Andrew Giles (Scullin, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Cities and Urban Infrastructure) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Today there are 46 people detained at the Park Hotel in Carlton—refugees and people who have sought asylum—46 more than there should be. Twenty-one of these vulnerable people have COVID—21 more than should have. This is awful, and it simply should not have happened, because places like the Park Hotel aren't safe for them to be, especially during this pandemic. This is hardly a secret. It's something that I raised with then Minister Tudge in March last year. Let's remember too that the human beings in the Park Hotel are there because they were unwell. At least 14 people in the Park Hotel are immunocompromised and at a heightened risk. Our duty of care to them was to keep them safe and to get them better. We have failed, profoundly. We have failed these men and failed a wider test too.

Australians are better than this. I don't just think this; I know it. Every day during the pandemic we have seen demonstrations of our concern and care for those around us, informed by a sense of decency, a responsibility, a recognition that COVID homes in on vulnerability, but not the Morrison-Joyce government. Where is the policy rationale for this cruelty? How is it that some have been released from APOD detention but not others, when we've known for so long the inherent dangers of these arrangements? And how can it be that vaccination rates amongst detainees are so low, given their vulnerabilities? Only 64 per cent of people in the immigration detention network have received their first dose of the vaccine, almost 30 per cent lower than the general Victorian population, which raises the question: what is being done to work with these men and their trusted advisers to encourage vaccination? Because keeping safe people who are in our care is, or should be, non-negotiable.

This can't continue. These men—these people—have been through so much, and now they must be so scared, for no reason save for a series of unacceptable failures by this government, who still, as I stand here now, with 21 people with COVID, won't accept their responsibility for what they've done and for what they've failed to do—provide decent care to human beings in need. As a refugee in the Park Hotel has said, 'We're not just speaking about a visa; we are speaking about our lives,' Their lives and our responsibility.

I want to speak about another matter which goes to our responsibility and our obligations to people asking us for help. It's my view that we owe the people of Afghanistan a moral obligation. I can't see how an argument can be made against this, given our shared recent history. I've been deeply affected by the voice of Afghan Australians. They need to be listened to and they need to be responded to. To bear witness to their concerns and to their fears is something I've felt deeply affecting, but how this affects me is beside the point. The point is to act where we can. There is so much we can do. Minister Hawke promised that no Afghan visa holder currently in Australia would be asked to return to Afghanistan while the security situation there remains dire. Yet this government's temporary protection visa scheme denies thousands of people with a recognised need for protection the opportunity for permanent protection and the chance to build their lives here. Since mid August we have received more than 26,000 applications for humanitarian visas from Afghan nationals, covering an estimated 100,000 people seeking our protection. But many weeks after Mr Morrison said that a proposed intake of 3,000 refugees was a floor and not a ceiling, we're no closer to appreciating where that ceiling might be. Again, this isn't good enough. We can and we must do better; we must offer people certainty.

My colleague Senator Keneally and I will be writing to Minister Hawke very shortly, but we shouldn't need to. The Morrison-Joyce government should simply be letting Australians know what they're doing in the face of this crisis, and they should be doing what needs to be done.