Richard Di Natale (Victoria, Australian Greens) Share this | Hansard source

I rise to speak against the Migration Amendment (Maintaining the Good Order of Immigration Detention Facilities) Bill 2015. This bill, essentially, gives unchecked power to detention centre officers to use force against asylum seekers, including children, in any circumstance that they feel is necessary. It is a bill that creates a legal framework for the use of force in immigration detention centres by authorised officers who are designated immigration detention centre service provider employees without any safeguards. Effectively, it means that private security officers can use force against people, including kids, that is, according to Australian Lawyers for Human Rights, greater than the force allowed in analogous state and territory prison legislation. Just reflect on that for a moment.

Here we have a group of people in immigration detention whose crime is that they were born in a country where they were tortured, persecuted and they made the decision to leave those circumstances. That is their crime: to be born in a place where they are unsafe, where some of them are raped, tortured, persecuted on the basis of their race or religion. Yet, here we are granting security guards more power than what we offer those people working in prisons right across the country. Even worse is that this is only subject to what is a subjective test regarding whether use of force was lawful—in other words, it is up to someone's opinion as to whether they think the action was justified. There is almost total immunity from legal action. The only right of appeal is through the High Court and there is no right to independent review of the use of force—no independent review.

It is at the minister's discretion to determine the training and qualification requirements. I understand that the minister has indicated that certificate II is an appropriate level of training for these detention centre officers. We would not allow someone to work as a nightclub bouncer in Queensland under those qualifications, yet we think it is okay to give them the capacity to use force that they determine is appropriate, according to the circumstances in which they feel that that force is necessary—when they are looking after children, pregnant women and older people. We would not allow people to work in those circumstances if they were bouncers in a nightclub in Queensland.

It enables the use of force to 'protect a person's life, health or safety, or maintain the good order, peace and security of the facility'. What does that mean? What is reasonable force? Reasonable force is okay in casual conversation, but what does it mean when we enshrine it in law? What is good order? What is the legal definition of 'good order'?

As Amnesty International highlight in their submission, it could mean the exercise of force against people who are raising their voices—maintaining good order—simply on the grounds that they are creating a disturbance within the facility. That is what this bill does. We are enshrining that ambiguity in law and allowing detention centre guards with minimal training, skills and experience to determine what they think the appropriate use of force should be. It is hard not to believe that this is just another part of the government's push to endlessly punish and intimidate asylum seekers. If the government were serious about addressing good order, maintaining peace within our detention centre facilities, it would do something about the causes of what is going on within those facilities.

What about the living conditions in which people are housed; the hellhole that are many of these detention camps; the arbitrary, indefinite and lengthy detention to which people are subjected? Depriving people of all hope through indefinite and arbitrary detention is a recipe for disturbance. What about giving people access to medical care, to appropriate education for their kids? If we want to address the issue of good order, if we want to ensure that our detention centre facilities are somewhere where we do not see the disturbances that this government is keen to highlight, how about we do something about those basic human living conditions? Instead of doing that, this government does what it always does, it takes the easy option. It tries to stoke fear and division within the community. It seeks to sanction a culture of excessive force within our detention centre network. And it gives and grants even more power to people who have already demonstrated that they are unable to behave responsibly with the power that they have, and it grants them more punitive power over a group of vulnerable people.

Let's look at what has happened within the existing framework, within the powers that detention centre guards already have. Let's look at the recent evidence of abuse in our detention centres. This is particularly alarming having this discussion now when you consider the numerous incidents of abuse and excessive force already on the record. Let's reflect on the murder of Iranian asylum seeker Reza Barati and the 70 other people who were injured during the 2014 protests on Manus Island. We have got two men charged for that, one free on bail, and another group of men who have not been found.

We have got the 7:30 Report footage from inside the Nauru detention centre on July 2013 where guards openly talk about shooting asylum seekers. We have got people expressing on the record a view that asylum seekers should be shot, and we are giving those people more power to determine what use of force is appropriate. What about the claims by Wilson Security guards that asylum seekers at the Nauru detention centre were water boarded? I will say that again—we have people in our care who have been water boarded by government-contracted employees. We heard allegations around another form of torture called zipping. This is a process where you use cable ties to secure an asylum seeker to a metal bed with metal bars at the base. The bed is thrown into the air and injury is caused to the asylum seeker as the bed strikes the floor.

Outlined in the Moss report in great detail we have got evidence of physical and sexual abuse by guards against women and children. Fairfax Media obtained evidence that there were 33 cases of alleged sexual assault involving children in Australian detention centres and on Christmas Island between January 2013 and March 2014. That does not include Nauru or Manus Island. Just think about that—33 cases of alleged sexual assault involving children at the same time that a royal commission is underway in this country looking into the issue of child sexual abuse. We have got the sexual abuse of women and children on Nauru, including underage asylum seekers being forced to perform sexual acts in front of guards. We had the spectre of women being told that they needed to strip naked in front of guards if they wanted to have a shower for more than two minutes. We have got one woman who was told that she would be raped if she was resettled at Nauru.

We have got video footage of force used against children during a transfer from one compound to another on Christmas Island. We have got investigations into the use of excessive force by guards at the Maribyrnong detention centre—with many of the officers themselves reporting repeated assaults on asylum seekers. Let us just think about that. There is already a culture of abuse, of torture and of assault within these detention camps. What is the response from this government? 'Let's grant those same people more power. Let's let them use their discretion to decide when they think it's appropriate to respond to what they describe as a disturbance and to ensure that good order is maintained.' The litany of abuse that is currently going on in our detention centres needs to be stopped, and the way to stop it is not by giving those same people more power to continue with their abuse.

It is a response that is necessary once you understand what is going on currently within our detention centre network. It is a policy from this government that can only be maintained if we maintain the culture of secrecy around our detention centre network. That secrecy is necessary for this policy to survive, because there are many good Australians who would be horrified if they saw with their own eyes what is happening right now. The response from government has to be, 'Shut it down and keep this out of the gaze of the Australian community, because once they identify with these people as human beings whose only crime is to be born in a country where they are persecuted, they would not tolerate it.' Once you understand that if the Australian people were to identify with those children, with those families, they would not tolerate it, the response has to be, 'Shut it down and make sure the Australian community do not know what is going on in our detention centre network.'

Of course, the government continues this culture of secrecy. It refuses to be accountable. What began with the immigration minister refusing to answer reporters' questions about asylum seekers, under the guise of it being an operational matter, has now become a full-scale media blackout. This is the sort of response we would expect from a corrupt dictatorship. It is not the sort of response that we should expect from an Australian parliament. We have journalists who cannot access detention centres. We have got a department that is under no obligation to provide reasons for refusing access to detention centres. Again, it is all necessary because this policy only survives because people do not know what is happening.

We have got people working in detention centres who are forbidden under the threat of jail time from revealing information to anyone about anything they come across while doing their jobs. We have criminalised whistleblowers, but not just whistleblowers—doctors and teachers who have an ethical duty to report physical and mental harm that is occurring as a result of detention. Again, let us just reflect on that. We are saying to somebody, a medical professional—somebody who has dedicated their life to providing care for others—that where you witness torture, where you witness abuse and where you witness sexual assault you must stay silent. Our parliament is asking our healthcare workers, our teachers, our nurses and our social workers to stay silent in the face of evil. That is what this parliament will do if it supports this legislation.

Then of course in order to continue to maintain the cloak of secrecy what do we have? We have a coordinated surveillance effort which targets a member of the Australian parliament—organised spying over several days by a team of government-employed contractors—being spied upon not just while driving and while visiting detention centre networks but also inside her hotel room. Normally a scandal like this would see heads roll. Normally, where a member of the Australian parliament is spied upon for doing nothing other than her job, it would be cause for a minister to resign their position—but not on this; not in this area of refugee policy. Why is that? It is because we have a government intent on pursuing these barbaric policies and we have an opposition too cowardly to stand up to them. That is why this is allowed to continue.

This is a bill that continues that culture of abuse and assault on innocent and vulnerable people. This bill purports to provide for the safety of those in immigration detention, but the biggest risk to detainees is not order within a detention facility; it is this government itself and the companies, employed by this government, that are supposed to have a duty of care. That is the biggest threat to people within our detention centre network. This bill is another step on the path that we have embarked on to jettison our international obligations under human rights acts and shows further contempt for the principles of the refugee convention. People are coming here to seek our protection and assistance, and our response is to condone torture, abuse and sexual assault.

This is a bill that further enables conditions that put the safety and lives of asylum seekers at risk. It is a bill that does not deserve the support of this parliament, and I condemn it in the strongest possible terms.