Adam Bandt (Melbourne, Australian Greens) Share this | Hansard source

It is clear, for reasons that other members have made clear in this House and as I raised earlier, that mandatory detention has failed. I welcome anything we can do to shed light on the effects of the policy of mandatory detention in this country. I hope that mandatory detention is treated as sufficiently serious an issue that we can move to establishing a joint select committee on it so that both houses of parliament can take the opportunity of the composition of the current parliament to have, once and for all, a comprehensive inquiry into the merits or otherwise of our mandatory detention system. I thank the member for Cook for including in his amendment to his motion calling for a select committee on Australia's immigration detention network some of the terms of reference that we think would be necessary to give that kind of breadth and impetus to the committee. I do hope that, over coming days, we can reach agreement that this ought to be a joint select committee.

It is clear that mandatory detention has failed. We know it has failed from psychiatrist after psychiatrist, mental health expert after mental health expert and human rights commissioner after human rights commissioner coming before us, the media and the Australian people to tell us about the appalling effects on an individual's mental health and wellbeing from being locked up behind razor wire indefinitely without knowing their fate. Most particularly, we know and can no longer close our eyes to the horrible life-ruining effects it has on children—children of families who have members in detention and children who are in detention themselves. There can be no excuse for the continued incarceration of children whose parents have fled to Australia. They have fled some of the most appalling persecution conditions—conditions that we send our soldiers overseas to fight against—but we then take them and lock them up. Mandatory detention has failed because it treats them as unlawful people who have committed no crime. It treats them worse than criminals. At least criminals know when they are going to be released; people in detention do not.

We know that the system of mandatory detention has failed because it is now being prosecuted for purely political reasons. It has become an issue of who can be toughest on this issue in the hope that it will win some votes somewhere. We have lost any defining policy behind our immigration system. We know that mandatory detention has failed because it is the most costly alternative available to us, with at least a billion dollars a year being spent on a so-called border protection policy which has nothing to do with national security issues but has everything to do with attempts to win votes domestically.

My colleague on the crossbench the member for Denison made a point about people smugglers. I have no doubt that there are some very unsavoury people who are people smugglers, but for this somehow to be made an issue not of protecting the rights of asylum seekers but of breaking the model of people smugglers is completely the wrong approach. If I, and I suspect most Australians, were in the position where I or my family were being threatened, where there was war around me or where I or people I knew were being persecuted I would do anything I could to get out of my country, including paying some money to someone to get me out. I think most fair-minded people would feel the same way. The more we talk about people smugglers, the more we ignore the fact that we are talking about individuals seeking assistance to flee appalling conditions. I am reminded that it was not always like this in Australia.

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