Kylea Tink (North Sydney, Independent) Share this | Hansard source

I thank the Attorney-General for standing and voicing all of that context around why the government won't be supporting these amendments. I would just offer the following back: arguably this reform of the AAT is the most important reform that we've seen in over a decade. I know from personal interactions with the Attorney-General and his staff that they are very committed to re-establishing an administrative review process in this country that Australians can be confident in, and that they can trust that the process is fair and equal for all. The truth of the matter is that, as long as we continue to carve out people who find themselves in a situation within our immigration systems where they are not given the same treatment under law as every other person living in this country, we are creating a two-tier system.

I want to respond to what the Attorney-General said with a number of things. No. 1, I don't think there's any person that has any connection with the refugee and asylum-seeking sector in this country who doesn't know that the two days previously applied under the AAT was completely and wholly unacceptable. It was unworkable. We're not talking about pleasant centres where legal advocates can enter an environment to talk calmly with clients around what their legal recourse may be. Many of the people being held in these immigration detention facilities and awaiting a decision around their status of citizenship are highly traumatised individuals. They come from environments where they've already experienced trauma. They're now arriving and have had to face a number of intersectional discriminatory behaviours when it comes to our country. Many of them have not been fully assimilated when they've arrived. They've escaped violent situations only to find themselves thrust into our community with no appropriate education or appropriate assimilation, and then they find themselves in trouble with the law and back in immigration detention.

The refugee area largely does welcome this reform. We need to be really clear. As the Attorney-General said and as he and I have spoken about, this is 500 per cent better than what we have had in this country to date. If I were a teacher, I'd be giving this a nine out of 10. The reality is, though, that what I'm arguing is that the government could get a 10 out of 10, and they could do it by being braver than the governments we've seen in the past and by stepping forward and saying, 'We are prepared to be the agency of change.' In fact, a change in this legislation could ultimately push changes in our immigration detention systems, which arguably are long past due for reform. As many in this place would know, there are widespread calls for a royal commission into how our detention system works in this country.

What I'm saying here will be no surprise to the Attorney-General, because we have talked about it and his team has been really great in talking to my team about what we're seeking to achieve here. There are some moments, I believe, when a government has the opportunity to step into a true ambition that fundamentally shifts the dial in how a country addresses certain challenges.

It's interesting to see that we have the immigration minister sitting with the Attorney-General. I feel like I have a great audience to have this discussion in front of. If we are going to reform this process meaningfully, in a way that sees us as a nation fundamentally commit to realising our international obligations under all the international treaties that we say we abide by—whether that's the right to seek asylum and be free from persecution under the Refugee Convention; the right to equality before the law and equal protection of law under the UDHR; the right to enjoy the same treatment as a national in matters pertaining to access to the courts, again under the Refugee Convention; the right, in full equality, to a fair and public hearing by an independent and impartial tribunal in the determination of rights and obligations under the UDHR; or the right to recognition everywhere as a person before the law under the UDHR—the time for that is now, with this piece of legislation.

So I thank the Attorney-General and his team for their time, but I continue to argue that the best-case scenario would be that even those in detention would be treated in the same way as every other person under the Administrative Review Tribunal process.

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