Bob Brown (Tasmania, Australian Greens) Share this | Hansard source

by leave—I too want to express both frustration and disapproval of the process underway here with this motion. The motion from Senator Joyce effectively gives approval to a dastardly process, which has seen the Australian government take an obsequious role to the Pentagon in allowing an Australian citizen to be treated in a way no American citizen would be allowed to be treated if incarcerated by an Australian government and in a way that American citizens in Guantanamo Bay have not been treated—they were sent years ago to face American domestic courts. At the joint sitting of this parliament nearly four years ago, when President Bush was present, we Greens called for a proper and equal process for the Australians in Guantanamo Bay.

Habeas corpus says that prisoners under our system should be charged and brought before a court with expedition. That fundamental tenet of law has been totally abrogated in this process. This motion would enable the government to get approval for a process which is without legal merit and which breaches international covenants and the rights of an Australian citizen abroad who has been held unjustly. The basic tenet here is that the Australian judicial system is in some way second-rate to that in the United States. The Greens have never maintained that. We will never accede to that. It is not true. It is time the Australian government showed some pride in this nation’s own judicial system by bringing Hicks home and having him appropriately charged. Finally, I remind the Senate that the Labor Party supported the government in recognising military commissions into Australian law, and it is high time that was again removed from the Australian legal statutes.