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

I second the motion. Modern Australia was built on the back on immigration. For decades, we welcomed hundreds of thousands of people from all over the world, provided them with support, gave them jobs, got their children educated and looked after their health and their broader welfare. For example, Australia has the highest concentration per capita of Holocaust survivors in the world outside Israel—most pertinent to remember at this terrible time in global history. We're a better nation for it. So, what changed? Why is it that one person has been held in detention for nearly 16 years when, a decade ago, the immigration authorities stated that their aim was to process applications for onshore protection visas within 90 days? Why is it taking close to 2½ years for the Department of Home Affairs to make its initial assessment when it's less than two months in the US and just a fortnight in Canada?

I would say it all goes back to that day in August 2001 when MV Tampa heaved into view off Christmas Island. At that moment, the last shreds of bipartisanship in refugee policy were tossed overboard. From then on, it's been one wedge after another. It has to stop. This bill, the Migration Amendment (Limits on Immigration Detention) Bill 2023, presented by the member for North Sydney, is a start. I, for one, am here for it. I will not be wedged, and nor will the community that I represent. In voting for me, they were voting for more humane treatment of refugees and asylum seekers.

It is Labor policy that there be a 90-day limit on immigration detention. Yet here we are, halfway through this term of parliament, and progress has been limited, to say the least. Whether or not a 90-day limit comes into effect, there may be a way through this: an independent panel for detention review, similar to state and territory parole boards, that could make recommendations to the minister for immigration applying to all people in immigration detention. An independent panel would be an effective interim non-legislative solution which could be introduced immediately, would be consistent with Labor policy and would ensure that immigration detention complies with Australia's international obligations, that there are alternatives to detention and that detention is only applied as a measure of last resort.

There is precedent for this: the Independent Reviewer of Adverse Security Assessments, set up in 2012.

Members on the government benches should live up to the promise of their party platform and support this bill. They should support the member for North Sydney's timely private member's bill and allow it to be brought to a vote. I congratulate my fellow crossbencher and I commend this bill to the House.

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