Little Andrew: Habeas Corpus Amendment Bill — First Reading 
Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume 
Little Andrew: Habeas Corpus Amendment Bill — First Reading 
[Sitting date: 15 August 2012. Volume:682;Page:4439. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.] 
ANDREW LITTLE (Labour) 
: 
 As my colleague Charles Chauvel has noted Labour will support this bill the Habeas Corpus Amendment Bill but we will support it because it needs examination. As other speakers have said the holy writ—almost—of habeas corpus is very important. It goes back to the Magna Carta. Those were feudal days. The National Party will be familiar with them because those are its underlying values those are its underlying precepts—it understands feudalism. But what is important about— 
Hon Maurice Williamson 
: This is how the EPMU used to work in the feudal days. 
ANDREW LITTLE 
: Everybody in the Engineering Printing and Manufacturing Union was delivered up on request I can tell you that. It is a very important protection of liberty and freedom. On this side of the House we value it and we treasure it. This writ is not a matter of statute; it is part of the inherent jurisdiction of the High Court—a court of inherent jurisdiction. It is not something that should be lightly interfered with. It is not appropriate in my view to justify changes to this important institution—the institution of the writ of habeas corpus—on the grounds of greater efficiency. 
The Better Public Services mantra that we hear all the time might be good for the cost-cutters the accountants and the bean counters but this is a question of individual liberty and individual freedom. Although we can do some things better procedurally when it comes to habeas corpus when it comes to the oversight that the High Court has to preserve and protect freedom and protect citizens from unlawful detention we should be very careful about the erosions of those principles—the priority principle—and the requirement for the body to be delivered up in an appropriate time frame. It is entirely appropriate that the court be given guidance that where clearly the detention is lawful and the application is frivolous or otherwise not meritorious there should be some scope to dismiss it without the Crown having to defend the detention. 
I want to say that in my researches about recent applications for habeas corpus the House might be interested to know that the most recent application in the Commonwealth jurisdiction was in the High Court of Bombay in the last day or so. It related to the delivery up of a cow and of course that was in the context in which the bovine species is very important to them. Some chap had lost his cow had his cow detained last November and wanted it delivered up. The habeas corpus application was the only way he could think of to do it. The cow sadly had passed away some months ago and was not capable of being delivered up except perhaps as a set of steaks. 
I want to say this though which is very important: part of the examination of this legislation will coincide with the examination by another select committee of another piece of legislation that is a Government bill and that is the Immigration Amendment Bill. That is a hideous piece of legislation. It is the total erosion of liberty and freedom. There could not be a greater erosion of it. It is interesting. Mr Auchinvole the sponsor of this member’s bill which purports to preserve and enhance habeas corpus is a Government member presiding over a bill that will do precisely the opposite when it comes to the destitute persons who turn up on our border applying for refugee status because that piece of legislation will do the opposite of habeas corpus. It will allow the Crown to detain unfortunate persons who turn up on our border for up to 6 months without having any say on any application to detain them with limited scope for judicial review and with limited scope for judicial oversight. So we should examine that legislation as against this member’s bill to preserve protect and advance habeas corpus. 
I just hope that now as these two bills move through the House this House will look at these two pieces of legislation and will look askance at Mr Auchinvole and at the members opposite and ask how can it be that that party—the great party of freedom and enterprise as it purports to be—will allow mass detention for up to 6 months without recourse to appeal and also then say that it supports habeas corpus. The two do not stand together.