Nick McKim (Tasmania, Australian Greens) Share this | Hansard source

My question is to Senator Cash, representing the Minister for Immigration and Border Protection. Minister, I refer you to the humanitarian calamity your government has created on Manus Island. After cutting off drinking water, food, medicine and electricity, your detainees were violently forced out of the detention centre by being beaten with metal bars last week. This is despite the fact that your so-called alternative accommodation is not ready and, even if it was, would not be safe or appropriate. Minister, why does your government continue to claim that all of the alternative accommodation facilities are ready when the UNHCR and many others have made it abundantly clear they are not finished, they are not finished today and, even if they were finished, they would be totally unsafe and inappropriate?