Ms Julie Bishop (Curtin, Liberal Party, Deputy Leader of the Opposition) Share this | Hansard source

On 30 September 2010, the then Attorney-General, the member for Barton, in a second reading speech on the human rights bill, was talking about the need to have greater understanding in Australia of human rights in Australia. He was talking about the respect that we must have in Australia for human rights for Australian citizens. He also talked about the recognition of human rights issues in legislative and policy development. On this government's attitude to human rights for Australian citizens, he said:

The government believes that Australia can, and should, live up to its obligations under these important treaties, not simply because this is the right thing to do but because the principles that are contained in those documents provide a protection against unwarranted, unjustified or arbitrary interference in the fundamental rights enjoyed by all individuals irrespective of their colour, background or social status.

He was talking about what we expect for Australian citizens. Yet this amendment moved by the member for Lyne, which would include the government's ability to implement the Malaysia solution, walks away from Australia's obligations under the United Nations Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees. This parliament is being asked to walk away from the very human rights protections that the member for Barton so eloquently applied to Australian citizens.

I remind members opposite that the High Court found that the so-called Malaysia solution was illegal because the human rights protections which are guaranteed under the UN convention, or the guarantees that were contained in the paragraphs that were inserted by the coalition government into the Migration Act, could not be guaranteed. There is no getting around that finding by the High Court. Yet we are being asked to walk away from our obligations as a party to the convention.

There is one amendment before this parliament which enshrines the protections and the human rights obligations that we as a party to the refugee convention owe to people who come into our care and for whom we therefore have a responsibility, and that is the amendment of the member for Cook. A bill containing his amendment is that only bill that can pass this parliament. It is the only bill that can get through the House and the Senate. We can leave here, and on our side we will have compromised. The word compromise has received so much focus in recent days. We have compromised, for we will support the government's bill with our amendment. We cannot compromise on the issue of human rights, and no one in this parliament should be compromising on the issue of human rights and walking away from the UN convention on refugees. We cannot compromise on this issue, and no-one should ask us to do so. We should not compromise on human rights, and on this side we will not.

If the government votes against the member for Cook's amendment, it will have refused to compromise. There will be no solution and the government members will, quite unbelievably, have walked away from the UN convention on refugees. I cannot believe that members opposite will do that. Australia became a party to the convention on refugees in 1954. The convention came into being in 1951, and just a couple of years later Australia embraced the UN convention on refugees.

We embraced in 1973 the protocol of 1967. For 58 years we have upheld the values and the principles that are inherent in that convention. As the member for Barton said 'the principles that are contained in these sorts of documents', he was not referring to the convention on refugees but to the human rights conventions under the United Nations, which provided 'protection against unwarranted, unjustified or arbitrary interference in the fundamental rights enjoyed by all individuals'. We say that this includes the individuals who as asylum seekers come under our care and responsibility.

The Prime Minister knows that the implementation is important because, deep in her heart, she knew that the UN convention on refugees was important when she announced the East Timor solution and when she announced— (Time expired)

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