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

Looking into the moral abyss that the coalition have generated with this legislation is hard, I understand, for the coalition. The complete lack of any kind of moral compass—I understand that it must be awkward to realise you belong to a party that wants to make political hay out of a six-year-old Australian kid that is trapped in a desert detention camp. I understand that it's awkward to look into the moral abyss you've created for yourself, but have a good look at it. Because I have been over there. I've spoken to a little six-year-old Australian kid whose only life has been a desert detention camp. She sat there in the meeting that I had with her mum, one of her aunts and another woman and drew a picture of Rapunzel and flowers, and she said that she just wanted to be free. She'd heard that there was grass in Australia, and you could run around on grass.

I spoke to her mum and her aunt, who had been—there are no educational resources in the camp and it's unsafe for the Australian kids to go to school because they're seen as wanting to come home to Australia and wanting a life separate from ISIS. They're actually under threat, and they can't even go to the rudimentary education camps that are there. I've seen the hand-drawn lesson plans that the mums and aunts were producing, trying to remember what their primary school lessons were, and hand-drawn images of the continents around the world or the different bones of the body or basic maths lessons. They're trying to give their kids some kind of future so that they can be ready when they come back to Australia to at least have some of the starting points to help their reintegration. I've seen that. No-one in the coalition has seen that, but everyone in the coalition wants that little kid to spend the rest of her childhood in a desert detention camp. That's what you want to do.

I know it's awkward looking into the moral abyss that you have created for yourselves and that you don't have any boundaries to where you'll take this politics or how you'll demonise. I know it's awkward, but we're just reflecting it back to you, your own selves. You're being reflected back to yourselves. Have a good hard look at where you want to take this country and your complete lack of any kind of moral limitations.

I come back to this: this bill wants to make it a crime to help bring kids out of a conflict zone. I've seen the former leader of the coalition Michael McCormack go to events from Save the Children and talk about how amazing the work of Save the Children is and talk about how they do life-saving work across the world and their absolute commitment as the world's longest continuous charity focused on children. I've seen that happen. I've seen the statements made by the former coalition leader. Now that same man and his party—I said coalition; I meant Nationals leader—wants to criminalise Save the Children. They want to put the people that he was supporting in jail for up to 10 years.

The Greens oppose this bill, and I'm glad to see Labor opposing the bill. I think Labor is opposing it because it's unconstitutional, but the Greens say, yes, the Australian government has an absolute obligation to keep Australians safe. That includes the Australian kids and their mums and it extends to that. We don't have rules like the coalition about who is or isn't Australian. If you're an Australian citizen, the Australian government has an obligation to do what it can to keep you safe. I think back about that little six-year-old who was on a bus a little while ago thinking that she might be free and then went back to the desert detention camp and who you want to keep in that detention camp. You know, she spoke with a really strong Australian accent because she's spent her life amongst the Australians in the camp on a street that's called Australia Street. I asked her about the picture and I asked about what's in the picture. She was pointing at them and said, 'Oh, they're roses.' I said, 'Well, what do you think about them?' She said, 'I've never seen a rose; I've never smelt a rose.' That's the future you want for her. We despise you for it and we see you. We oppose this bill.