Zoe Daniel (Goldstein, Independent) Share this | Hansard source

Labor's been in power for fully nine months, and what have we got? Not legislation to fix the plight of the tens of thousands of refugees on various temporary visas. What we're being asked to vote on today is legislation for Nauru to remain a regional processing centre for another decade. And there is still no plan to medically evacuate the 150 people remaining in those two detention centres and to allow them to reside in Australia while they engage with resettlement options. Why do they need medical evacuation? Because we have broken them. Many of them are so broken that they're immobile and nonverbal. We did that, as a country. The parliament did that.

Three-quarters of Australians say that has to change. The Albanese government is spending $632 million this financial year to keep refugees offshore. That's more than $4 million each. That compares with less than $4,000, on average, according to the Asylum Seeker Resource Centre, to administer arrangements in Australia for those living in the community on bridging visas—not to mention public money going to a private US prison company accused of pandemic profiteering and the unlawful use of solitary confinement. If the inhumanity isn't enough, look at the cost to the taxpayer. On that basis alone, we should close offshore detention. If the government insists on keeping it—which it does—I say that we must have mandatory short processing periods and no more indefinite detention. It is neither human nor economically responsible.

As I said publicly earlier today, I support a royal commission into this whole miserable business. If we want to truly stop the boats and break the business model of the people smugglers, we must develop a regional solution with our neighbours, especially the key transit countries, Indonesia and Malaysia, with record numbers of refugees worldwide and at least a million refugees from the conflict in Myanmar alone in our own region. I hear the minister and the opposition on the many variables here, the national security issues and the risks to those travelling. I have stood on the shore at Christmas Island; I have seen those bodies pulled from the water. But I speak for those many constituents in Goldstein who have raised this when I say that I do not support this tick and flick to blindly extend the life of this flawed system—I cannot.

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