Little Andrew: Immigration Amendment Bill (No 2) — First ReadingText is subject to correctionLittle Andrew: Immigration Amendment Bill (No 2) — First Reading[Sitting date: 19 November 2013. Volume:695;Page:15088. Text is subject to correction.]ANDREW LITTLE (Labour): It is one of those days when it is easy to forget even some of those who make a good contribution in the House. On that note I just want to make this comment about the honourable member who spoke last Mike Sabin. The Immigration Amendment Bill (No 2) follows on from one we had earlier this year about immigration. I recall the debates about that bill which was all about people-smuggling and the vast hordes of armies of people ready to be hoovered up and brought down here people who are sailing across the Tasman. It was the Government and its members who were saying that this was a real threat and that those people-smugglers had those potential refugees on the horizon ready to come down sweep down from parts hither and thither and flood the nation with otherwise unmeritorious claims for refugee status. It was the members of the Opposition who were saying: “This doesn’t sound right to us. Where is the evidence?”. I am pleased to see however that the Government now having seen the evidence which is a grainy recording of an alleged people-smuggler somewhere in Australia saying that there are people ready to come down here treats it with the scant regard we gave it at the time.This bill makes some important modifications. It is worthy of examination by the Transport and Industrial Relations Committee and for that reason we are supporting it. But I just want to sound this note of caution as we go into that process that scrutiny process and just say that there are some aspects that cause us concern. It goes back to that hoary old chestnut that seems to apply to so many pieces of legislation from this Government where basic human rights and citizen rights are ridden roughshod over. We can justify those things with all sorts of claims to nationalism saying that those people are a scourge and that local people will be affronted and affected by it. But the reality is that like it or not—and irrespective of the origins of people how they sometimes get here and the nefarious means by which they travel here—they are people.So I look with alarm at clauses like clause 33 which creates a new section 111 in the Immigration Act that allows the taking of biometric samples and information irrespective of the status of the immigration application. In fact the application could bedeclined and under this amendment to the legislation the unsuccessful applicant would still be obliged to provide that information. Regardless of all the assurances that we have had in the last 18 months or 2 years about how much work is being done to secure the information systems and the databases of the Government the reality is that they are not secure. People are being required to give evermore personal important and intimate pieces of information about themselves and we have no assurance about the security of that information. Nor do we have any assurance about how it might be used. We do not know whether the information having been collected for one purpose might be used for another. When we start talking about biometric information which can sound somewhat innocuous—it can be irises it can be thumbprints and fingerprints and all those sorts of things—I nevertheless have real concerns about giving Government officials of whichever Government the power to get more personal and intimate information when there may not be any need to do so.So we will look very carefully at those particular provisions that give power to override citizen and human rights and we will want to make sure that they are properly justified in the context in which they are being given.