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

This coming Monday, 18 May, will mark Mullivaikkal Remembrance Day, when the world remembers the appalling crimes inflicted on the Tamil people in 2009 in the closing days of the conflict between the Tamils and the Sinhalese in northern Sri Lanka. In 2009, some 300,000 Tamils were hemmed into a so-called safe zone and then subjected to bombings, artillery shells and killing. We don't know how many Tamils died, but it's estimated to be more than 140,000. That's why, this week, the Tamil Refugee Council held an exhibition here in the heart of Australia's democracy, Parliament House, to tell the truth about the Tamil genocide. It didn't just happen on one day in 2009; it has happened for decades and continues. I want to thank the Tamil community for the strength they've shown in remembering the power of their culture and the power of truth and thank the Tamil Refugee Council and all their supporters for bringing that show and that exhibition to parliament today.

Well, now we're seeing it. We are watching the way Labor, the coalition and their mates in One Nation are trying to do a stitch-up job by bringing in these new extended ASIO powers. Labor initially wanted to make these extraordinary secret detention powers absolutely permanent to literally whisk you off the street for 24 hours, secretly interrogate you and then stitch you up with secrecy laws so you can't tell anyone. Initially, the coalition was on board and One Nation was on board. There's been a resistance across the country. Labor has now pulled its head in on these permanent laws, but make no mistake; they want to extend ASIO's powers to reach into your homes and to not only track down alleged terrorism but extend it to issues like communal violence or to wherever ASIO wants to go to pluck you off the street whenever the Attorney-General thinks that you might be a risk. Those are dangerous, fascist laws, and we should fight them.