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

The compassionate people of Melbourne have for over a month been rallying every day outside the Park Hotel in Carlton in my electorate. They have been rallying because since 2019 over 60 innocent men have been cruelly imprisoned there. These men, along with hundreds of others, were brought to the Australian mainland to receive medical treatment. Instead, at times they been confined to their rooms for 23 hours a day. Australia's immigration system is based on torture and cruelty and says that when people come here seeking our help we show them a closed fist instead of an open hand. I ask each of you here in parliament today: if you or your family were in a situation where bullets were raining down on you or you couldn't feed yourselves or you were under threat of death or persecution, wouldn't you flee to seek safety? And wouldn't you want to be treated like a human being when you arrived in a country like Australia?

The people of Melbourne have now borne witness to the inhumanity of this government. The community pressure is working. In the last fortnight 46 men were released, and they are now free for the first time in eight years, but there are still 12 men languishing in the Park Hotel. As the leader of the only party in this parliament that opposes the cruel system of indefinite mandatory detention, I want to assure each of these 12 men that we will keep fighting not just until those 12 are released but until every detention camp is closed down and no-one is locked up indefinitely for committing no crime.

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