National Security

Sharon Claydon

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

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

I'll ask everybody to keep the interjections down.

Peter Dutton

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

That includes you, Member for Deakin.

Peter Dutton

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

We allowed them to hand it down?

Sharon Claydon

Ministers at the table, please.

Peter Dutton

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

You're in the wrong parliament, mate!

Clare O'Neil

You'd be better suited to state parliament!

Peter Dutton

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

Is the motion seconded?

Dan Tehan

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

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

Dan Tehan

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

Sharon Claydon

Don't you start, Member for Petrie.

Dan Tehan

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

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

Long debate text truncated.