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

I'll continue reading from the same transcript read out by Senator David Pocock.

Question:

Because of the background of these people, that you are saying have committed crimes.

The safety concerns of the people of Nauru, what does the government have to say to ease their gut about the fact and the shock that they are living within their community?

Answer:

The first thing we have to remember is that these people have their time in jail. They have a history yes, but they also have a present.

And the present of this people now is that they are living within the people of Australia and are not committing crimes, some of them are just enjoying their lives and continuing their lives but they are not from there and Australia does not want them.

And for some reason, some legal reasons, they cannot be deported.

So, we are the solution to them being moved from there. I did wanna provide a solution.

But to address our own, its not that different from how we protected our community back when the refugees first came and after we allowed them out of detention to settle within our community, they also had a history and we also have a history, there are some that come out of jail here with their own histories.

We weren't harmed and we wont be harmed.

Of course, there are extra community safety arrangements that we will bring out to look after our community, maybe, for example, and help them (NZYQ) a little with their movements and to ease the shock of the community.

Because the biggest thing I see now is that there will be surprised people and we have to remember that this is not the first time we have let foreigners come to our home and it will not be the first time we have accepted foreigners with backgrounds that are not 100% pristine.

and we know how to handle arrangements like this and we also know how to empower the lives of these people and we know to take care of them.

And we all get along just fine. We hold that we will be fine.

We will bring out a lot of things for this and we welcome the input of the community if they want to give us their feedback on how to make them feel safer/more secure.

They can make contact with their relevant members of parliament and ministers to let us know.

I have also sat with the Opposition recently to give them all of the facts of this thing that we have entered.

So that they know what is true and what isn't true.

The Australian media will have their own spin on it but what I have given you is what is true to all of my knowledge.

There are three people that will come first, within days, maybe less than a week. We know their profile, what their names are, their backgrounds and their ages.

And we have already prepared them a space and we have prepared the safety protocols to protect them and to protect us.

And we are not overwhelmed, because we have already gone through these things. This is not new here.

The only new thing is that they are not refugees.

Question:

If the 30 years ends and we have not resettled them in another country, what is Nauru and Australia's Plan?

Answer:

Well I guess in 30 years time, there will have to be meetings between the Government of Nauru and the Government of Australia and what we're going to do about these people.

But there's a long way into the future,

I do trust however, that maybe before then, we will little by little be able to return these people home if they want that.

I also anticipate that these people will have family from Australia that will want to visit them here and we are not closed off to that, just like when the refugees were here, we allowed their families to visit them here, we opened our arms to them and we will do that with these people also.

I want to thank my colleague Senator Pocock and I want to thank the ASRC for joining with me tonight to tell the truth about this interview, because this is the interview that the government has refused to produce. This is an accredited interpretation of the interview that President Adeang gave when the announcement leaked out from Nauru—it did not come from our own minister—about a $2½ billion secret deal. This government have been trying to keep this secret from the Australian people, refusing to produce their own interpretation and refusing to tell the Australian people what the Nauruan president said.

I know that Senator Pocock and I read the transcript out in somewhat of a rush, but we did it because we weren't certain that we would get it on the record in the time that we had available. It should have been the government that told the Australian people about this. It should have been the government that had the decency to step forward and be honest with the Australian people about what the Nauruan president said. No doubt there are reasons why the government wanted to hide this, because President Adeang wrongly makes the statement, no doubt on advice from the Australian government, that none of the NZYQ cohort are refugees, which is plainly wrong. Did the government tell them that? Did our government mislead the Nauruan government? Do they adhere to what the Nauruan president said about these people not being refugees—none of them? They're probably also embarrassed about the fact that President Adeang made it very clear that he wants these people to return to the country they came from. We know that they have fled from persecution, by and large. Does the Australian government join with Nauruan president in wanting to send people back to persecution in Iran, in Iraq, in Russia and in Sudan?

Finally, we get to read the truth onto the record. I want to again thank the ASRC for the work they've done on this. (Time expired)

Senate adjourned at 20:30