David Pocock (ACT, Independent) Share this | Hansard source

I thank Senator McKim for the Migration Amendment (Evacuation to Safety) Bill 2023 and the opportunity to debate this. I welcome this bill. For more than 20 years the plight of asylum seekers and refugees trying to reach Australia has been politicised. Successive governments have been in what seems to be a race to the bottom, campaigning on fear, division and cruelty. We must remember that this issue is about people and not politics. As politicians, we have a responsibility to the people that we represent, and we have a responsibility to build a nation that we can be proud of—a nation that treats everyone with respect and dignity and that faces complex challenges with courage, with open debate and, in the end, I would hope, with unity.

In recent years we have not faced this issue with unity and courage. People seeking asylum and refugees have been used as political footballs, with all sides using them for cheap pointscoring. The 150 people that remain in Papua New Guinea and Nauru are victims of our collective political failure. There are certain basic human rights that everyone should have. We should all have the right to work, to put food on the table, and to have a roof over our heads. The rights of those 150 people have been grossly violated. This bill is an opportunity to change that. If this bill were passed, there would finally be an offer to transfer people from offshore detention in PNG and Nauru to Australia, with the significant caveat that they are not subject to an adverse security assessment by ASIO. That's a really important caveat, and I think it's something that people pounce on when we talk about security threats and the impost on communities here in Australia. In Australia, they would have access to the medical treatment and mental health support that they require—mental health support which, in many cases, is desperately required.

Reading through the submissions to the inquiry into this bill was a moving and sad experience. It just reinforces that this is dealing with human beings like all of us—people who have hopes and dreams for their lives and who, for whatever reason, have found themselves in a situation where they were so desperate that they decided that they needed to leave everything they knew and leave their family to seek safety. And they have sought safety from Australia. On my reading of this report, we are failing them. One of my constituents, a Canberran called Peter, made a submission to the inquiry. He said:

… the human face of the policy for those remaining in Papua New Guinea and Nauru is one of desperate misery—and this for people who risked all to flee oppression, torture and death in their countries of origin.

The human face is missing from the committee report into this bill. In fact, accounts from those who are suffering are not even included in the text. So here are some of the stories in the submission from the Asylum Seeker Resource Centre. Case study 1 states:

Mohammad is a Hazara man from Afghanistan who is in PNG. He has been recognised as a refugee. He is currently under severe mental stress because he is worried about his family in Afghanistan who are living under Taliban rule …

Mohammad has suffered in offshore detention in PNG for over 9 years. He has a multitude of untreated health conditions which makes it difficult for him to eat. He also suffers from depression. His doctor suggests he exercises, but Mohammad does not want to leave his house for fear of his safety.

The submission quotes Mohammad directly:

My hopes are to be with family, find work, stand on my own feet, feel independent and feel like a human. To have a peaceful life. Just do not forget us and hopefully, you can help us get out of this situation. We are stuck and cannot do anything to change our life for the better.

Another case study states:

Qarar was hospitalised in Nauru earlier this year after he experienced severe pain. He has been approved for transfer, but has still not been evacuated or received the medical treatment needed.

The submission quotes Qarar:

My brother is in Australia, I need to go to Australia for treatment, it is easier for me in Australia. I have been to Australia 3 times—had an operation in Brisbane in 2014 for kidney stone removal, good hospital, I stayed for 2 weeks, with a lot of facilities, proper doctors and professionals, there is a lot of humanity, human being's health is important in Australia, it is nothing here ... Australia is spending a lot of money and could have spent it in a better way.

Another case study in the submission states:

Hiren has been held in Nauru for over 9 years. He was transferred to Australia in February 2023 for urgent medical treatment for chronic pain conditions. Hiren has been held in closed hotel detention. He has not been told when he will be released from detention.

He says:

People are getting crazy. Health issues are worsening. People are scared for their safety. Locals swear at refugees. Get people out of this situation please. They are under a lot of stress and face a great uncertainty. Pay attention to the corruption and torture that is continuing to go on in offshore detention.

The 2010 Australian of the Year, psychiatrist Professor Patrick McGorry, has described offshore detention centres as 'factories for producing mental illness'. It's no surprise that we hear stories of people who've been locked up for over a decade and have health conditions, including mental health conditions. That's on us. That is a direct result of politicians' policies. We have to own that, and we have an opportunity to change that.

Medecins Sans Frontieres found that on Nauru:

Among the 208 refugee and asylum seeker patients assessed by MSF, 129 (62%) were diagnosed with moderate to sev ere depression. The second highest morbidity was anxiety disorder (25%), followed by PTSD (18%), mild depression (11%), complex trauma (6%) and resignation syndrome (6%), also known as traumatic withdrawal syndrome.

We can't ignore this. We know what is happening: there are a small number of people who we keep offshore for political reasons. Please think about these people.

Clearly, there's also the economic cost. Offshore centres cost around $9.6 billion in the three years between 2013 and 2016. That's an extraordinary amount of money. They continue to cost around $1 billion a year to run, which comes to over $500,000 per asylum seeker per year. This doesn't make sense. There has to be a better way to do this. Offshore detention is cruel. It causes the destruction of the physical and mental health of those who seek our care and our community.

The time has come for Australia to adopt a more compassionate and humane approach to refugees and asylum seekers. We have to grapple with this issue. We have to grapple with the national security concerns—the concerns that Senator Scarr rightly raised about Border Force having to deal with horrendous scenes—and we have to grapple with the fact that these are people who are desperate—people like you and me who are seeking our support—and we're locking them up and spending a huge amount of our money do so.

We can and must find a way to ensure that people do not die at sea and people also do not languish in indefinite detention. I believe we need to start to play a more active role in our region. People are only leaving because their situation is intolerable or their life is at risk. We need to stand up alongside calls that call out human rights abuses in other countries. And we really need to start thinking about how we're going to deal with climate refugees, because, if we look back at the last couple of decades and think we've had a refugee problem over any of those years, we haven't seen anything. The thing to think about—and I encourage the major parties to start thinking about this—is that, when we start seeing the spiralling, compounding effects of climate change, our Pacific neighbours are probably not going to be in a position to just do our dirty work. People in those countries will potentially be looking to Australia and saying: 'We can't cope here. We need support.'

This is a really tough problem, but ignoring it or locking up 150 people and hoping that that solves the problem doesn't. I understand that this is not something the major parties will entertain, but I urge you in your party rooms—and in your thinking—to start listening to the Australian community. Once we hear these sorts of stories we start to understand the people and how desperate they are in seeking our support. People want a more pragmatic, humane approach.

I thank Senator McKim for bringing this bill to the Senate. It does have my support. A number of Canberrans contact me on a regular basis about this but not only this. There are people languishing in our community on bridging visas—people who've had small businesses for 10 years and are contributing and paying taxes but who don't have access to services, to tertiary education and all of the things that many of us take for granted. Thank you, Senator McKim. I support this bill.