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

Here we go again, heading down a dark but all too well trodden path in Australian politics: a race to the bottom on refugee policy and a race to the bottom on immigration detention policy. We all know how this is going to end and we all know that it's not going to end well because we've seen this story time after time in this country and we've seen the tragic ending to this story time after time, where innocent refugees are murdered, where innocent refugee children are subjected to sex abuse, where innocent refugee women are raped, where innocent refugees and people who sought asylum in this country are detained indefinitely and tortured because the Labor and Liberal parties have a dark vein running through their political circuitry. If there is one thing they can agree on, it is that refugees are there to be brutalised and dehumanised and to have their human rights trampled. The instinct to collude in order to brutalise and demonise refugees runs all too strongly through the veins of the Labor Party and the Liberal Party in this place.

The Australian Labor Party has not just handed over the drafter's pen to Mr Dutton, allowing him to draft anti-refugee legislation that the Labor Party will support, but is now handing over chamber management duties to the opposition. Mr Dutton is not just running the government's policy, he is running the business of the government in the Senate. The Labor Party has just voted for a Mr Dutton motion to manage their hours, a Mr Dutton motion to jam through a bill which has had attached to it 70 pages of amendments with an explanatory memorandum that is so big it needed to be bound into a book—and we got it three hours ago. This is a shameful way to legislate.

We are dealing with a fundamental human right here, the right to liberty. That is not an absolute right, but it is a critical right. It should not be overridden nor curtailed without the most careful consideration, but here we are with an explanatory memorandum of nearly 150 pages and with 70 pages of amendments, as well as the original bill that we are debating. This is legislation that severely curtails liberty in Australia for a small group of people in a way we would never dare to try on citizens—but we can do it because we are a bunch of xenophobes. That is what this legislation is. It is xenophobic by definition. It only applies to foreigners.

We have seen where this path ends, but it is worth noting how we take the steps down it. It is a pattern that has been repeated in recent Australian history over the 20-plus years since the Tampa appeared over the horizon. We all know what happened back then. Former prime minister John Howard saw a political opportunity available to him through demonising a group of desperate and innocent people who were seeking asylum in Australia, people who had been through the most horrendous experience on the high seas. The Murdoch media came in behind the LNP and magnified the confected emergency that Mr Howard and Mr Ruddock created at the time, and the Labor Party rolled over in craven capitulation. We saw it again in 2013, when the Labor Party was in government and the next iteration of offshore detention was created, another dark and bloody stain on our country's national story. We have seen it again over the last few weeks post the High Court's recent decision which, quite rightly, rendered indefinite immigration detention unlawful in Australia.

We've seen the confected emergency from Mr Dutton. We've seen News Corp and far too many other journalists from a range of media outlets in Australia credulously reporting the lies of the opposition, credulously reporting that, somehow, every person caught within the scope of that High Court decision was some kind of vicious criminal, when nothing could be further from the truth. I've sat through interview after interview by ABC journalists who enthusiastically and credulously ran Mr Dutton's speaking points at me. I expect that from Sky, but I don't expect it from the ABC. It's disgraceful. There have been honourable exceptions, but collectively the press gallery in this country needs to take a good, long look in the mirror and realise that they play a critical role in this dark and bloody path that this country walks down in regard to refugee policy and immigration detention policy.

Shame on every journalist who has failed to call out the lies of the opposition. Shame on every journalist who has bought the frame that somehow all of the people caught within the High Court decision are hardened criminals, when we know many of them have never been convicted of a crime in their lives. We know there are people who have been living in the community peacefully for a long time that are now caught under the scope of this legislation because it's shoddily drafted and has been rammed through in haste.

Colleagues, the way we treat refugees is instructive, so I'm telling you now—and I'm telling the Australian people now—that the way the Labor and Liberal parties treat refugees is the same as they would treat the rest of Australia if they thought they could get away with it. They would ride roughshod over your human rights if they thought they could get away with it. How do we know that? It's because they're prepared to do it to a group of people just because of their visa status or just because they are foreigners.

What we're facing here is rushed, shoddy, xenophobic legislation. This is a dark, dark day in the Senate's history, and you can add it to a range of dark, dark days in the Senate's history. Time after time in this place, the major parties have got together to do over refugees and do over people who are seeking asylum. We live in a settler colonial society in Australia, and we have had trouble with the concept of liberty in this country since the first convicts arrived over 200 years ago. We have never come to grips with the critical right to freedom and liberty. This place was founded as a carceral state, and it exists as a carceral state today. This debate is proof of that. It is clear and obvious proof that we're a prison state. When it all gets too hard, we just reflexively lock people up.

Let's be really clear about the group of people that this legislation deals with. It is a small group of people, some of whom—not all—have been convicted of crimes. In at least a small number of cases, they have been convicted of heinous crimes. That is absolutely true, just as, on a regular basis, Australian citizens are convicted of heinous crimes. The difference is that, if you're an Australian citizen, you get sentenced by the courts, you do the time and then you come back out into the community. You're given an opportunity to rebuild your life. Some people don't. They reoffend. They're dealt with again by the justice system, and back into prison they go. But, for this group of people, it's a different regime entirely because they're foreigners. You understand: we are a xenophobic Senate. We deal with foreigners differently than we deal with Australians. But, when this group of people are convicted and sentenced by the courts under our Constitution—which makes it clear that the power to punish is reserved only for the courts, and not for politicians—they are imprisoned, and then, when they come out of prison, they are thrown into indefinite immigration detention. They are punished twice for the same crime.

Indefinite immigration detention, we now know, was never lawful; the detainees were unlawfully detained by the government—punished twice, with the second punishment unlawful. Now, the Labor and Liberal parties want to punish them a third time, and the only reason they can be punished a third time is because they are not Australian citizens. If another country was doing this to Australian citizens abroad, the Labor and Liberal Parties would be up in arms about it. But because it is Australia doing it to a bunch of refugees and people who sought asylum in this country, that is okay by the Labor and Liberal parties.

So here we go again, as I've said, a range of offences is created by this legislation, some of which have mandatory sentencing attached to them. I'll remind all Labor members in this place that mandatory sentencing is starkly contrary to Labor Party policy. I mean, I have to ask: What is the point of being a member of the Labor Party? They go through all these conferences—these big events—they generate policy, and their senators and MPs just come into this place and ignore it. I tell you what, you wouldn't get away with that in our party, and rightly so. We would be held to account if Greens senators and MPs acted in this way, but the Labor Party is quite happy to give the finger to its members because it has no respect for its members and no respect for its own policy. The only thing it has respect for is Mr Dutton.

We have heard a lot about community safety in this debate. Make no mistake, Labor's position on the bill is not about keeping our communities safe; it is actually about keeping the Labor Party safe from Mr Dutton. That is what we are dealing with here—a confected emergency, spun out of thin air by Mr Dutton, the toadies in News Corp magnifying it, happily reporting the opposition's lies, and the Labor Party on script, on brand, cravenly capitulating at the first available opportunity. They've not only handed over the power to draft legislation to Mr Dutton; they have handed over chamber management responsibilities today to Mr Dutton. It beggars belief that the Labor Party would have so little pride and so little backbone that they would be prepared to allow Mr Dutton to run roughshod over them in this fashion. This is a dark, dark day for the Senate and, tragically, we know how this is going to end.