Senator COONEY (9:37 PM) —The Migration Legislation Amendment (Strengthening of Provisions relating to Character and Conduct) Bill 1998 is another bill in a long history of bills in the area of migration. Like the others, it is of great significance. To repeat a trite point that has been repeated again and again in debates in this house, this country—other than the indigenous people—is a country that is based on migration. In the English speaking world it stands with the US and Canada. It is one of the three great centres to which people come to set up a new life, to establish a new nation and to identify themselves with the people already here. In saying that I do not take away from the great contributions that places like New Zealand make, but I think that of the great migration nations in the English speaking world they are the three.

But, unlike Canada and the United States, we seem to have lost faith in the good of migration and faith in what migration can do for us. We seem to have lost faith in the identity we have as a great migrant country. This bill is an indication of our loss of confidence, an indication that we are closing in upon ourselves in this area instead of taking in new people.

This bill does not deal with the issue of who comes here to stay for the purposes of making their lives; it deals with people who come here as visitors and whom we want to get rid of because we decide they are not fit people to come. This is of significance in that argument that I was putting before about migration to this country because it shows an attitude to people who come from outside.

What this bill seeks to do is strengthen the provisions relating to character and conduct. A country is entitled to take in whom it will and to exclude whom it will. That is understood on the international scene. But, putting aside that legal concept, there is also a moral concept that we should conduct ourselves around the world in a decent and fair way. I am afraid this bill does not live up in all respects to that test.

This bill is to do with the Migration Act. The Minister for Immigration and Multicultural Affairs, Mr Ruddock, is a man who has a reputation for acting according to his conscience, who has a record of wanting to do the right thing not only by migrants but people around the world. I think, for example, he is a very eminent member of Amnesty. I therefore do not want to condemn him in what I say about this act, but it does trouble me. Proposed subsection 501(1) says:

The Minister may refuse to grant a visa to a person if the person does not satisfy the Minister that the person passes the character test.

It goes on to say that not only may he refuse a visa but he may, if he reasonably suspects the person does not pass the character test, cancel that visa. That gives the minister great power. It is a power that is not subject, in so far as the government is able to ensure this, to a judicial review. This is a worry because of proposed subsection 501(6). It sets out the tests that should be applied when judging whether a person has such a character as should lead to him being excluded. Those tests are very much the sorts of tests that are applied by a court.

We have three arms of government. Parliament makes the laws, it pursues a policy. The courts should stay out of policy matters. But subsection 501(6) is not a policy matter; it is a matter of applying a set of criteria to a set of facts so that the criteria set out in the act will be used to identify whether a whole series of points of evidence are such as to exclude this person. That is very much a judicial exercise and this proposed section proposes to exclude any judicial review of the minister's position.

As I understand it, the minister must apply the provisions of subsection 501 personally, and of course that goes a great way to reassuring people that the whole system is work ing properly. But it draws back from the present position where people do have judicial review, and it is that moving away from judicial review that is a matter of concern. I will illustrate what I mean by that. If a person has a substantial criminal record, the minister may—and I note that it is a may, not a must—refuse to grant a visa or may cancel a visa. But the problem with that is this: a person has a substantial criminal record if that person has been sentenced to a term of imprisonment of 12 months or more. It does not matter when, and it does not matter whether it is somebody like Anwar Ibrahim, who is now in court in Malaysia—and we have some concern about that; the Prime Minister and the Minister for Foreign Affairs made that point when they were there recently—if he is convicted in such a court, it is open to the minister to exclude such a person.

If you look at subsection 12 you will see that `the court' includes a court martial or similar military tribunal. Even the court martials that are run within our system are not always good. I was reading on the weekend—and you would understand this well, Mr Acting Deputy President—of cases in the First World War where all sorts of injustices were done because of the way court martials went around their task. So this particular section stops people from coming to Australia, or excludes them if they are here, on a minister's orders, on the basis of evidence that might be produced from courts that are quite tainted and quite corrupt. Unfortunately, the judicial systems around the world do not have the integrity that our courts do, do not have the reputation that our courts do, do not have the ability that our courts do; yet those courts around the world, if they give anybody a sentence of 12 months or more, can lead to a person being excluded from our country or thrown out.

You might better understand these provisions if there were some evidence of people who have come here and have done violence to this country. I ask the minister if evidence can be produced here now as to how many people who have come in on a visa, or who have come here in any event without a visa, have a criminal record—as this suggests—and have done physical violence to people in this country, as distinct from giving occasion for some people here to say that his or her very presence disturbs the population already here.

The point I am making is that this particular legislation is directed to resolving a crisis, and there just is not a crisis in this country that this legislation addresses. There is not a history of people coming to this country and doing violence. We have had people excluded from this country who should not have been. I cite as an example Gerry Adams from Ireland, who was allowed into America but not allowed here. It is an indication of a certain paranoia that does not go well in a country as open as ours should be.

Debate interrupted.