Monique Ryan (Kooyong, Independent) Share this | Hansard source

The government introduced this bill, the Migration Amendment (Prohibiting Items in Immigration Detention Facilities) Bill 2024, on 21 November 2024, just last week, and it is the third of a suite of bills with which the government appears to be on a very rapid race to the bottom in its attempts to mimic the draconian efforts of the last government to treat the most vulnerable people—people seeking asylum in this country—in a fashion which is not humanitarian, is not generous and does not recognise or reflect the values of electorates like the one I represent.

I want to note for those constituents of Kooyong who are watching tonight that this is not a new bill. This is the fourth time that this bill, or an iteration of it, has been brought to the House. The first time was in 2017 when Peter Dutton was the immigration minister. The bill was reintroduced in 2019 and 2020, and on each occasion it failed to pass because of a significant backlash from not only the other sides of the House but also the community. In fact, when the ALP wrote a dissenting report in 2020, essentially to this very bill, it noted the extent of community backlash and, really, revulsion about the premises of the bill. That actually led to a community petition signed by 140,000 Australians expressing their disgust at the measures that we're discussing with this bill. They had the opportunity to do that because this is a democracy and in a democracy people have a right or an ability to give feedback about things the government is planning that they care about. But citizens are denied that right when a bill is put before the House with this degree of haste.

What would this bill do? The bill would essentially give the minister sweeping powers to ban almost any item in a detention centre. Those items would include everyday items like mobile phones. The bill has the ability to cut off from their loved ones and from their crucial supports people who are vulnerable and already in a place they do not want to be, who are subjected to conditions in their life they do not want to live within. It would limit their ability to hold the government responsible for the circumstances of their detention. Under this bill as it is laid out, the minister can determine that almost any item is a prohibited item. They could be things that are illegal and which could be the subject of criminal activity, but they could also be things the minister believes might be a risk to the health, safety or security of people and the detention facility or to the 'order' of the facility, whatever that might be.

The bill also expands the basis for officers in the detention centre to undertake invasive strip searches. It gives broad new powers for officers to conduct area searches within the centre, which could include examination of people's rooms, their personal effects, common areas or even medical examination areas. And officers within the detention centres will be able to use force to conduct those searches. They can bring dogs or other external people in to help them. They can confiscate items they believe have been banned. It doesn't matter whether or not the person has been shown to have actually misused their phone in the past or to have engaged in any conduct which has put other people at risk. If the officer feels this is a reasonable thing to do to reduce any risk to health, safety, security or order in the detention facility then the officer can do that. We can imagine how that power might be misused by people who don't necessarily have inmates' best interests in mind. The bill also gives the minister the ability to issue blanket directions about the exercise of search and seizure powers within detention centres.

I think it's important to note that many of these powers are actually already in the hands of the minister and people who run the centres. They already have search-and-seizure powers if they are dealing with illegal or dangerous items in a detention centre. We have to remember detention centres aren't prisons. But the distinction appears to be moot in the context of this legislation. The minister and officers are already able to undertake those searches and those seizures under the Migration Act under their common law duty of care, and we have to remember as well, remembering that these are not prisons, that these centres are in many instances being staffed by contract personnel who are not subject to the same rules or, shall we say, degree of oversight as police people or ABF. I think it's really important that we note that people who are in detention shouldn't have to exist under a harsher regime just because of their visa status. These people are not criminals. Now, some of them, we're told, have been guilty of criminal activity within the detention centres that we are discussing, but, if that's the case, the people running those centres have the ability to resort to the criminal justice system. The mere fact that that sort of activity might be taking place is not a justification for changing the rules around the places themselves. Were that the case, then you could argue that similar powers should be given to teachers in schools, where very often illegal activity is undertaken, or a music festival or any other spot where people undertake illegal activity.

I think, at the end of the day, we have a duty to first do no harm to people who are vulnerable in our justice system, whether that be the criminal justice system or the immigration system. It's worth us remembering that, between 2019 and 2024, there were more than 700 episodes of self-harm by people in immigration detention centres in this country and there were 29 deaths. It's hard to imagine the imposition of the rules that the government has put before us with such a lack of due diligence, consultation or community feedback. They will hurt people who are vulnerable and who already, just by the circumstances that lead to them finding themselves in these immigration detention centres, lack the power and the agency that ordinary Australians have.

It's also worth remembering that this particular bill that has been put in front of the House with such short notice is only one of three significant bills that the government is pushing through with unseemly haste at this point in time. We've recently seen the Migration Amendment Bill, which has imposed ankle bracelets and curfews on prisoners, we've seen our government arranging to pay other sovereign states to take our noncitizens—but we don't have a whole lot of clarity about what that involves—and we've seen the government reviving its deportation bill as well.

This is not the sort of Labor government that many of us expected when Mr Albanese became Prime Minister, in 2022. Many Australians expected a government which would be more just and more generous. Gandhi said, 'The true measure of any society can be found in how it treats its most vulnerable members.' This treatment is not reflective of the Australia that I know, that I love and that I hope to represent.

Question unresolved.

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