <p>Labor seems to have learnt nothing from the last week we were here, when the High Court made a significant decision. We should all have reflected on that decision soberly and worked out how to construct an immigration system in the face of a very clear finding from the High Court. The High Court said you can't just lock people up indefinitely in immigration detention and put them in a warehouse and think that's the answer, because that is illegal. In response to that, the opposition ran a fear campaign and said, 'Oh, the government's letting people out,' when in fact it was the High Court that did it. So what did the government do? Instead of saying, 'Well, let's have a discussion in this place about how we construct a proper refugee system and migration system based on the new High Court findings,' they panicked. The opposition ran a fear campaign and Labor caved in.</p> <p>We, the Greens, were the only ones in this place to vote against Labor and the Liberals were doing. We said at the time, 'Don't engage in a race to the bottom with the opposition, particularly the Leader of the Opposition, because there's no low he won't sink to,' and that is exactly what has happened. Here we are back again the next week, and already the opposition is saying, 'Oh, no, it's not good enough, you've got to do more.' If you give in to this guy, he is going to keep coming back for more, Labor. So have some spine. Stand up to the Leader of the Opposition and argue for a principled approach that respects what the High Court has said and gives us the time to work out what a response to that would be and what a decent migration system that respects what the High Court has just said would look like in this country. In an effort to appease the Leader of the Opposition, Labor has rushed legislation in here, and already the opposition are saying, 'Oh, it's not good enough; we need more.' This is exactly the point that we were making: don't engage in a race to the bottom with the Leader of the Opposition, because he will just keep asking for more and sinking lower and lower and lower.</p> <p>It may have escaped the attention of the government, but at the last election their vote went backwards, and we now have a situation in this country where less than a third of the country votes for the government, a bit more than one-third votes for the opposition, and a third votes for someone else and says, 'We're sick of these dirty deals that get done between Labor and Liberal when you're acting in a way that is not in the public interest and you're not bringing integrity to politics.' With a third of the country now saying that they want the magnifying glass put over what politicians do in this place, Labor, instead of listening, just caves in, comes here and says, 'You've got an hour to debate a very significant piece of legislation that's potentially about giving the High Court more powers.'</p> <p>We're talking about changing the relationship between the parliament and the High Court, on what limited information we've got from Labor, and they want us to debate it in an hour—a bill that we haven't even seen for a day. Well, I say this to you, Labor: this legislation may well end up back in the High Court. You may well come here again, wanting another piece of legislation to tidy up the errors in the first piece of legislation that you did because the Liberals rushed you into it.</p> <p>This is no way to run a country—to hand over the keys to the opposition. Labor are handing over the keys to Peter Dutton and then wondering why it is that they're suffering as a result. Well, no. If you want to deal with the challenges this country faces, then think about them soberly, do it in a way that puts the public interest first, that respects this place, and then you might start getting a bit more respect from the people. But you are asking us to rush through legislation that we saw for the first time this morning, dealing with one of the most significant issues in this parliament, and that is something that we will oppose.</p> ~~<p class='motion-notice motion-notice-truncated'>Long debate text truncated.</p>~~ The majority voted in favour of a [motion](https://www.openaustralia.org.au/debate/?id=2023-11-27.153.4) to agree with the main idea of [the bill](https://parlinfo.aph.gov.au/parlInfo/search/display/display.w3p;query=Id:legislation/billhome/r7128). In parliamentary jargon, they voted to read the bill for a second time. This means that they can now discuss it in greater detail. ### What is the bill's main idea? According to the [bills digest](https://www.aph.gov.au/Parliamentary_Business/Bills_Legislation/bd/bd2324a/24bd38) (which is a document prepared by the parliamentary library): *> The purpose of* the [Migration Amendment (Bridging Visa Conditions and Other Measures) Bill 2023](https://parlinfo.aph.gov.au/parlInfo/search/display/display.w3p;query=Id:legislation/billhome/r7128) is to make a number of amendments following the rapid introduction and passage of the Migration Amendment (Bridging Visa Conditions) Act 2023.* > *> Specifically,* the Bill will create new criminal offences for breaching certain visa conditions, amend the circumstances when a Minister must vary the conditions for a Bridging Visa R, and introduce new powers for the collection and use of information related to an electronic monitoring device.* > *> On 8 November 2023,* the High Court of Australia ordered the release of an individual known as NZYQ from immigration detention, finding his detention unlawful. On 16 November 2023, the Government introduced the Migration Amendment (Bridging Visa Conditions) Bill 2023. This Bill passed both Houses that day with the support of the Opposition and received assent on 17 November prior to the High Court handing down its reasons in the NZYQ decision on 28 November 2023.* > *> The Migration Amendment (Bridging Visa Conditions) Act 2023 amended* the Migration Act 1958 and the Migration Regulations 1994 to allow for the imposition of new visa conditions and the creation of offences for breaches of certain visa conditions which apply to non-citizens for whom there is no real prospect of removal from Australia becoming practicable in the reasonably foreseeable future (the NZYQ-affected cohort).* > *> Stakeholders have raised significant concerns with these new provisions, and they are already the subject of at least 3 High Court challenges. > *> Media reporting has foreshadowed* that the Government will seek to move amendments to the Bill to introduce a new detention order scheme to be modelled on the continuing detention order scheme in Division 105A of the Criminal Code. The Opposition and the Australian Greens, as well as a number of independents, did not support the passage of the Bill through the House of Representatives.*

~~Dan Tehan~~
The immigration mess keeps getting bigger and bigger by the day. Sadly, when it comes to community safety, it's the last thing on the government's mind. As a matter of fact, the West Australian newspaper summed it up pretty well—
~~Milton Dick~~
~~The member for Wannon will not use props during the debate.~~
~~Dan Tehan~~
as 'the subtle art of not giving a'—I won't use that unparliamentary language. It talks about the complete and utter mess the government is making of its attempts to deal with this High Court decision—so much so that now they've rushed these further amendments into the parliament when we've just found out that the High Court are going to give us the reasons for their decision tomorrow. At a minimum we should be waiting until we get those reasons to see whether these amendments go far enough.
As we know, last week, or the week before, when they introduced their amendments we said at the time, 'Too little, too late.' That's exactly what they were, and we had to strengthen them for the government. We should be sensible about how we proceed, not be told as an opposition that the government is going to introduce these amendments and there will be a meeting at eight o'clock in the morning, and we get handed the bill with the amendments which was finished at 4.17 pm last night—rushed. And they expect the parliament to just say they're the government and they should be listened to, and this is what they should do, when their track record when it comes to keeping the community safe is deplorable.
I think there is one reason and one reason only why we are here today with these amendments before us—that is, the government is using them as a distraction to take the focus off their track record. Let's have a look at the track record currently: 138 former detainees now free in the community. Four of them, we know, have not complied with the amendments which went through the House over a week ago, and one of them is AWOL; one of them can't be found and hasn't been contactable. We don't know anything about that person. The other three have been referred to the AFP. We don't know the exact status of that.
Everything that we've had from this government when it comes to this issue has shown how ham-fisted their response has been. They had nearly six months to prepare for the High Court decision, yet all we got immediately after the High Court decision was: 'Oh, it's all too hard. We're going to have to wait for the reasons. There's nothing we can do.' Well, the community said that wasn't good enough, the media said that wasn't good enough and the opposition said that wasn't good enough, and eventually the government was forced to act in a way where they led completely with their chin by introducing legislation which they said were the toughest laws that had ever been introduced.
~~Yet, within the space of about 12 hours, they'd actually had to bow to opposition pressure and make the laws and give them real teeth because of their inept handling of this issue.~~
There are still many, many more questions that need to be answered by the government when it comes to this issue. For instance, why did the government concede on 30 May it was not possible to deport NZYQ when it only approached Bangladesh, Saudi Arabia and the Five Eyes nations after that date? The minister for immigration said on 30 May it was not possible to deport NZYQ. So he almost threw in the towel on 30 May. Then it seems that, after that date, the government decided: 'This could work against us. This could work against community safety.' They then tried to fix it up by approaching Bangladesh, Saudi Arabia and the Five Eyes nations after that date to see whether they would take NZYQ. Why did Minister O'Neil, in complete contradiction of the minister for immigration, say last week that she had operational advice 'it was likely' the government could deport NZYQ when this case indicates the precise opposite? We saw questions along these lines asked of the government today, and they didn't want to go anywhere near answering them.
The other question we need answered is: did the minister for immigration, in making that call on 30 May, get that signed off jointly with the Minister for Home Affairs, the Attorney-General, the cabinet or the Prime Minister? Or was the Prime Minister's lack of attention to detail also exposed in this? There are so many answers that we need to hear from the government, and yet they refuse to give them to us.
Only this morning, when we had our briefing, which was then followed by another briefing because we couldn't get the answers that we wanted, we put to the government serious questions about these amendments. We still haven't got very clear-cut answers from the government on these. These are serious issues that we need answering. The Prime Minister has received a letter from the Leader of the Opposition talking about the issues that we think need addressing if we are to support this bill.
My understanding is that we are still waiting to hear clearly about the approach that the government will take. But, if the government were serious, it would enter into a proper bipartisan process with the opposition to do this properly. It would not just drop a letter on a Sunday night and then say, 'You have to be at a briefing at eight o'clock' and then—this is what the government did—not even have the head of the Australian Border Force turn up. But guess when he did turn up? They then did a press conference half an hour later, and guess who was there to answer questions on operational matters? The head of Border Force. This is the type of bipartisanship that the government is seeking.
We have to remember what this is about. This is about the No. 1 priority that any government has, which is keeping the community safe. You will remember that 10 days ago we had to remind the government that there were victims out in the Australian community of some of the people that they had released and that those victims didn't know what was happening. They didn't know what protections were going to be put in place for them.
~~They were scared. They were themselves having to ring up to find out information about what the government is doing.~~
I say this to the government: rather than rushing these amendments through and treating us as if we have to either put up or shut up, when the real expertise lies on this side of the House when it comes to keeping the nation safe, why don't you, in the very first instance, put all your focus on finding out where that one detainee whose whereabouts they don't know is? That should be the government's No. 1 priority. The next should be making sure that the amendments we put through the week before last are fully implemented and then working with us to get through proper amendments which will keep the community safe.
~~Adam Bandt~~
Labor is dancing to the Liberals' tune. Labor is letting the Leader of the Opposition write antirefugee legislation and then rushing it through parliament for him. This is the man who made a career out of attacking refugees and migrants and punching down, and he now gets to run the show. Labor might as well be done with it and just make Peter Dutton the Minister for Home Affairs.
Labor seems to have learnt nothing from the last week we were here, when the High Court made a significant decision. We should all have reflected on that decision soberly and worked out how to construct an immigration system in the face of a very clear finding from the High Court. The High Court said you can't just lock people up indefinitely in immigration detention and put them in a warehouse and think that's the answer, because that is illegal. In response to that, the opposition ran a fear campaign and said, 'Oh, the government's letting people out,' when in fact it was the High Court that did it. So what did the government do? Instead of saying, 'Well, let's have a discussion in this place about how we construct a proper refugee system and migration system based on the new High Court findings,' they panicked. The opposition ran a fear campaign and Labor caved in.
We, the Greens, were the only ones in this place to vote against Labor and the Liberals were doing. We said at the time, 'Don't engage in a race to the bottom with the opposition, particularly the Leader of the Opposition, because there's no low he won't sink to,' and that is exactly what has happened. Here we are back again the next week, and already the opposition is saying, 'Oh, no, it's not good enough, you've got to do more.' If you give in to this guy, he is going to keep coming back for more, Labor. So have some spine. Stand up to the Leader of the Opposition and argue for a principled approach that respects what the High Court has said and gives us the time to work out what a response to that would be and what a decent migration system that respects what the High Court has just said would look like in this country. In an effort to appease the Leader of the Opposition, Labor has rushed legislation in here, and already the opposition are saying, 'Oh, it's not good enough; we need more.' This is exactly the point that we were making: don't engage in a race to the bottom with the Leader of the Opposition, because he will just keep asking for more and sinking lower and lower and lower.
It may have escaped the attention of the government, but at the last election their vote went backwards, and we now have a situation in this country where less than a third of the country votes for the government, a bit more than one-third votes for the opposition, and a third votes for someone else and says, 'We're sick of these dirty deals that get done between Labor and Liberal when you're acting in a way that is not in the public interest and you're not bringing integrity to politics.' With a third of the country now saying that they want the magnifying glass put over what politicians do in this place, Labor, instead of listening, just caves in, comes here and says, 'You've got an hour to debate a very significant piece of legislation that's potentially about giving the High Court more powers.'
We're talking about changing the relationship between the parliament and the High Court, on what limited information we've got from Labor, and they want us to debate it in an hour—a bill that we haven't even seen for a day. Well, I say this to you, Labor: this legislation may well end up back in the High Court. You may well come here again, wanting another piece of legislation to tidy up the errors in the first piece of legislation that you did because the Liberals rushed you into it.
This is no way to run a country—to hand over the keys to the opposition. Labor are handing over the keys to Peter Dutton and then wondering why it is that they're suffering as a result. Well, no. If you want to deal with the challenges this country faces, then think about them soberly, do it in a way that puts the public interest first, that respects this place, and then you might start getting a bit more respect from the people. But you are asking us to rush through legislation that we saw for the first time this morning, dealing with one of the most significant issues in this parliament, and that is something that we will oppose.
~~Long debate text truncated.~~
The majority voted in favour of a [motion](https://www.openaustralia.org.au/debate/?id=2023-11-27.153.4) to agree with the main idea of [the bill](https://parlinfo.aph.gov.au/parlInfo/search/display/display.w3p;query=Id:legislation/billhome/r7128). In parliamentary jargon, they voted to read the bill for a second time. This means that they can now discuss it in greater detail.
### What is the bill's main idea?
According to the [bills digest](https://www.aph.gov.au/Parliamentary_Business/Bills_Legislation/bd/bd2324a/24bd38) (which is a document prepared by the parliamentary library):
> * *The purpose of the [Migration Amendment (Bridging Visa Conditions and Other Measures) Bill 2023](https://parlinfo.aph.gov.au/parlInfo/search/display/display.w3p;query=Id:legislation/billhome/r7128) is to make a number of amendments following the rapid introduction and passage of the Migration Amendment (Bridging Visa Conditions) Act 2023.*
>
> * *Specifically, the Bill will create new criminal offences for breaching certain visa conditions, amend the circumstances when a Minister must vary the conditions for a Bridging Visa R, and introduce new powers for the collection and use of information related to an electronic monitoring device.*
>
> * *On 8 November 2023, the High Court of Australia ordered the release of an individual known as NZYQ from immigration detention, finding his detention unlawful.
On 16 November 2023, the Government introduced the Migration Amendment (Bridging Visa Conditions) Bill 2023. This Bill passed both Houses that day with the support of the Opposition and received assent on 17 November prior to the High Court handing down its reasons in the NZYQ decision on 28 November 2023.*
>
> * *The Migration Amendment (Bridging Visa Conditions) Act 2023 amended the Migration Act 1958 and the Migration Regulations 1994 to allow for the imposition of new visa conditions and the creation of offences for breaches of certain visa conditions which apply to non-citizens for whom there is no real prospect of removal from Australia becoming practicable in the reasonably foreseeable future (the NZYQ-affected cohort).*
>
> * *Stakeholders have raised significant concerns with these new provisions, and they are already the subject of at least 3 High Court challenges.*
>
> * *Media reporting has foreshadowed that the Government will seek to move amendments to the Bill to introduce a new detention order scheme to be modelled on the continuing detention order scheme in Division 105A of the Criminal Code.
The Opposition and the Australian Greens, as well as a number of independents, did not support the passage of the Bill through the House of Representatives.*