Bob McMullan (Fraser, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I want to use this opportunity to raise once again my concerns about the treatment of David Hicks and about the continuing operation of the Guantanamo Bay detention centre. It is humiliating to Australia that one of our citizens has had to seek to exercise a right to British citizenship to get a shot at justice. However critical one might be of the Blair government’s policy on Iraq, they have been unequivocal about Guantanamo: it is no place for British citizens to be held because they will not get justice. Australia should say the same. Tony Blair has said that Guantanamo should close; the Australian government should do no less. Jack Straw, the former Foreign Secretary, has said correctly that it was as a result of his diplomacy that all the British citizens held at Guantanamo Bay were released. I wish our foreign minister could make the same claim. In fact I wish he had even tried.

Even former Prime Minister Berlusconi of Italy and Chancellor Merkel of Germany have expressed concerns but the Howard government has said nothing. Just calling for the closure is not enough. The people in Guantanamo are not saints and angels, and nobody wants to say, ‘Open the gates and let them all walk out.’ Through all the years we have had this debate, it has been extremely difficult to find an appropriate forum in which to deal with these people.

Clearly the military commissions are totally inappropriate, and no Western country except Australia accepts that its citizens should be tried there. I want to draw attention to a positive proposal that is circulating for an alternative to deal fairly with all the people in Guantanamo, including David Hicks. The proposal has been published by the Center for American Progress. If members wish to see it they can look at the website; all they need to do is remember the American way to spell ‘centre’ and they will find it quickly. The Center for American Progress is proposing a special tribunal for international terrorist suspects, based on the models developed for Lockerbie and for the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia.

I do not agree with absolutely everything in this paper, but I think it is the best, most positive proposal about saying, ‘We need to give justice even to people accused of the most terrible crimes.’ We gave justice to the people who were charged with blowing up the aircraft over Lockerbie—in which a friend of mine was killed. They should have had justice. They should have been tried fairly, and they were. David Hicks should get no less. All those other people in Guantanamo should get no less. It is a blot on the record of the Howard government that they stand idly by, cheering from the sidelines, while our citizen has been 4½ years in detention without trial or charge. They have been saying it is appropriate and they have done nothing. They are the worst Western government in the world on this matter. (Time expired)