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

I rise on behalf of the Greens to indicate our party's strong opposition to the Labor Party's most recent attack—in fact, one of the nastiest attacks that I've seen—on multiculturalism, on the rights of asylum seekers and on refugees. What this bill, the Home Affairs Legislation Amendment (2025 Measures No. 1) Bill 2025, seeks to do is to take away from people some of the most fundamental legal rights—to take away the right to natural justice and the right to be heard before incredibly important decisions are made about you, your life, your future and your health. In this case, it's all part of a toxic deportation deal that Labor has done with Nauru.

Last night we discovered that the toxic deportation deal done between the Albanese Labor government and Nauru is not a $400 million secret deal; it's a $2.5 billion secret stitch-up between Australia and Nauru to deport some of the most vulnerable people in this country to one of our Pacific neighbours and to treat that country effectively as a dumping ground—a sort of modern, 21st-century, penal colony—knowing full well that Nauru is a tiny island with almost no economy and will be dependent upon Australia's economic support. We are meant to be treating our Pacific neighbours as friends. We're meant to be treating them as equals. We're meant to be treating them as partners. Instead, the Albanese government is literally bribing our Pacific neighbours to become Australia's 21st-century dumping ground and penal colony. It is obscene.

We know who this bill is targeted at: it's targeted at multicultural Australia. It's targeted at people who have come here to this country seeking refuge from some of the worst regimes on the planet—seeking refuge from the extremist government in Iran; seeking refuge, as the Tamils from Sri Lanka have, from facing persecution; seeking refuge from places like Sudan, where the killing and the genocide continue; and seeking refuge, as so many from the Hazara community from Afghanistan have—seeking refuge from the genocide against women and the continued attacks against the Hazara community in Afghanistan. They're the people the Albanese government wants to strip the rights of natural justice away from and deport to Nauru. The Labor government is quite happy to break up families as part of this deal. If women have Australian kids, it doesn't matter to Labor—break the family up, deport mum and leave the kids without a mum. That's what Labor are proposing with this bill, and they are rushing it through without inviting submissions and without asking the broader community their views.

Thankfully, my office put out a call before that short sharp hearing we had last night into this bill and offered to table submissions, in the committee, from organisations like the Refugee Council, the Law Council of Australia, the Asylum Seeker Resource Centre and multicultural communities, because a Labor dominated committee made a conscious, deliberate decision to not ask for submissions from the community and to only hear from Home Affairs—an appalling decision. Why did Labor make that decision to not hear from the community? Because they were scared about what they would hear.

What has the community said, though? What have the NGOs, refugee advocacy groups and the Law Council said about Labor's bill? I think it's important that we read on to the record just some of their submissions. The Asylum Seeker Resource Centre said: 'We believe the removal of legal rights from certain cohorts of people will have impacts beyond refugees and people seeking asylum, standing to marginalise multicultural communities and polarise public debate. This legislation risks entrenching the perception that certain groups are permanently conditional in their belonging, subject to different rules and denied the same access to justice. Such a move erodes trust in institutions not only among affected individuals but across multicultural communities who see these laws as part of a pattern of exclusion.' President, if you'd heard the contribution from my colleague Senator Faruqi earlier, about how Labor now treats people of colour as having only a conditional right to exist in this country—you would have heard it too from my colleague Senator Faruqi, and I associate myself with her comments.

Human Rights Watch said this in relation to Labor's most recent, ugly, nasty, mean attack on people seeking asylum:

Refugees and asylum seekers previously forcibly transferred to Nauru by Australia have died from medical neglect and suicide. Human Rights Watch research has found that people forcibly transferred to Nauru have suffered severe abuse, inhumane treatment, and neglect. This latest deportation plan will put hundreds more lives at risk.

Australia's punitive migration system has already caused immeasurable harm to thousands of people over decades in violation of international law. It is not too late for the government to halt this plan and prevent further abuses.

It's not too late. Labor could still say no to this bill, stop playing the coalition's dog whistle, stop doing worse than the coalition and stop dragging the coalition to places even they wouldn't take this parliament in denying procedural fairness, in compulsory detention and in reopening the abusive deportation arrangements with Nauru. It's not too late for Labor to realise they're taking Australia down the wrong path.

From the New South Wales Council for Civil Liberties:

Removal of the NZYQ cohort to Nauru is morally bankrupt. The NZYQ cohort includes many people who have special needs in order to function in society. In many cases, the reasons they have special needs includes Australia's deprivation of their human rights through inadequate integration support and long term immigration detention. Australia has the resources to provide the necessary supports to these people. Even after paying Nauru the $400m upfront fee and $70m annual fee, Nauru will not have the necessary resources to support these individuals. Australia's relationship to Nauru becomes analogous to the relationship between Britain and the Australian colonies from 1788 to the 1850s, where the colonies were a dumping ground for convicts. Payment to third countries for this kind of settlement of criminals should be illegal under international law.

The Refugee Council of Australia, with its broad reach, has spoken about this bill too. It says:

As this legislation was only introduced on 26 August 2025 and is being rushed through Parliament, leading to a lack of scrutiny and devastating implications. The attempt to remove natural justice and dueprocess for certain groups of people should be a warning sign to all that the cornerstone of our democracy is under threat.

The Bill appears to be a direct attempt to pre-empt or undermine decisions by Australian courts.

The Refugee Council strongly opposes the proposed Bill and the Australian Government's related arrangement with Nauru announced on 30 August 2025.

Will anybody in Labor listen to the Refugee Council? Will anybody in Labor listen to these groups who are saying to you, 'Stop the dog whistling'? We know that Labor's demonisation of asylum seekers and their attack on migrants is one of the reasons the far right, One Nation and others feel empowered to have anti-immigration rallies, like we did on the weekend. They are being fed by Labor's own rhetoric, marginalising and attacking asylum seekers and suggesting that all asylum seekers are somehow criminal—an obscene abuse from a government that should know better but has a history of doing far worse.

The Human Rights Law Centre said:

The Bill will preclude consideration of people's health, the harm they face in Nauru, and whether they will be permanently separated from family in the making of 'third country reception arrangements'. It has been drafted specifically to avoid such considerations being raised and properly considered, by excluding natural justice in the making of 'third country reception arrangements.'

I tell you, Acting Deputy President, I pressed Home Affairs about this last night and asked: 'What if one of the directions leading to the deportation which the minister chooses to give and which the government wants to strip natural justice rights from is for a woman to get passports for herself and her children to return to the country from which she had fled persecution? What if the woman, as tragically happens, is suffering from a violent relationship with a former partner and the father of the kids?' She wouldn't be able to say: 'I won't do that. I won't apply for a passport, because I'd have to go to the kids' violent father and expose myself to violence and expose myself to that risk.' You are removing the right to even say that. How do you have a conscience in this? How does every Labor member think that is okay?

What about somebody being forced to be deported to Nauru who identifies as LGBTIQ? They no longer have a right in the deportation process because you're stripping away their natural justice rights to be able to say to the government, 'As an LGBTIQ member of the community, I will likely be persecuted in Nauru.' We know from international reports that Nauru is an unsafe place to be gay. It's an unsafe place. Report after report has said that it's a place where, if you identify as LGBTIQ openly, you face potential violence, you face discrimination and there are no rights protecting you.

But Labor doesn't want to hear. It's stripping natural justice away and preventing anyone from even being able to tell the government about that before they're deported. What about a woman with the care of two kids? You'll remove natural justice so she can't tell the government, 'You deporting me to Nauru is going to leave my kids without a mum.' They may be Australian citizens, but no; they don't want to hear. They want to deport. They want to meet and better the coalition's dog whistle. That's what Labor does. Every time you do this—the attacks against people seeking asylum, Labor's false assertion that they're somehow inherently criminal—it's heard by the far right, and they use it. As in speeches we heard from One Nation earlier, they use what Labor's doing to foment attacks against immigrants, to attack multiculturalism and to demonise people who have come to Australia from overseas.

The Human Rights Law Centre, in its submission, really sums up what Labor is doing here. It says:

In summary, the anti-fairness bill—

and I endorse its characterisation of this bill; it's not a home affairs amendment bill but an anti-fairness bill—

would remove the government's duty to give a person notice, and an opportunity to respond, when deciding to deport them to a third country—effectively allowing the government to ignore health, safety or family separation risks that someone might face if exiled permanently to a country that is not their home; remove the government's duty to give a person notice when issuing them a direction to cooperate with their own deportation, when the failure to comply results in jail time; and retrospectively patch up visa decisions that were made on the basis of wrong information and wrong or outdated law, rather than allowing those decisions to be reconsidered and made again.

The bill is the latest in an ongoing attempt by the Albanese government to deprive migrants and refugees of basic procedural rights that ensure integrity in decision-making and to pre-empt or undermine decisions by our courts. And heaven knows where the $2½ billion we're giving to Nauru will go. The Nauruan government has form. They've sent some of the money Australia's paid them to the Finks motorcycle gang. If that wasn't bad enough, as Labor is deporting people to Nauru, the Nauruan president has made it very clear that it's his government's intention to send those people back to the country from which they fled, in breach of the refugee convention. And what does Labor say about that? Absolutely nothing, because they are so morally bankrupt.