Andrew Giles (Scullin, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

Sorry should not be the hardest word to say and it should not be too much for the Australian people to expect that our government should take responsibility for its actions, especially when those actions damage people, like the nine workers caused to be wrongly removed from their roles in Nauru in October 2014, and also when damage is caused to our democracy through these actions and the failure to be honest and direct with the Australian people as well as those affected workers.

We know now, through an independent report and through the Australian Federal Police, that the Department of Immigration and Border Protection, under then Minister Morrison, had no justification in removing nine Save the Children Australia charity workers from Nauru in 2014 and we know that claims that Save the Children Australia employees coaxed asylum seekers to fabricate accounts of abuse were completely unfounded. Specifically, the Doogan report, which was released very quietly by the government last month despite having been dated June 2015, found that there was 'no evidence nor reliable information' to support the naming of the Save the Children Australia staff at Nauru. This is outrageous and unacceptable and requires an apology to be delivered by the now minister.

The then minister, in publicising details of these outrageous allegations, caused great damage not only to Save the Children Australia and the affected workers but also to other NGOs and indeed more broadly to civil society. This action, and the failure to account for it, has very wide-ranging and serious ramifications. It has been awful for those directly affected—and I will touch on that briefly in a moment.

Let's think here about the chilling effect these actions have had on our civil society. They have undermined our capacity to uphold human rights and hold executive government to account. Some of these individual staff members have spent long periods since October 2014 unemployed and some have suffered from mental health issues after being publicly accused and deported. Having worked, as the Save the Children CEO has said, with some of the most vulnerable children in the toughest of circumstances—this is very difficult and very important work under politically charged circumstances—workers doing the work deserve support, not opprobrium. They deserve support and they deserve respect. It is past the time for that respect to given, in circumstances where nine people have had their reputations tarnished and have been deprived of their livelihoods. And for what?

I remember that the then immigration minister told a press conference on this issue that the public do not want to be played for mugs. This is correct, of course. We have heard a lot of talk about ministerial responsibility lately. These standards include what a minister says. Are we to believe that, if you are the immigration minister, you are free from the ministerial code of conduct? I ask members to think about the provisions of clause 5.5 of that code, which provide very clearly for a minister to correct the record. The insidious nature of the misinformation here is why this government needs to issue an official apology for those concerned from the responsible minister, not a departmental officer.

The government waited months to release the report and then attempted to bury its findings, releasing it on a Friday afternoon in January. This report, of course, not only vindicated the Save the Children staff but condemned the government's appalling and cynical handling of these allegations. It said:

From review of the documentation it seems reasonably clear that the information provided in relation to the ten SCA staff members was not intended to be acted upon in the way it was acted upon. Rather it seems that the intention was that further investigation would be undertaken before any action was taken.

Instead of properly investigating, as he was required to do, the then minister chose to score political points and trash people's reputations through the media.

What we have learnt since, from the Moss report and the Doogan report, was that the government misled the Australian public about what was happening on Nauru. These claims were found to be false by not one but two reports, and the government has thus far refused to put in any effort to correct the record as it is required to do. It puts the new Prime Minister's claims about restoring traditional cabinet government to shame. A simple apology will not make up the mistreatment but it will go some way towards beginning a healing process.

This government needs to recognise that the facts they were provided with were wrong and did not justify their subsequent actions. They need to recognise the damage done by trying to malign a charity—and indeed the workers—with no evidence. It is time for government to stop treating people like mugs and apologises It is not hard to say sorry. It could be the first step in enabling nine people to get on with their lives and in restoring the reputation of Save the Children Australia. (Time expired)

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