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

What we are seeing here is the continuation of a decade-long collusion between the Labor Party and the coalition to destroy the lives of people who seek asylum in this country. We have seen it for decades, and we have seen literally thousands of lives destroyed by this lockstep in cruelty, this deliberate demonisation of people who seek asylum in this country. And as someone who visited the detention centre, the offshore prison, on Manus Island many times—the so-called Lombrum detention centre, the Lombrum offshore prison—let me tell you categorically how many white people there were locked up in that prison: absolutely none. Every single one of the well north of a thousand people who went through was black- or brown-skinned.