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

The Migration Amendment (Repairing Medical Transfers) Bill 2019 has a really simple proposition. The government is putting forward the basic idea that if you're sick you shouldn't be able to get medical treatment. That's what this government is saying to all of the people whom Australia has locked up in prisons or on prison islands because they've committed no crime but have done nothing more than come here and try to seek our help, often fleeing war, trauma and persecution. They've come here, and the Australia government, under successive governments, under a bipartisan policy, has made them sick. It has locked people up in indefinite detention when they have committed no crime. It has said to young children, 'Even though you have done nothing wrong, you are going to spend your future unable to live freely and play like every other child does.' When you do that to people, it makes them sick. We've been told that time and time again, under a Liberal government and under a Labor government. This policy of offshore indefinite mandatory detention breaks people. It breaks them to the point where children have tried to kill themselves. We've had reports of people trying to set themselves on fire. That is what we have done to people.

The health crisis in these camps is, as I say, at breaking point. If you live in Australia and you are so sick that you set yourself on fire or you consider taking your own life, there is help available to you. If you break your leg, there is help available to you. Most people in this country have no problem with the proposition that even prisoners who get sick are entitled to medical treatment. Yes, they've committed a crime and, yes, they're serving a sentence, but that's no reason to also say that if you get sick you can't get medical treatment. At the end of the day, people are human beings, and there's a basic principle that we have—or that we should all have—for each other, which is that if you get sick, no matter who you are, you are entitled to the treatment that will get you better.

That wasn't happening for people who were on Manus or Nauru or in detention. What was happening was that people were getting incredibly sick—as I say, to the point where they would consider taking their own lives. They were getting so sick, and because this government, following the principles set down by previous Labor and Liberal governments, was saying, 'You're not allowed to live in Australia. We're going to put you offshore, out of sight, out of mind,' they were in places where you couldn't get the kind of help that people need, so bad was their health and so poor in many instances was the medical treatment that was being given to people.

So people were crying out, saying, 'Give us the treatment we need to help us get better.' They had some friends and some advocates here. Groups like the Asylum Seeker Resource Centre, the Human Rights Law Centre and many doctors and lawyers said, 'Okay, if the government's not going to give them the help that they need and deserve, then they should be brought to Australia to be given that help.' And every time they tried to make that happen, this government and this minister stood in their way and forced them to go to court to get basic medical treatment.

Just think about that for a moment. This government, this home affairs minister, has overseen them in a prison or in detention where, by definition, it helps break them to the point where they get sick. When they get sick and someone says, 'Give them medical treatment,' the government says, 'No. You go to court. Make us give them medical treatment.' People were going to court, and people were getting the medical treatment that, finally, they needed, but with no help from this government.

When the Australian people found out about this, they said, 'There's something wrong here. There is something wrong if we are not giving people the medical treatment they deserve.' So in the last parliament we passed a bill that had a very simple proposition: if you get sick you're entitled to medical treatment, especially if you're under Australia's care, even if you're living in detention—especially if you're in detention. The bill that was passed had a lot of safeguards in it. Did it go as far as I wanted or the Greens wanted and end offshore detention? No. Did it say everyone should be processed here in Australia? No. We didn't have support from Labor or Liberal on that one, because they all agree on offshore detention. What it did do was say that if you're sick you can be brought here to get the medical help you need.

Despite all the rhetoric from the government, the people who were brought here still remained in detention while they were here. It's not like they got brought here and let out. I say that's what should happen if they're genuine refugees, but it doesn't. They got brought here and were kept in detention while they got the help they needed. And the minister still retained the power to step in if there was a security threat issue. In every other instance, if independent doctors said, 'No, they need medical help,' they were entitled to get it. That legislation passed, because it was the right thing to do.

I want to pay tribute to the former member for Wentworth, Kerryn Phelps, who worked with the crossbench to lead the charge. I want to acknowledge the work of the former opposition leader, the member for Maribyrnong, as well because it did take guts to stand up and do that in the face of what we knew would be an onslaught of misleading statements and untruths from the government and the opposition. And, of course, it came.

For one moment, there was an attempt to wind back this bipartisan policy, and I pay tribute to the members of the crossbench and the Labor Party who worked together to make that happen. I know there are a number of people who worked very hard on this over a period of time. And the good news is, it was working. After this bill got passed we saw sick people getting the help they needed, and what the numbers bore out is what we feared all along—there weren't security threats. These people didn't have security threats hanging over their heads. There was no reason to deny them medical help. What we found was that when the independent doctors said, 'No, someone needs help,' most of the time the minister agreed and they were brought here. So we didn't have to go through this tortuous court process. We didn't need to have the minister saying, 'I'll only give you treatment if you can go and convince a judge.' No. If a doctor says you need treatment, you get it. And people were getting it.

Of the people who were fronting up and had doctors saying, 'This person is so sick they need treatment,' in the first instance, 80 per cent of the time the minister agreed. The minister agreed and said, 'Yes, they need to come here.' Gone was this appalling and unjustifiable use of public money to keep sick people sick—all the lawyers and the clogging up of the court system by this government blocking legitimate claims. Eight out of 10 times, the minister looked at it and said, 'Under this new law, actually it's right; they should come here and they should get help.' There were not floods, as the minister and the government might have you believe—floods and floods of the new independent panel that was put in by the minister overriding the minister's decision. In fact, there have only been eight instances where the minister has been overridden. This tells you that, by and large, the people who are getting help under this legislation are people who need it. They are sick people and, eight out of 10 times, the minister agrees they're sick, and so they get the help they need without having to go to court. That is the law now, and this government wants to change it.

This government wants to go back to the old way of doing things where, even if the minister agrees that you're sick, you have to go to court, and the minister and the government will fight you with all the vast resources of the Australian government. They will fight you and fight you and fight you. If you get sick and die along the way, so be it; we don't care. This system is working. It is getting help to the people who need it. They are getting the treatment that they need, and this government wants to deny that to them.

We now have a question to answer in Australia. Regardless of where you stand on whether you think offshore detention is right—whether you think it's right to keep people locked up for not having committed any crime—we now have to deal with the very obvious fact that under this government's watch there are now hundreds of people who are sick because the government has made them sick. What are we going to do with those people? Are we going to say they are not entitled to medical help, which is what this government wants to do, or are we going to allow this legislation to stay in place so that they can just get the help that they need? Obviously the government doesn't care whether sick people get worse or die. It's quite happy to leave them in conditions where they don't get the medical care they need and in fact are going to make them sicker. It's quite obvious the government doesn't care.

If this bill passes this place—unless this government has a change of heart, for which you need a heart in the first place—and goes to the Senate, I say to all the members of the Senate: by rejecting this bill, you are not posing a security risk to Australia. By knocking this bill back, you are not changing the government's border protection policies. I'd love it if the medevac bill changed the government's border protection policies, but it doesn't. It's not my preference, but, if you believe in offshore detention, indefinite detention and all of those things, you can still knock this bill back, because this bill does nothing for Australia's security. All this bill does is say it's going to be okay from now on for the minister to dip his hand into the public purse, take money that could be going to schools and hospitals and use it to go to court to stop sick people from getting treatment. That's what the government's asking for. The government is asking for the right to use public money to stop sick people getting treatment.

Now, no-one agrees with that. That's why the medevac bill passed both houses of parliament last time. It's why the Australian public thought it was a very good idea. I urge members of this place but especially members of the Senate: whatever your perspective on those broader issues, keep in place a law that is working. We know it's working. We know people are getting the help that they need. Allow that to continue to happen, because, otherwise, if you vote with the government on this, you are voting to make sick people sicker unnecessarily and you're voting to say it doesn't matter if someone as a result of all of this ends up with permanent illness, ends up with damage or decides to take their own life, because that's what has been happening. I plead with this place and with the other place to leave the law intact and to reject this bill.

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