Mr. Liam Herrick:

Whereas it was the Government's intention to publish that legislation before the end of this year, we now understand that this will not happen. There is a system of safeguards in other states that we do not have. We have heard that it is meant to be detention as a last resort, and there is reference to alternatives to detention, but we understand that they will not be set out in the Bill. They will be operational matters for the Department so we do not have sight of what they might be. It is reasonable to assume that alternatives that might include tagging or surveillance would be quite complex to put in place because there would be data protection and surveillance issues. The Senator is right about the timeline. We are talking about next June and we know how long it takes to furnish, establish and regulate places of detention more generally, so it is not clear to us at this stage how this work in practice.