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

I want to thank the member for Indi for bringing this important matter to the House. The government has said that in eight days time, under a deadline it has self-imposed, it will close down the processing centre on Manus and potentially start turning off the power and the water to the people who are there, but there are hundreds of people in that place who don't know their fate. These are people who have committed no crime. All they have done is what I think any one of us in this place would do if we thought that our lives were at risk, our family's lives were at risk or we couldn't freely express ourselves politically without risk of persecution or torture. They did what many people with no other option would do—they sought a better life. We should be very proud that the life that they sought was in Australia. It is a testament to our values that they thought that they would seek to come to Australia. If I was in that situation and I thought my only hope of looking after myself or my family was to jump on a boat, I would do it. I suspect many, many other people here would do it as well. Is it the best way? Perhaps not. Sometimes, though, it's the only way. They did nothing more than jump on a boat instead of getting on a plane, in which case they would have been treated very differently, but this government is continuing the policy of the Labor government of locking these people up indefinitely.

The people in this centre have already witnessed murders, riots, beatings and machete attacks. They have witnessed drunken members of the Papua New Guinea navy fire over 100 shots into the prison, and they have witnessed a loaded up Toyota Hilux ute being rammed through the gates in an attempt to attack refugees in that centre. As a result, we are hearing now on a daily basis that the people, who are in the centre because they have committed no crime but are in indefinite detention in a place that is a risk to their safety, are feeling the effects of having been locked up in this mental illness factory. Now they are told that in eight days time the place will close. As we have heard from previous speakers, the options they have been given are anywhere but Australia. They are told, 'You could go elsewhere in Papua New Guinea, or maybe we'll send you over to Nauru. Maybe you'll be one of the lucky ones who get under the US resettlement deal, but there is no guarantee of that either.' The government is going to great lengths to do everything other than the humane thing, which is to say, 'We will bring them here and process them here.'

As a result, because of this government's deliberate policy of uncertainty, we're in a situation where in eight days time services could be cut off to these people and they will be, yet again, forced to make decisions with a gun at their heads. What worries me is that this is a deliberate decision by the minister and the government to create a powder keg that will go off. As I've said, we know that the conditions there are appalling and that they should never have been in this camp that Labor and Liberal support. They should never have been there. But now it is a tinderbox, and the worry is that the minister is deliberately creating the conditions for a situation where violence will occur. It has already occurred there, through the attacks, and now in eight days time, if you have several hundred people stuck on an island that they can't get off, given no alternative other than perhaps to be told, 'You can go and live in PNG'—where they know it's not safe—'or you can go and be moved elsewhere to another form of detention.' When they're saying, 'We don't want to go until we know what our future is,' that is creating the conditions for violence to occur. I think it's a deliberate act by Minister Dutton to create a situation where violence will occur, which he will then use to turn around and blame these refugees and asylum seekers even further and say, 'Look, that is why we can't bring them to Australia.'

I think that's despicable. If the government wanted to impose this deadline to bring an end to the centre, then it should have a decent plan for the several hundred people who are there. Now, it will shame us if the new New Zealand government takes these people. Maybe they will; I don't know; but it would shame us that across the ditch a government is prepared to do the right thing, yet we here in Australia are party to a government that says, 'If you're an asylum seeker you can't have a pet unless we approve it, and we're going to lock you up and destroy your life.'

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