House of Representatives on Tuesday 2nd September 2025

Home Affairs Legislation Amendment (2025 Measures No. 1) Bill 2025 - Second Reading

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Here we are again—a new parliament but the same shambolic handling of Australia's migration system from the Albanese Labor government. Another bill introduced at the eleventh hour, subverting proper parliamentary scrutiny, as Labor tries to patch over its own failings. Again, it has fallen to the coalition to help clean up Labor's mess.

This will be the fifth bill Labor has introduced in an attempt to fix the chaos it created when it released hundreds of dangerous criminals onto our streets after it lost the NZYQ case almost two years ago. Make no mistake, it is the Labor government's successive policy failures that have brought us to this position in the first place. It's not the High Court, it's not the coalition or the Greens. This mess sits at Labor's feet alone. When the High Court handed down its ruling in the NZYQ case in November 2023, this government was caught flat-footed when it should have had the laws drafted and ready to go. Instead, this panicked government released hundreds of criminal noncitizens into the community with no plan to manage the very serious risks to public safety.

On 14 November 2023, the hopeless former minister for home affairs and the hopeless former minister for immigration said that the released detainees were 'subject to a range of strict mandatory visa conditions'. But, as it turns out, no visas were in place at all. According to documents obtained by the coalition under FOI, this government released at least 83 detainees from immigration detention into the community without any visa conditions, meaning they were roaming about freely and completely unchecked.

You couldn't make this stuff up. This was the first of many times the coalition would help to clean up the government's mess—in this instance, by facilitating the urgent passage of the Migration Amendment (Bridging Visa Conditions) Act 2023 on 18 November 2023 so that strict visa conditions could be imposed. Immediately after the NZYQ ruling, the coalition called on the government to implement a preventive detention regime to re-detain the most serious risk-offenders that had been released. After the member for Hotham suggested, 'You can't out legislate the High Court,' the government was dragged into finally passing new laws to implement a community safety order scheme—after we'd been demanding it for weeks.

In March last year, the member for Scullin was forced to admit that the government had issued invalid visas to nearly 150 people released from immigration detention because of a technical legal error. As a result, our law enforcement agencies were forced to withdraw charges, for alleged visa breaches, against 10 hardened criminals in the NZYQ cohort. Then, in an extraordinary revelation in Senate estimates, the Department of Home Affairs admitted that murderers and sex offenders were being released by the government without being subject to electronic monitoring, meaning they were free in the Australian community without any surveillance at all. They were let loose on the Australian people.

Who could forget the member for Scullin's bizarre interview on Sky News, where he claimed this cohort were being monitored under an imaginary drone surveillance program, which he was forced to admit didn't exist? I think he's been watching too many Hollywood movies in his spare time!

He's still a minister. Tragically, it is the Australian community that has borne the very real consequences of this government's dysfunction. We will never forget the tragic image of the front page of the West Australian that showed a cancer survivor and grandmother who, allegedly, had been bashed at the hands of a freed immigration detainee who'd had his ankle monitor removed despite already facing charges for visa breaches and other offences.

This came after repeated warnings from the coalition for the government to move quickly to re-detain the highest-risk offenders. It is little wonder that the Prime Minister jettisoned the member for Hotham and the member for Scullin from the Home Affairs portfolio, after their chaotic and dysfunctional approach to Australia's immigration and border protection regime.

The member for Watson's test as the new Minister for Home Affairs was to fix this mess and restore order to our immigration system. But, evidently, he has failed too. More than 18 months after the parliament passed legislation to create the community safety order regime, the minister has still not lodged a single application for a preventive detention order, despite the member for Scullin promising in May last year that six applications were nearly ready and a further 26 were in the advanced stage of preparation. This is a shocking failure on community safety from the Albanese Labor government.

Tragically, we have seen very real consequences for this inaction. On 15 June, a 62-year-old man was, allegedly, viciously assaulted in Melbourne by an immigration detainee freed by this government. The victim died from his injuries in hospital and the perpetrator has since been charged with his murder. This terrible situation could have been avoided if the government had used its preventive detention powers to put this dangerous criminal behind bars before he had harmed an innocent Australian.

Later, in June, the Minister for Home Affairs effectively admitted he had given up on his own preventive detention regime, saying, 'No-one has come close to reaching the threshold that is in that legislation.' But instead of seeking to fix the problem by, for example, changing the law to lower this threshold, the minister has thrown up his hands and put it in the too-hard basket. I suppose we shouldn't be too surprised. When the member for Watson last held the immigration portfolio, in 2013, in just 80 days he allowed 83 boats carrying 6,634 people into our country and put 1,992 children in detention.

Things aren't looking much better this time around. The minister needs to pull his act together and use the powers the parliament gave the government to get these high-risk offenders off the streets before they commit more crimes against innocent Australians. There is no reason he can't do this at the same time he pursues avenues for deportation, like the third-country arrangements dealt with by this bill.

The need for action has never been more acute. As at 31 July, there were 354 dangerous criminals free in the community following the NZYQ decision. Of these, only 90—less than a third—are subject to electronic monitoring and only 45 individuals are subject to a specified curfew. This means that there are well over 200 dangerous criminals free in the community without ankle bracelets or curfews—basics, really. If you're letting criminals out into the community, you'd think you'd put them under some sort of surveillance—not this government; not the Albanese government. We also know, from previous evidence given by the Department of Home Affairs, that there are child sex offenders free in the community who are not subject to electronic monitoring, curfew or any form of surveillance. Because of Labor's botched legislation, multiple criminals convicted for visa breaches received suspended sentences despite the parliament legislating mandatory 12-month minimum sentences shortly after the NZYQ fiasco began. This minister is asleep at the wheel, and his negligence is putting the Australian community at risk.

Lives at risk—exactly, the member for Riverina. Sadly, these are just the latest in a litany of failures from the Albanese Labor government on immigration and community safety, including the former minister for immigration's direction 99 debacle, which saw 97 criminal noncitizens avoid deportation from Australia because of the government's capitulation to pressure from the New Zealand government, and the Minister for Home Affairs' humanitarian program on the run, wherein he admitted he had been personally interviewing Palestinian families before granting them humanitarian visas. This comes after the government granted thousands of tourist visas to people in a war zone controlled by a terrorist group before they were referred to ASIO for proper security checks.

The Albanese Labor government is undermining Operation Sovereign Borders by overseeing a 21 per cent decrease in aerial flying hours and a 16 per cent decrease in maritime patrol days compared to 2020-21. We've seen at least 35 illegal people-smuggling ventures carrying more than 600 illegal boat arrivals make the journey to Australia since the Albanese Labor government came to power. At least five ventures have made it to the Australian mainland, at least two of which deposited their passengers and escaped undetected by Australian authorities, something that was almost unheard of in the decade before Labor took government.

The current bill seeks to address legal arguments being used by NZYQ affected individuals to prevent their removal from Australia to Nauru under a third-country reception arrangement. They have mounted two types of legal challenge: firstly, by claiming that they were owed procedural fairness before the Commonwealth took the decision to apply for a Nauruan visa; and secondly, by claiming that there was an error in an old visa decision relating to them. The bill seeks to address these lines of argument by putting beyond doubt that the Commonwealth does not need to afford an individual procedural fairness when taking action in relation to third-country reception arrangements, disclosing information about removal-pathway noncitizens to foreign governments and issuing removal-pathway directions requiring noncitizens to take certain steps to facilitate their lawful removal from Australia. These provisions are primarily directed to noncitizens who have exhausted all legitimate avenues to remain in Australia and for whom removal is the only remaining outcome under Australian law. The bill also removes legal uncertainty created by the NZYQ decision by validating relevant visa decisions so they are taken, for all purposes, to have always been valid, as if they had been made in accordance with the current law established by NZYQ.

The coalition has always sought to work constructively with government to fix the immigration mess of the Labor government's own making. We'll always act in the national interest, and this is absolutely in the Australian peoples' interest. We cannot have criminals roaming freely without surveillance in our community any longer. I understand the net effect of this bill is to provide legal certainty which will minimise delays in removing NZYQ affected individuals from Australia, meaning that people with no legal right to be here will be removed as soon as possible. Basic rules of hospitality apply. If you're in this country, you do the right thing. If you don't, you're gone.

You're out. It's how we'd operate with our own homes. This country has the same standards.

Given this imperative and the fact that this bill is constrained in its scope to addressing specific legal challenges relating to noncitizens on a removal pathway, the coalition is facilitating the urgent passage of this bill through the House, despite Labor's rushed and dysfunctional process. We will interrogate this bill via an inquiry in the other place to ensure there are no mistakes or unintended consequences, given this government's atrocious track record when it comes to this kind of legislation. Remember, this is the fifth bill Labor has introduced to manage its NZYQ disaster. We would not be doing the right thing by the Australian people if we did not insist on an inquiry in the other place, even if we are committed to facilitating the urgent passage of this bill.

I want to restate that the only reason we are here today is that Labor failed to get it right the last four times. Again, it is Labor that has botched its handling of Australia's immigration system, and, again, it has fallen to the coalition as the adults in the room to clean up Labor's mess. We will clean up Labor's mess, and that is why we will support the passage of this bill through the House.