The Minister is aware that I have some continuing concerns since I withdrew my Amendment 29. Having listened to the debate on this amendment today, there is a word in the amendment that causes me great concern in the context of the story I recounted to the House. The word is “referral”. In the case of my story, referral would have come far too late: the children were in the middle of the Atlantic before anybody could have referred them. Those children could not have referred themselves. They were deposited at the quayside. We did not know who they were or where they came from. They were put on to a boat and they sailed away within three hours. As they could not have referred themselves, they were therefore wholly dependent on the authenticity and legality of some certificate to the effect that they were properly selected and briefed to become migrants. They are lost people, as far as I am concerned—a lost generation. There were 1,760 of them; I have been able to check up since.
Where this clause is wrong goes back to the point that I have been asking the Minister about since I withdrew my amendment. How have we got in here an absolutely legal authority for every child who is put into a migration situation? We have done this regularly about every 20 years for the last 250 years and we need to stop it. We need to outlaw ourselves from doing it any more. That was my concern when I recounted my story and I am not satisfied that the Bill in its present form locks that door once and for all so that we cannot prise it open again and do it.
In the circumstances I described, the travel arrangements could be made under the entire authority of the Australian Government and the Australian civil service in London. The children were coming from local councils that wanted to get rid of them and from orphanages that could not cope with the numbers they had. They put them in a truck and dumped them on the quayside at Tilbury. We put them on a boat and they sailed. Where is a referral going to come in to save those children from that fate? We have not made
illegal the act of forced transportation. We have been doing it for 250 years and I am not satisfied yet that this Bill blocks it.