Migration Legislation Amendment (Offshore Processing and Other Measures) Bill 2011

The majority voted against a motion proposed by Liberal MP Scott Morrison.

The motion was to amend a previous motion proposed by Greens MP Adam Bandt. The wording of Morrison's motion is the following:

That all words after "House" be omitted with a view to substituting the following words:

(1) notes that the Government has accepted the Coalition’s policy of offshore processing of asylum seekers on Nauru and Manus Island; and (2) calls upon the Government to implement the full suite of the Coalition’s successful policies and calls upon the government to immediately: (a) restore temporary protection visas for all offshore entry persons found to be refugees; (b) issue new instructions to Northern Command to commence to turn back boats where it is safe to do so; (c) use existing law to remove the benefit of the doubt on a person's identity where there is a reasonable belief that a person has deliberately discarded their documentation; and (d) restore the Bali Process to once again focus on deterrence and border security.

Background to the bill

The bill was originally introduced in the House of Representatives as the Migration Legislation Amendment (Offshore Processing and Other Measures) Bill 2011. It was drafted in response to the High Court's judgement in Plaintiff M70/2011 v Minister for Immigration and Citizenship () HCA 32, which put an end to the Labor Government's Malaysia Solution policy.(Read more about the decision on Wikipedia here and on ABC News here. Read more about the effect of this decision on the Malaysia Solution here.)

To this end, the bill amends the Migration Act 1958 to replace the existing framework for taking offshore entry persons to another country for assessment of their claims to be refugees. The bill also replaces discretionary detention with mandatory detention for all asylum seekers at an offshore place, such as Christmas Island, and alters the Immigration (Guardianship of Children) Act 1946 in relation to making and implementing any decision to remove, deport or take a non-citizen child from Australia by overriding the guardianship obligations under that Act.

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