David Shoebridge (NSW, Australian Greens) Share this | Hansard source

I move the amendment circulated by my colleague Senator McKim to the motion that the report be adopted:

At the end of the motion, add: "but, in respect of:

(a) the Home Affairs Legislation Amendment (2025 Measures No. 1) Bill 2025, the provisions of the bill be referred immediately to the Legal and Constitutional Affairs Legislation Committee for inquiry and report by 28 October 2025"; and

(b) the Telecommunications and Other Legislation Amendment Bill 2025, the provisions of the bill be referred immediately to the Legal and Constitutional Affairs Legislation Committee for inquiry and report by 28 October 2025".

In what was a chaotic day, with so much other news around, we saw the Albanese Labor government try to sneak through yet another vicious attack on the rights of refugees and on the rights of people seeking asylum. They tried to do it on the quiet and to sneak it through. Again, what we're seeing is this government desperately keen to avoid transparency and to avoid scrutiny—in this case, of one of the nastiest, meanest attacks on multicultural Australia and on the basic set of decency and rights that we should be giving to people who come here to seek our protection.

We have seen the Albanese Labor government being led like a little, tame poodle by the coalition down this nasty pathway of a competition to see who can be the most mean, the cruellest, to refugees and people seeking asylum. It is a race that only the least principled, the ugliest, the meanest, the nastiest, can win. My guess is that, at the end of the day, the coalition will win that fight. That's their history. But, I can tell you what, the Albanese Labor government are doing everything they can to put it in contest.

The Home Affairs Legislation Amendment (2025 Measures No. 1) Bill 2025 removes the rights of natural justice, the right to basically be heard, before some of the most far-reaching decisions are made in relation to people's lives. In this case, the Albanese government wants to be able to make a decision to deport somebody from Australia, often somebody who has already had an asylum claim made in their favour, so we know that they have a need for protection; we know that they have a need for asylum. But now the Albanese government wants to be able to deport them to Nauru without ever asking and without ever testing what impact that might have on their health and on their family—without even asking. Worse, the Albanese government want to be able to approach the Nauruan government to apply for a visa in that person's name to force them to go to Nauru—again, without ever giving these people even the right to know the application is happening, let alone the right to correct obvious errors, to tell the Nauru government and the Australian government about their health concerns or to explain why leaving their child behind might not be fair. They're not even asking.

The right of natural justice has been embedded in our common law traditions not for decades but for centuries. Why do we have a right to natural justice? Because it reflects our values as a country that believes in the rule of law and in basic decency. But it obviously doesn't reflect the Albanese-Labor government's values, because they want to rip it away from some of the most vulnerable people in the country.

Do you know what? If that's not bad enough, once people get to Nauru—under Labor's plan to not tell them, deport them and break up families—the Nauru government has made it clear what they want. They want, in breach of the refugee convention, to send those people back to the countries from which they fled—to send them to Iran, to send them to Afghanistan. They want to do this all without even having that basic human decency of asking or giving the people the right to know that the application has been made or that they may, as human beings, have a right to be heard before the Albanese government deports them to Nauru on their way to Afghanistan or on their way to Iran. Shame on the Albanese government for doing this. Shame on you not even having the guts to put it to the committee so that the Australian public gets a chance to see what you're doing and to see the latest stitch-up job you're doing with the coalition.

Of course, we're moving this amendment to send this ugly bill, this mean bill, this nasty Labor bill to the Legal and Constitutional Affairs Legislation Committee, so that we can shine some sunlight on your meanness. Maybe that sunlight will be a kind of disinfectant for some of the ugly nastiness that's happening in the Labor government. Maybe you can realise that you have a whacking great majority down in that other house, and, with us, you have a progressive majority in the Senate. You don't need to follow the coalition's dog whistle on this stuff. You can recover a pathway to decency. That's why we move this amendment.