Josh Burns (Macnamara, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I rise tonight to contribute to the Migration Amendment (Prohibiting Items in Immigration Detention Facilities) Bill 2020. I start my remarks tonight by thanking the people in my electorate who have written to me about this bill, who have raised their voices and, by extension, requested me to raise mine in this place and say for them that they can't understand the logic behind this bill. They can't understand why Australia is pursuing such a draconian overreach in regard to the management of people in our control and in our care. They have rightly pointed out the cruel nature of this bill.

Migration policy in this country over the last decade is a familiar story of this government overreaching and playing political games with our detention facilities and our migration system. But when we saw this bill rehashed—an old version of Peter Dutton's bill from 2017—we thought we would work constructively with the government. We thought as the Labor opposition that there are pretty extraordinary powers sought by the government and therefore we would seek to get an explanation and find out why these powers are necessary. Often there could be reasons and cases as to why the government's sought these pretty extraordinary powers. But, of course, there was no answer. There was no response from the government that justified the extraordinary powers that they sought to have as a result of this migration bill. The only logical conclusion to that is that this bill is not about a proportionate response from government but about cruelty and politics. Cruelty and politics are what are governing this bill and its creation.

I listened intently to the contributions of the member for Melbourne and the member for Clark. While I know that they in their lonesome offices really enjoy taking swipes at the Labor Party, I remind them that the Labor Party is opposing this bill and that the Labor Party took to the last election a record of reform that would have dramatically changed the way in which Australia treats people in care and treats those seeking asylum in this country. We would have removed indefinite detention and gotten people out of detention. We would have worked with New Zealand and other countries to set up regional processes to make sure that people weren't left languishing by themselves for years. We also would have got rid of temporary protection visas, improved the processing time for visas, increased our humanitarian intake and played a bigger role on the international stage. We would have completely transformed the way in which Australia handles these migration cases, so I really resent the politics from the Greens and the Independents, who are constantly trying to undermine Labor's reform in this place. We would have taken a very different approach, just like we did in the last parliament, when we introduced and worked with the crossbench on the medevac bill.

The story of the medevac bill is much like this one. The standards that Labor sought to enforce were not remarkable. We wanted to make sure that there was basic medical care for those in our power. With this bill, all we are saying is that detention centres are not prisons, that people in the care of Australia as a nation are not prisoners. If they commit a crime or there is a suspicion that they have committed a crime, do what you need to do with the powers that already exist, but that's not what this bill is about. This bill is a punitive measure to deny people the most basic of accessories, such as a mobile phone. What is this government afraid of—vulnerable people writing nasty things about them, texting nasty things about the Prime Minister or about the minister for immigration? It's hardly a sign of strength that a government would seek to take away such a basic human right as the right to communication and connection to the outside world from people who have not committed a crime, from people who have come to this country seeking our help.

As with the medevac bill, with this bill the government is simply seeking to play politics and to introduce cruel and unnecessary overreaching measures. To deny someone a mobile phone in detention seems heartless and cruel, but to deny medical attention to someone in this country—the Australia I have grown up with—seems foreign to all the things I hold dear about this country. It seems foreign to all the things I know as an Australian, where health care is a universal right, not something the government plays games with, depending on whether or not it feels like it needs to flex its political muscles on the day.

It's hardly surprising—as with this bill, where the government has no reason and no justification for these extraordinary powers—we heard after the medevac bill the mother of all scare campaigns unravelling. They said they needed to open up the Christmas Island detention centre. We all remember that. The government wasted $185 million to open up the Christmas Island detention centre. It was in the budget. What a waste of money. What a waste of resources. What a waste. To prove that there was no justification for the government to have opened the Christmas Island detention centre, who did the government send there? For the majority of time it has been a sad family of four, with a three-year-old girl and her five-year-old sister sitting in there by themselves with their parents, defenceless.

It is not a sign or a show of strength to take a family out of a community in regional Queensland and put them in the Christmas Island detention centre by themselves. It doesn't matter that the government wasted millions of dollars in setting up an unnecessary detention centre after the medevac bill embarrassment in the House of Representatives. It matters that they used it for a $185 million political exercise where the Prime Minister was seen doing press conferences, charging taxpayers thousands of dollars per minute to get photo ops near this empty detention centre on Christmas Island. We are better as a country and as a people than wasting millions of dollars on defenceless people. I think that we as Australians are better than spending millions of dollars during a pandemic to lock up people unnecessarily. In the middle of a pandemic, wasting millions of dollars locking up a family—surely we are better than taking away their mobile phones when they haven't committed a crime.

This bill isn't about the extraordinary powers that the government wants; this bill is about the government seeking extraordinary powers for no reason. This government had no reason to want to take away the mobile phones of people, who have committed no crime, other than to flex its muscles and play the politics of cruelty, which is its default game. It's hardly surprising, because the Minister for Home Affairs has form on this. He leads the department and the acting minister, who has been an acting minister for quite some time, in this reform. Maybe the Minister for Home Affairs is bored. Maybe he is looking forward to the November reshuffle when he will be moving over to Defence, as reported by many of the mainstream media outlets. Maybe he is looking to pack up the home affairs department and be shifted sideways. I don't know what's driving this. Maybe he wants one last hurrah in his role in charge of the immigration and detention centre before the Prime Minister shuffles him aside.

All I can say is that we in the Labor Party are not going to be governed by the politics of fear. We need to be bigger than that. We need to be bigger than that as a country, and we need a government that is bigger than that. We need a government who can stomach having things written about them by people in detention, people who have been left there unnecessarily for seven years—indefinite detention—and who don't have any idea of what the future holds for them. Surely we can say that (a) they deserve medical care and (b) while they are in our care they can have things like a mobile phone. I don't think that that's too much to ask. In fact I think these people should be taken out of detention as quickly as possible.

I will finish my contribution today by saying that at every single stage we have sought to work collaboratively and cooperatively, and sought to find answers as to why the government would want to introduce such draconian measures. But at every single stage the government hasn't provided answers. The only answer that really exists is that the government wants to play with people's lives and play cruel political games in order to make its political points. It's shameful, and I join my colleagues in the Labor Party in saying that we don't support this bill and that we hope for a day when a bit more decency and humanity comes to immigration detention and immigration policy in this country. I hope to work towards them in my time in this place.

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