Sarah Hanson-Young (SA, Australian Greens) Share this | Hansard source

I cannot believe that we are back here discussing this issue of asylum seekers. The coalition moved a matter of public importance very similar to this only six months ago. They tried their very best to whip up fear, to whip up hysteria around refugees—desperate people seeking protection, seeking freedom, seeking our assistance. I just cannot get over how out of touch the opposition are on this issue. We have come so far. We have come out of the dark days; out of the dark old ages where we saw children locked in detention centres in the middle of the desert, where we saw young people so desperate for somebody to listen to them, for someone to see their desperation that they sewed their lipstick together. So dark were these days that people were so desperate that they did have to come on boats to seek our protection.

What has changed is government policy. What has changed is the will of the community and the belief in the community that we need to have compassion. What has not changed is people around the world still needing protection, people still fleeing persecution and war. In fact, we have seen an increase of that over the last few years, which obviously adds to the increase of people knocking on our door and asking for our protection.

It staggers me that the opposition want to continue to drag out these issues when we know that the Australian community will not stand for it, when we actually want to be a country of the fair go, when we want to be a nation that prides itself on compassion, on human rights, on justice. Yet clearly the opposition must be feeling so irrelevant in their position that the only thing that they can do to make themselves feel good, to add to their own self-assurance, is to attack those who are more vulnerable than themselves. That is what today’s debate is about; they are trying to make themselves feel a bit better. It is like the grumpy kid in the schoolyard, not having many friends anymore and thinking: ‘What will I do? I’ll go and pick on the small guy.’ That is exactly what the opposition are doing today. It is disgusting. It is gross. It is absolutely disgusting.

A term like ‘illegals’ is absolutely offensive. Not only is it offensive but it is completely inaccurate. It is actually not illegal to seek asylum in Australia. Australia has signed the United Nations Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees that says people can seek asylum, it is not illegal and they should have their claims processed. They should not be demonised and they should not be punished for their mode of arrival or the claim that they are making. As a signatory to the 1951 United Nations Refugee Convention this is something that Australia pledged to do; that we would act in the best interest of the global community and help those people who are seeking protection, knowing that we are pretty lucky here in Australia. We have a safe and stable country, and, despite the antics in our chambers of parliament, we actually get along quite well. Why would we not have a responsibility to share that with people who are vulnerable, who deserve our protection and who deserve that type of freedom as well? It is not illegal to seek asylum in Australia. I am getting sick and tired of hearing various voices from the coalition benches referring to innocent asylum seekers as ‘illegals’.

I do not know how many times this has been raised over and over again by members of the Australian Greens, members of the government, as well as various experts in the field, that advocating for harsher immigration policies—as the opposition tends to do, and this is becoming more frequent of late—does not stop desperate people fleeing war and persecution. Desperate people will seek freedom. Desperate people will do what it takes to ensure that they can give their children the best life possible. If that means jumping on a boat with some hope and desire that they will give their children a better future, that is what they will do. Members in this chamber need to have a good long think about what they would do in their position; if they had no other choice to give their children a future. Would you really care whether Australia had some policy written up on its website that said that it will charge you a debt for your immigration detention? No, of course not. It does not work like that. Desperate and vulnerable people fleeing war and persecution will do what it takes to give their children the best chance at life. Frankly, so they should. Every parent should do what it takes to give their child the best life possible. They should not be demonised for it. They should not be blamed for it.

This whole idea of whipping up fear and scaremongering and hysteria around the recent boat arrivals takes us back to the days when we used to lock children in detention in the middle of the desert. We know that is wrong. Let us not go back there. Let us not allow ourselves, as parliamentarians—as representatives of an amazing democratic country where we do have safety, where we do have stability—to debate these silly ideas of hysteria about something that is actually not there. Australia takes in hardly any refugees in comparison to comparable countries such as Canada. In fact, we have a responsibility to help those people who do apply. We should not be blaming innocent people for seeking protection.

It is fair to say that on all sides of politics we can agree that the people-smuggling trade is an appalling way to exploit innocent people who are in a desperate situation. The point at which we differ is at the role that Australia should be taking; it is not to punish those innocent people who have sought protection through those services but to help to combat the global rise of numbers of asylum seekers fleeing their homelands in search of a safe and peaceful environment.

That is where we should be expending our energies, not on punishing those people who arrive in Australian waters by boat. So the question I put to Senator Bernardi is: given what you say, Moses was a people smuggler by your definition but do we demonise him? Do we say that Moses was the lowest form of vile? No, of course we do not. We understand that desperate people do desperate things in order to seek protection and freedom. Australia has a really important role to play but we need to make sure we play the right role in helping to ease the numbers of asylum seekers around the world. As one of the wealthiest nations in our region, we need to provide positive support and not put our energies into whipping up fear and hatred. Instead of spending millions of dollars on pushing people back from our borders, we need to be thinking of innovative ways to create a safer, more humane pathway by which people can seek asylum. Simply demonising innocent people who are arriving in Australian waters by boat does not do that. It is simply for political gain.

It is time that some members in this chamber and in the other place stopped peddling a myth of fear around asylum seekers. We all need to recognise that the exploitation of innocent people through the trade of people-smuggling is not to be encouraged and that what we need to be doing is encouraging our neighbours, such as Indonesia, to sign the UN convention on the status of refugees, which would then allow them to recognise the need for these people to be protected. We need to be working with our neighbours to do these things, not simply pushing boats back and saying it is somebody else’s problem. If we espouse to be leaders in the global community, we need to take some responsibility for helping those desperate people around the world as well. Simply pushing them back out to sea and saying it is not our problem is just not good enough.

Language such as ‘queue jumpers’ and ‘illegal entrants’ whips up an unnecessary storm over those seeking asylum in Australia. Surely all of us here can recognise that when you are fleeing persecution or a war ravaged country you may not have the necessary means to apply for a visa to arrive in Australia lawfully. People who are desperate enough to jump on a boat in the vain hope of protection and safety for their children are not in a position to put in an application and wait year after year after year for a response. That is not the way it works. In fact, if some members of the opposition believe that is the way it is, I suggest that they take some study leave and go off to spend a few weeks in Afghanistan.