Richard Di Natale (Victoria, Australian Greens) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I move:

That the Senate take note of the answer given by the Minister for Employment (Senator Cash) to a question without notice asked by Senator Di Natale today relating to the deaths of asylum seekers.

The question regarded the death of Hamed Shamshiripour; yet another preventable tragedy that happened because we have a government and Liberal Party that is abandoning the men, women and children that it has a responsibility to look after. These are innocent people doing nothing other than fleeing persecution and torture. They are seeking Australia's help and being met with not just a turned back but also by unspeakable cruelty. The people being detained by the Liberal Party—with, it must be said, the support of the Labor Party—have suffered appallingly for so many years. They have not just been denied their liberty; they have been tortured, they have been fired upon and they have been hacked with machetes. And now what we see is a government trying to shut down the detention centre in which they are housed without anywhere for these prisoners to go. It is utterly remarkable that we are seeing their premises being demolished, with water, power, and sewage being cut off to parts of the centre, in what has to be seen as nothing other than an appalling breach of their human rights.

Six months ago, we saw the Prime Minister trying to include the people who are now being detained on Manus Island in what is a crude people swap, trafficking of human cargo, with Donald Trump. We are seeing the Liberal Party treat human beings like cattle. For six months, from that decision from the Prime Minister, not one person has been resettled; in fact, quite the opposite. We saw the government being shameful and brazen in its attempt to try to create a political fix when what is required here is some decency, compassion and humanity. The reality is that it's not safe for these people to return home.

The Prime Minister talks about 'economic refugees'—there's no such thing. These are genuine humanitarian refugees who are fleeing war-torn parts of the world—indeed, in some instances, conflicts that we ourselves, here in Australia, have spilt blood over—conditions that make it unsafe for some people and conditions that mean that individuals and families are being chased out of their own homes. But neither is it safe for them to be abandoned in Papua New Guinea. There is only one option left on the table if this country is to show the world that we have not turned our back on the innocent, on the desperate, on those people who are looking for nothing other than to contribute to the Australian nation. That option is to immediately evacuate those detention centres on Manus Island and Nauru and to bring every one of those men, women and children here to Australia.

Just last month, a letter from hundreds of detainees gave us a harrowing insight into the effects that this government's indefinite detention has had. Let me quote from it:

Our souls … are destroyed under your cruel regime of your of torture and trauma by your offshore detention.

You have the army, the police and all of the necessary manpower and equipment.

Bring them here and we will line up so you can shoot us to end our misery if you want to force us out.

It has come to this. It has come to this: eight innocent people, all now dead because we have a regime endorsed by the Liberal Party here in this country that has at its core a principle that says innocent people must be traumatised, must be harmed, in order to send a message to another group of people. It violates some of the most basic principles that any democracy should be founded on, and that is that the innocent—men, women and children—should never be harmed in an effort to try to direct a message to another group of people. That is what lies at the heart of this policy. There are so many Australians who are despairing at the torture being carried out in their name. To them I say: do not give up; we will continue fighting until every one of those people is returned to Australia. (Time expired)

Question agreed to.