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

This week is Refugee Week. It's an appropriate time to reflect that it has been almost exactly 10 years since offshore detention was restarted on 19 July 2013, a decade since the Labor government started sending to Manus Island and Nauru thousands of people who arrived in Australia by boat to seek asylum. This has become one of the darkest and bloodiest chapters in our country's story—and it is not yet over.

The following 14 people paid for it with their lives: Reza Barati, Sayed Ibraham Hussein, Hamid Kehazaei, Omid Masoumali, Rakib Khan, Kamil Hussain, Faysal Ishak Ahmed, Hamed Shamshiripour, Rajeev Rajendran, Jahingir, Salim Kyawning, Fariborz Karami, Sayed Mirwais Rohani and Abdirahman Ahmed Mohammed. We remember them and honour them today with a moment of silence in the Senate. They are not forgotten, and they will never be forgotten.