Bob Brown (Tasmania, Australian Greens) Share this | Hansard source

Is it not the case that a parliament, particularly ministers—who evolve laws for the good running of the country—have to have the foresight to anticipate circumstances so that the prosecution and practice of the law can proceed? But in this situation the government, being found by the High Court not to be able to prosecute certain persons being held on people-smuggling charges, has decided to retrospectively apply a law that may well prove them to be guilty—not in relation to a law that stood when they were arrested but a law that, consequent to cases dealing with their proper judicial handling, has been altered by the passage of the legislation we now have before us in the Senate.