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

This weekend the Australian government is deporting a Tamil refugee who fled his country. The United Nations Committee Against Torture is asking that the deportation be stopped because there is a serious risk that he will be tortured if he's sent back, but the government is going ahead. In the face of this Liberal government outrage, Labor remains silent. Labor is silent as human beings who want nothing more than to be safe and free from persecution rot in the state sanctioned offshore hellholes that Labor itself set up, in prisons where they are tortured and stripped of their sanity, their dignity and their humanity. Imagine if, instead of using question time to pitch for grabs on the nightly news, Labor asked the Minister for Home Affairs about the brutal regime that he presides over in Manus and Nauru. Imagine if Labor pursued the rights of refugees and asylum seekers with the same ferocity it pursues the government over the year the budget is returning to surplus, the Prime Minister's personal wealth or how many Newspolls the government has lost.

The people of Batman have a unique opportunity on 17 March. They can elect the Greens' Alex Bhathal—a strong, independent local voice, someone who lives in the community and who lives and breathes their values. Right now the entire country is watching. Winning this seat will create a seismic shift in political atmosphere and it will send a deafening message that Australia is moving past the politics of fear. I urge the people of Batman to vote for the Greens' Alex Bhathal for courage, compassion and action, not another Labor backbencher who will focus on— (Time expired)