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

I rise to speak on the Migration Amendment (Repairing Medical Transfers) Bill 2019. Well, this shouldn't actually be a contentious debate. In fact, we shouldn't even be debating this bill in this parliament because, at its heart, you can distil this legislation down to a fundamental and extremely simple question: do you think sick people should get the treatment that medical professionals say they need? If you answer yes to that question, you will join the Greens in opposing this legislation, because we believe when people are sick, they should get the medical treatment that doctors and medical professionals say they need. But if you are going to support this legislation as we know every single member of the LNP and both members of Pauline Hanson's One Nation party will do then you are basically saying that you do not believe that desperately ill people should get the medical treatment that doctors say that they need. That is the distillation of the question before us today.

The Greens, who, along with former senator Tim Storer, were co-sponsors of the legislation that became known as the medevac bill, will strongly oppose this attempt by the government to repeal that legislation. This bill is called the Migration Amendment (Repairing Medical Transfers) Bill 2019 but it doesn't repair medical transfers at all. Repairing medical transfers was what the medevac legislation did, co-sponsored by the Australian Greens. And we had to repair the medical transfer regime because, under the old way of doing things, people were dying as a result of not getting the medical treatment they needed. The medevac legislation has saved lives. It has delivered people the health care that they have so desperately needed and that they had previously been deliberately deprived of by mendacious ministers and bureaucrats, who were acting in political interest and self-interest rather than in accordance with human rights law, with humanitarian principles and with the principles of the medical profession. The government's refusal—and we have seen this on multiple occasions—to transfer sick people from Manus Island or Nauru here to Australia under previous arrangements caused death, mental anguish and untold suffering amongst innocent people who had done no wrong, who had committed no crime, who had stretched out a hand to ask our country for help, and in return had been imprisoned. Some of them remain in Port Moresby or on Nauru and are pretty close to clocking up seven years in indefinite offshore detention.

This repeal bill shows that the government is prepared to put what it believes are its political imperatives ahead of other people's genuine medical needs. The government has made a crass calculation that some lives are worth sacrificing—some human lives are worth sacrificing for broader political outcomes. They have made that crass calculation despite their legal and moral obligations. This calculation should be intolerable in a liberal democracy like Australia's. Fundamentally, decisions about medical care should be made by medical experts, not by politicians and not by bureaucrats.

When I speak about things that happened on Manus Island, I want to place on the record that I'm doing so based on numerous sources, including the findings of the inquest of the Coroners Court of Queensland into the death of Hamid Khazaei, which I will go into in more detail later in my speech. But I'm also relying on personal experience, because unlike any member of the LNP who is going to vote for this legislation in the Senate, unlike any member of Pauline Hanson's One Nation party, I've been to Manus Island. In fact, I've been to Manus Island five times, which of course means I know an awful lot more about what's happened on Manus Island than any of the people who are going to get up when the vote comes on—whenever that might be—and vote for this legislation. It is based on personal experience. I was there in the Lombrum detention centre, in November 2017, when the Australian government ordered that the food be cut off, the drinking water be cut off, the electricity be cut off and all medical supports be cut off from over 600 vulnerable people. I saw the human impact. I lived a very small part of the humanitarian calamity that those orders caused amongst so many people who had already suffered far too much and for far too long.

Before the medevac regime came in place, 12 people died, either in offshore detention on Manus Island or Nauru or here in Australia after being transferred, too late, because mendacious politicians and bureaucrats got in the way of medical transfers. I'm going to read the names of the people who died. On 17 February 2014, Reza Barati was murdered on Manus Island. On 22 June 2014, Sayed Ibrahim Hussein died on Nauru. On 5 September 2014, Hamid Khazaei died in Australia after he was not transferred in a timely way when he was dying on Manus Island and in Port Moresby. On 29 April 2016, Omid Masoumali died on Nauru. On 18 May 2016, Rakib Khan died on Nauru. On 2 August 2016, Kamil Hussain died on Manus Island. On 24 December 2016, Faysal Ishak Ahmed died on Manus Island. On 7 August 2017, Hamed Shamshiripour died on Manus Island. On 2 October 2017, Rajeev Rajendran died on Manus Island. On 2 November 2017, Jahingir died on Nauru. On 22 May 2018, Salim Kyawning died on Manus Island. And on 15 June 2018, Fariborz Karami died on Nauru. These people died away from their families, their mothers, their fathers, their brothers, their sisters and, in some cases, their children. They died alone, without those supports near them, because of actions taken by the Australian government.

One of those cases, the death of Hamid Khazaei, is extremely instructive when you think about this legislation. I'm relying on the findings by the Coroners Court of Queensland, of Mr Terry Ryan, the state coroner. These findings were delivered on 30 July last year. I will place on the record in the Senate some of Mr Ryan's conclusions. Firstly, he said:

Mr Khazaei's death was preventable. Consistent with the evidence of the expert witnesses who assisted the court in this matter I—

that is, the coroner—

am satisfied that if Mr Khazaei's clinical deterioration was recognized and responded to in a timely way at the MIRPC clinic, and he was evacuated to Australia within 24 hours of developing severe sepsis, he would have survived.

But he wasn't evacuated to Australia in a timely way, was he? No, he wasn't. Why wasn't he evacuated to Australia in a timely way? It was because the mendacious bureaucrats and politicians and the system they created prevented that from happening. There's blood on people's hands here. The blood is on the hands of the LNP. And the blood will be on the hands of One Nation if they vote to support this legislation.

I will read further findings from Mr Ryan's report:

… The clinicians who received Mr Khazaei at the PIH on that day—

that is, the day he was transferred to Port Moresby—

did not have the necessary clinical skills to deal with his presentation. The significant delay in responding to his critical care needs at the PIH led to cardiac arrest after which Mr Khazaei's condition became irretrievable.

He should have been transferred to Australia straight from Manus Island, but he wasn't. His death, as Mr Ryan found, was entirely preventable. Mr Ryan also found that the health care that Mr Khazaei received on Manus Island was not commensurate with the care he would have received in a remote clinic on Cape York, which was the benchmark applied in this matter. Similarly, the health care he received from the Pacific International Hospital in Port Moresby was not adequate.

Mr Ryan said he accepted Dr Little's evidence that if Mr Khazaei had been transferred directly from Manus Island to Cairns after Dr Muis's initial transfer request, he was likely to have survived. The coroner accepted the submission on behalf of the family that there was an obligation on the part of senior clinicians within IHMS and International SOS, who were aware that Mr Khazaei's transfer was being delayed, to proactively contact the clinicians who were left to manage his care within the limited resources available on Manus Island. He found that the fact that there were no further communications to or from the clinicians on Manus Island represented a systemic failure.

And I've left the kicker until the end. This is Mr Terry Ryan, the State Coroner of Queensland, who said in the final sentence of his summary of recommendations:

Decisions about medical transfers should be based on clinical considerations.

There is not much more that needs to be added, is there? 'Decisions about medical transfers should be based on clinical considerations.'

I wonder: Senator Cormann is going to vote for this legislation; if he got sick would he go to see a doctor or would he go to see the immigration minister or someone inside Home Affairs? Minister Cash is going to vote for this legislation; if she got sick, would she go to see a doctor or would she go to see the immigration minister or someone inside Home Affairs? If the Prime Minister got sick, would he go to see a doctor or would he go to see the immigration minister? We all know the answer to those questions. Whether it be Senator Cormann, Senator Cash or the Prime Minister, if they fell ill they'd go to see a doctor. They wouldn't go to see the immigration minister, because they know that the immigration minister is not competent to make medical decisions. No, they'd go to a doctor. But can you imagine the hue and cry if, having been to see a doctor, Senator Cormann, or Senator Cash or the Prime Minister were then prevented from complying with their doctor's directions by the immigration minister? You wouldn't hear the end of it in this place. But that's exactly the regime they want to go back to now.

I've witnessed personally the humanitarian calamity of offshore detention. I've held crying men, sick men, on Manus Island, who were begging for the treatment and the help that they needed but were prevented from receiving because of the acts of this Liberal-National Party government—this mendacious government that wants to wind back the medevac provisions that put the clinical treatment of people in offshore detention into the hands of the people which it should be in: the hands of doctors and medical professionals. This is the medevac legislation which took those decisions out of the hands which they should never have been in: the hands of Minister Dutton and the mendacious bureaucrats who crafted this appalling, terrible offshore detention and medical transfer regime.

We will not support the repeal of the medevac provisions. Anybody who does support the repeal of medevac can expect to have blood on their hands—more blood than they've already got on their bloody, bloody hands—because doctors should make these decisions, not politicians and bureaucrats.