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

I speak on behalf of everyone when I say no-one wants to see people dying at sea. It is with heavy hearts that we receive the latest news. People have the right to safety and security for themselves and their families and, if they cannot find that in their homelands, then we know that people will flee. We have signed up to conventions to ensure that as they are fleeing—as they take their families and seek safety—they will be treated properly, with respect, safety and security. The law says those standards should apply. Later this afternoon, we are going to have a choice. Are we going to ask ourselves and all of our neighbours to lift the level of protection to meet those standards we have signed up to so that people do not wait decades in Indonesian camps—where there are currently only two United Nations human rights commissioners processing their applications—and where, after waiting for years, they get so desperate that they decide to take to rickety boats, putting their own and their families' lives at risk in hopes of safety?

Are we going to uphold that convention so those people do not spend those decades waiting in limbo or are we going to rip up the basic legal standards we have signed up to? I tell you this, Madam Deputy Speaker Burke, if we rip up those standards ourselves and do not abide by those conventions, there is no way we can look at our neighbours with straight faces and ask them to improve their standards of treatment for refugees and asylum seekers.

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