Carmen Lawrence (Fremantle, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

May I first of all express my admiration for the members opposite who are taking what I know for them will be a very difficult step but on the basis of principles that they hold dear. Like them, I believe that the Migration Amendment (Designated Unauthorised Arrivals) Bill 2006 is truly bizarre legislation. It effectively deletes Australia from our own legal coverage and abandons our responsibilities as an international citizen while attempting to foist these responsibilities onto our impoverished neighbours in the region, most of whom are not even signatories to the necessary international conventions for protecting refugees.

The Migration Amendment (Designated Unauthorised Arrivals) Bill 2006, as I am sure many other speakers have already pointed out, represents a massive retreat from the very first steps we saw from the government so recently in the direction of the more humane treatment of asylum seekers. It is a complete about-face. The Prime Minister and the responsible minister have effected a spectacularly craven and abjectly humiliating retreat from what was a recently negotiated policy position—and I can understand why members opposite feel betrayed.

Clearly, as I have said before, it is not the result of some careful reanalysis of the policy position or of strong pressure from the Australian people—indeed, generally speaking, the Australian people have shown they are not supportive of these moves—and nor is it the result of a sustained campaign from MPs in this place. It is basically to accommodate another government, and that makes the measures even harder to stomach. It is designed to shut up the critics of that other government—Indonesia—and to move them from the public gaze and from access to the media to the now infamous camps of Nauru and Manus Island.

The minister repeatedly told the West Papuans who were given asylum that they could not expect to come here and use Australia as a platform for criticising the regime that they had fled—not on Nauru they won’t, when they are sent there. Any further refugees from West Papua will be effectively silenced. There is no doubt about it. There will be no more embarrassing images of independence flags and songs on the tarmac, and no exposure of the reasons they sought asylum and the reasons why their asylum was accepted.

As we now know, the about-face followed protests from Indonesia about the group of West Papuans who were quite properly granted protection visas. As a result of that pressure, the Prime Minister announced that the government will no longer process asylum seekers who arrive on the Australian mainland under Australia’s migration system. That is effectively what this legislation does. In an attempt to appease the Indonesian government, the Howard government bizarrely excised the Australian mainland from Australia’s migration zone and announced that any future asylum seekers would have to be processed in countries other than Australia.

In other words, at the first whiff of disapproval of the proper administration of Australian law, the Prime Minister, our so-called man of steel, folded in what was a pretty humiliating acquiescence. We have seen the same pattern in other areas of foreign policy, particularly in his relationship with the US President, George Bush. He was not prepared to defend our own laws and to explain to Indonesia the quite proper processes which led to the refugees from West Papua being granted asylum here in the first place. That was our law in operation—laws passed by this parliament and accepted by the wider community.

Disappointingly, the Prime Minister was not even prepared to mount an argument about the importance of our own sovereignty or to advance the reasons why we, as a nation, are committed to the proper protection of genuine refugees, why we are signed up to those conventions, let alone to insist to Indonesia that they should desist from treating the West Papuans so brutally that they actually do have to flee for their lives and seek asylum in a country like Australia.

Instead, we saw the Prime Minister set aside what I am sure all of us thought were once universally agreed standards of human decency so as not to offend a neighbouring country. Not for the first time, sadly, he trashed our values to accommodate other nations. He took us to war in Iraq, for example, with the grotesque consequences that we see every night in the news. That can hardly be considered a success. Certainly, the poor Iraqi people know that it is not, as they sacrifice their lives and their livelihoods.

Despite the monstrous destruction of Lebanon, the most recent example, and the mounting death toll in that conflict, the Prime Minister has so far failed to do the right thing and add his voice to the many who are calling for an immediate ceasefire—in other words, to speak from the pulpit that he has as Prime Minister for an immediate end to the killing, the violence and the hatred. Instead, again, he and his foreign minister mimic the Bush administration in both their analysis and the spin they place on the events that are going on there now. In the Prime Minister’s eyes, it would appear, people in all of these examples are disposable for political advantage; yet he should know just from observation that violence breeds violence and that it is madness to try to build our future on the misfortunes of others, whether it is the West Papuans, the Iraqis or the Lebanese people.

But I guess I was not surprised by any of this. Why? Because this government’s treatment of asylum seekers is the inhumane template which governs their behaviour in so many areas of foreign policy. This is not novel. They continue to trample on what I regard as those core Australian values and to repudiate international norms while all the while, I must say, hypocritically lecturing the rest of us about such values. Live by them, I say. If you are Christians, live by those values. How can you treat other human beings in this way? How can you stand up in this parliament in the morning and say the prayers that bring down the blessings of the Christian God upon your heads and then treat your fellow human beings like so much rubbish?

Australia’s interests in the region are not served by showing that we can be bullied into abandoning these cherished values of freedom, independence and decency and into abandoning the idea that we should respect the human rights of all comers by setting them aside so lightly. The clear message the government is sending to anyone who will listen, and to the community as well, is that these values of care, compassion, freedom, integrity, responsibility, honesty and trustworthiness—the ones the government would have students plaster on the wall alongside images of Simpson’s donkey—are no more than words and that the government does not really mean a word of it. I think by now Australians understand this duplicity. On the 10th anniversary of the election of the Howard government, an opinion polling taken at that time showed that the majority of Australians now believe that, under Howard, we are a meaner and less fair society than we once were. They can see what has happened to those values.

What is amazing about all of this and why some of the government’s MPs are so disaffected—and I do not blame them—is that just last year there was a unanimous vote in this parliament to amend the Migration Act to effect what was a much needed overhaul of Australia’s detention and asylum-seeking regime. These much needed changes followed very extensive and protracted discussion and negotiation with colleagues on the opposite side.

I think what the Prime Minister has shown, as he did when he made a deal with Mr Costello, the Treasurer, to transfer leadership at an appropriate time, is that direct negotiation with him is not worth a lot and that he is actually not to be trusted at all. This backflip certainly shows that. To me it looks as though the Prime Minister was waiting for the first opportunity to throw off the cloak of decency which he had assumed, to throw off at the first opportunity the facade he had conveniently put on, reluctantly it appears.

Even more incomprehensible is that, in all of these proposed changes, the government’s decision effectively repudiates the lessons which I think everyone thought they had learnt from the Palmer and Comrie reports, not to mention all the others, which so comprehensively documented the destructive effects of prolonged detention. We should not really have to go over this again. It is extraordinary that in this parliament we still need to point out what happens when you keep children in detention for extended periods and what happens when you put people on an island like Nauru, or on Manus Island, for year after year. It is quite simple, and the Prime Minister should understand this: it simply destroys them. These are human lives that are being destroyed. That is not overdramatising it. It is what has happened. I have met with some of these people, and many of them will never recover their lives.

What a lot of people cannot understand, me included, is how this government, with what I regard as its degraded human rights standards, can so shamelessly revert to a system that they know will keep innocent children in detention, even if they are allowed to roam around Nauru. Go and have a look at the place: most of it is blighted by the mining that has taken place there. The people of Nauru have a tough enough time. We know they will be kept in circumstances that will cause them serious harm and uncertainty and that they will be away from the normal community and away from the supports that could assist them to assimilate and begin their new lives. It is truly unbelievable, although we are contemplating it in this legislation, that the government, knowing all these things and with all this evidence, can reintroduce the disgraceful regime of indefinite detention, for which so many people are already paying right now with their sanity.

Not satisfied, in my view, with having trashed Australian standards of compassion and decency, the Prime Minister has shown himself willing to barter our independence as well. By asking the country of origin of asylum seekers, in the case of the West Papuans, to actually comment on the legitimacy of their refugee claim, Australia is placing its own short-term domestic interests ahead of proper determination of refugee status—and, by the way, is breaching all the relevant conventions in the process. They actually suggested that the Indonesian military—for God’s sake!—be allowed to assess the refugee claims of West Papuans. As one commentator put it: that is like asking Saddam Hussein’s regime to review Iraqi asylum claims, or the Taliban to check the Afghan Hazara claims or the Nazis to look at the 1940s Jewish claims for assistance. As another commentator put it: ‘This is an idea which is either short-sighted or wilfully cruel.’ I will leave you to reach your own conclusions.

It is bad enough that these proposed changes to our immigration policy were dictated by another nation, as they clearly were, but their representatives then made sure it was done by coming here to this parliament. If we were truly a friend of Indonesia, as the government clearly wants to suggest we are, we would not be afraid to stand by our own standards and our commitments to treat asylum seekers with at least residual decency, and we would speak the truth to the Indonesian people instead of capitulating to their unreasonable demands. If we were true friends we would tell them what we know about what is going on in West Papua. I have said it in this place before but it bears repeating: we should tell the Indonesians that, yes, we have read the reports and heard the witnesses who attest to the fact that Indonesian police and military have engaged at various times in violence and killings in West Papua. I am sure many of the members here have seen the photographs and images. We should tell them that we know they have been responsible as governments over time for torture killings of detained prisoners and that political, cultural and village leaders have been killed. We should tell them that we know that some detained people have suffered electric shocks, beatings, pistol whipping, water torture and so on. We should tell them that we know these things and that we have seen the evidence.

We should tell them that we are aware of systematic resource exploitation, the destruction of some Papuan resources and the forced relocation and use of unpaid labour. We would tell them these things if we were truly friends to Indonesia. We should tell them that we condemn such actions and that we will protect anyone who flees in terror and we will give them appropriate asylum. If we were true friends we would argue, importantly, that there are other ways to govern the territory. We would support those members of the Indonesian government who are trying to proceed in other ways and to do better. We would tell them that we understand but cannot defend their reluctance to face the facts of what has gone on in West Papua. But the tragedy is that we cannot talk like that to Indonesia. What moral authority do we have when the government actually refuses to respect the human rights of refugees appealing for our help? Why would they listen to us in these circumstances?

As many people have pointed out, this legislation will now be worse than it was before those last hard-won changes were made. I want to consider a number of the deficiencies: now, all unauthorised boat arrivals will be transferred to the offshore centres to have their claims for refugee status assessed; Australia is no longer Australia; and, in what is a truly ‘Alice in Wonderland’ extension of the act, ‘A person is taken to have entered Australia by sea if the person has entered the migration zone by air.’ Figure that one out; talk about the Mad Hatter’s tea party.

Secondly, by deciding only to take asylum seekers as a last resort, and under severely circumscribed conditions, Australia has clearly reneged on its obligations and responsibilities under international law. So many people have commented on that, but it bears repeating: the policy breaches the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the Convention on the Rights of the Child, the Convention on the Elimination of all Forms of Racial Discrimination, the refugees convention and the Convention Against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment—all of these are arguably breached. Although I know the government really does not give a toss about such conventions—it has shown that over a decade—perhaps some of the MPs on the other side, as well as those who have indicated their unwillingness to support this legislation, should pause for a moment and remember that those conventions were drafted as a reaction to the horror of the Holocaust and the conviction of the international community that it should never be allowed to happen again. The Australian government is, in this legislation, sending another clear message, a sad one, that we do not attach much importance to these obligations. In doing so I think it is opening the door for other countries to disregard them as well. It is a very bad example from a wealthy, mature democracy.

Thirdly, in these remote locations, which are not Australian territory, there can be no guarantees about the quality of care. The government cannot give us any guarantees about the quality of care, which we know has been seriously deficient in the past. I think the Dutch psychiatrist Maarten Dormaar, who worked for IOM on Nauru for a period, hit the nail on the head when he described the experience as taking him ‘to the heart of darkness’.

Tragically, children will again be detained, as I have mentioned, with the well-documented and adverse mental health effects which I know the government has tried to consistently deny. But—and I want to underline this—the only documented incidents of pre-adolescent suicide attempts in Australia have occurred in immigration detention. And there have been many. Previously healthy children as young as five have deeply cut themselves, starved themselves, hanged themselves with bedsheets and drunk cleaning fluids to try to end their own lives in detention. That is what happens when you put children in these circumstances. The HREOC report of the inquiry into children in immigration stated:

Children in immigration detention for long periods of time are at high risk of serious mental harm. The Commonwealth’s failure to implement the repeated recommendations by mental health professionals that certain children be removed from the detention environment with their parents amounted to cruel, inhumane and degrading treatment of those children in detention ...

That is a very damning report from HREOC—from anyone, for that matter. But, in order to send its strong message, the government has decided that the suffering and permanent damage of children is a legitimate means to achieving a policy objective. That human beings are political objects has to be unacceptable and must not be allowed back into Australian law.

In addition, in this legislation, despite some of the government’s advertised concessions, there is effectively no review of indefinite detention. What is going to happen to these people if no-one takes them? We know what happened in Australia already with stateless people. Some of them were in detention for five or six years. Some of them remain in limbo right now, effectively under house arrest on very unsatisfactory visas. The government really have not dealt with the problem at all. And, although the government finally saw some sense and removed all but two of those who were remaining on Nauru—those damaged people from Nauru—since the Tampa scandal, they are now preparing to do it all over again. They appear not to have learned a thing. Of course, under the new regime, even if people’s claims succeed, they can stay locked up with no remedy.

The new system offers no guarantees anymore that people found not to be refugees will be returned to a safe country. That, by the way, is something that the government has failed to do already with the refugees who were on Nauru, who ‘volunteered’ to go back to Afghanistan, with the results that we now see documented by the Edmund Rice Centre. Nine of the Hazara people there sent back to Afghanistan have died as a result. At least two of them, children, were almost certainly killed because of the political stance that their father had taken. They were killed on their return, in clear breach of our international obligation not to return people to places where their lives might be endangered—and I put in brackets here: with the cooperation of the International Organisation for Migration.

The International Organisation for Migration is a body that deserves very close scrutiny. It acts as the arm of governments in returning people to places that are not safe. It acts as the arm of government in holding people in these detention centres. It is not an organisation that enjoys the respect these days of Amnesty International, for example. It is not an arm of the United Nations, as some people wrongly suppose. It is a mercenary organisation, paid for these services.

In this legislation there will not—indeed, cannot—be any access to the Australian legal system. Asylum seekers are going to be denied access to any fair and impartial reviews via the process of the Refugee Review Tribunal, which has, as we know, reversed thousands of the government’s decisions in recent years. They are not error free. The recent concessions the minister announced, which might allow for retired RRT members to adjudicate, as far as I understand it have no legal force. There are a range of other deficiencies which I am sure other members will mention.

This is appalling legislation, costly in both monetary and human terms. It represents another retreat from our obligations as decent international citizens. If every country behaved in this way, there would be literally nowhere for people to flee persecution and to find some peace, safety and security. If everyone behaved like the Australian government, the world would be a much more appalling place. This legislation is a travesty. (Time expired)

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