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

I move:

That this bill be now read a second time.

As a nation, we used to pride ourselves on the way we treated people who needed our protection.

We played an active role in negotiating groundbreaking international treaties and were prepared to stand by our word: honouring the terms of the treaties we helped create.

We saw those who desperately boarded small vessels to escape an environment threatening their lives as people who were deserving of our compassion and respect.

These people have contributed extraordinary things to our community—from sporting accolades to breakthrough achievements in art, engineering, medicine, food and politics—with this 47th Parliament benefiting from this lived experience among our MPs.

Yet in the nineties our political leaders identified these people as a potentially powerful group of 'others' that should be used to manipulate our domestic environment and with that their attitudes hardened.

A frightened population is easier to control as fear quietens people and encourages them look to their leaders for safety.

I look at that time and see if for it was and what it continues to be—a flagrant, and ultimately sadly successful, campaign that used the 'fear of others' to control us.

It's this fear that stops us looking too closely and convinces us to trust the things happening behind razor wire fences and bolted doors are warranted to protect our borders.

And our government continues to leverage this fear to enable them to completely disregard the basic human rights of a certain set of individuals.

Today my community of North Sydney and I stand with the refugee and asylum seeker communities and advocates across our country—to say 'no more'.

No more will we accept propaganda that seeks to embed fear. No more will we let weak leadership continue to drag our international reputation through the mud or let leaders use words to divide us based on where we have come from, the colour of our skin or the religion we practice. No more will we let our government arbitrarily and indefinitely hold those seeking protection in endless detention.

Rather we will reset our path and walk away from destruction, back towards basic human respect, because we are better than all of that, and we want our government to rise to meet our expectations.

In presenting the Migration Amendment (Limits on Immigration Detention) Bill 2024, I'm offering our current government a way to move beyond the politics of fear and division and to re-instate Australia's fundamental commitment to international humanitarian law.

I originally introduced a version of this bill last year, but it was ignored by the government.

Instead, we have endured another 12 months of cheap political point scoring as the major parties continue to argue that there should be no limits to what our government can do in our name, to 'protect our borders'.

It's been 11 years since Australia restarted the offshore processing regime, declaring all who sought our protection by boat would be condemned to the uncertainty that comes with indefinite detention on Nauru, Manus Island or Papua New Guinea—irrespective of the circumstances that led to them to seek safety in the first place.

Despite Nauru being emptied last year, as of today, around 100 asylum seekers are indefinitely detained there.

This strengthened bill then is being re-introduced in the light of those numbers and to give this government a way out.

As I present it, I ask that we set aside the often dubious and sometimes racist debate around asylum seekers, and instead look at this issue through a human rights lens.

This bill does not end offshore processing—nor does it say any person who comes to our country should automatically be granted residency.

Rather it brings an end to the inhumane practice of indefinite and arbitrary detention for people seeking our protection.

It does this by firstly introducing a 90-day limit on immigration detention.

This limit can be extended if the minister decides that, considering principles of human rights law, an extended period of detention is necessary as a last resort, reasonable, and proportionate.

Importantly, the bill also enables any ministerial extension to be reviewed by the Administrative Review Tribunal (ART).

Eleven years ago, the then immigration department aimed to process applications for onshore protection visas within 90 days.

Yet right now, the average number of days people arriving as refugees or on humanitarian visas spend in detention is 1,057 days (or 2.9 years) with the longest being 5,766 days—or nearly 16 years.

By comparison it takes just 55 days for a claim to be processed in the USA and 14 days in Canada.

Ninety days should be achievable here.

Secondly, this bill prohibits the detention of children.

The Convention on the Rights of the Child contains numerous rights for refugee children that Australia currently blatantly denies.

These include the obligation to make all decisions in the best interests of the child, to not separate children from their families, to protect children from all forms of violence or abuse, and special protections for children who are either already an established refugee or are seeking refugee status.

This bill would also ultimately bring us back in line with several other human rights treaties that we are party to, including the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, the Convention against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment and the Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees.

As a signatory to these treaties we have a responsibility to protect the human rights of all seeking asylum, regardless of how they arrive.

These rights are not optional. We do not get to decide when we uphold them, nor for whom and setting them aside is a dangerous notion, as evidenced by the stories told by those who have experienced Australia's detention regime.

One such person is now a human rights activist, and a former refugee held in Nauru. She has said:

11 years ago I was locked up in Nauru and it made me sick. No privacy, no safety, I could not see my family or see any hope for the future … I was then evacuated to Brisbane where I was locked up again in detention for two more years. Locked up with my sickness and pain and separated from my family. Now I am still not free, and I am still in Australia waiting. I still can't see my family, I can't study, it is hard to find work as we have to renew our visas every three to six months. It is too much.

In closing, I acknowledge the progress we have seen, with the introduction of the new Administrative Review Tribunal due to start soon. There are many hoping to see it operating efficiently and effectively as quickly as possible.

But ultimately our current government presides over a system that is failing to protect the basic human rights of those who need our protection the most, and we have it in our power to do better.

I commend this bill to the House and cede the remainder of my time to the member for Goldstein.

Milton Dick (Speaker) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Is the motion seconded?

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

I second the motion. It is just under nine months since the member for North Sydney introduced an earlier version of this bill. It was timely then and, considering the febrile state of the world, it is urgent now. Humanity should be the starting point for any conversation about war and its consequences, and indefinite detention is inhumane. So is seeking to exclude people fleeing one war zone from Australia's refugee program, as the Coalition has suggested.

I note the parallels with Donald Trump's toxic Muslim ban of 2017, banning people from entering the US from particular countries. I covered this when I was US Bureau Chief for the ABC, and I note Trump's more recent comments threatening to step up travel bans from so-called 'terror-plagued countries'. We must not allow this kind of rhetoric to go unchecked here in Australia. As the world's wars escalate and force people to flee to safety, we must remain clear-eyed, reasoned and empathetic, as this bill, the Migration Amendment (Limits on Immigration Detention) Bill 2024, is.

The people of Goldstein voted for me in part because I stand for more humane treatment of refugees and asylum seekers. Most refugees are no threat to Australia. They should be treated with respect and sensitivity. It is timely to note that Australia is the nation that provided a haven for the highest concentration of Holocaust survivors in the world. The Jewish community that has since made a home in the safety of Melbourne and Sydney is something we should all be proud of.

We've also provided a home for those fleeing wars across South-East Asia, including Cambodians who fled the horrors of the Khmer Rouge, which killed up to three million people. We welcomed people from war-torn Sudan, Syria, Afghanistan, Ukraine and elsewhere. The innocent civilians of Gaza should be granted entry under exactly the same terms and conditions, and that euphemistically named processing should be efficient and sensitive, reflecting respect for the situation from which they have come.

Despite stated Labor policy, we are more than two-thirds of the way through this term of parliament, within eyesight of the next election, and still living with the stain of offshore detention on our national character. The updated bill clearly brings offshore detention within its scope, as well as reflecting developments, including the NZYQ High Court case and the establishment of the Administrative Review Tribunal. It is of profound concern that Nauru is now hosting six times more people than it did six months ago. This return to offshore detention by stealth must be stopped, and those sitting on the government benches should live up to the promise of their party platform and support this bill. I commend the bill to the House.

Milton Dick (Speaker) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The time allotted for this debate has expired. The debate is adjourned and the resumption of the debate will be made an order of the day for the next sitting.