Trish Crossin (NT, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I rise to take note of the answers from Senator Vanstone today. In particular I want to note and highlight the lack of commitment from this minister to actually take this report seriously, and I want to pick up on a couple of comments I have heard in the last half an hour. We had two days of hearings into this bill. I note with interest that the government did not wheel out any of its members of the committee to actually stand before us in taking note to defend or to provide comment on their own report today—an interesting fact.

There were a number of problems in terms of information provided to the committee during the hearing, particularly on Tuesday last week in Sydney, where the department was not able to provide answers and in fact failed to even send anybody—if I remember correctly—to the proceedings in the morning. There was actually no-one from the department sitting in the public hearing for the first four hours taking notes to enable any senators to refer to the department for clarification of what was being said. I do not think I have sat in very many Senate committees in my time in this parliament where someone from the department has not at least been at the back of the room watching and listening to what was being said. The absence was particularly notable given the department was due to appear at 1 o’clock that afternoon.

Senator Parry, you are right: the lack of detail about this bill is because your government has not worked it out. The department was not able to provide us with this information and this detail. Of 136 submissions received, one wanted the bill supported—and that was your department. The 136 submissions included a large representation from churches and from the Refugee Council of Australia, which represents over 80 organisations defending the rights of refugees. Large organisations such as those can see nothing in this bill that warrants any of it being supported. In fact, as we left the committee hearing last week, I thought, ‘It will be a surprise to me if the government members can find anything in the two days of hearings that will lead them to want to support this bill being passed.’ I was not surprised when I got the chair’s draft to find that the major recommendation of this report was that the bill should not proceed. I want to commend the chair of this committee for actually coming up with that conclusion. Quite frankly, she had no other option but to do that.

It is disappointing today that we have not heard from the minister that the report is going to be taken seriously and that a response will be provided as soon as possible. In light of the massive criticism around this country and given that three of the minister’s own government members who signed up to this report do not want the bill to proceed, it is disappointing to hear from the minister that this bill is still going to proceed. There is an article in the Age today—more likely the editorial—headed ‘Human rights should not take a back seat to appeasement’. It points out that only in January this minister, Minister Vanstone, pledged that the department would not be swayed by foreign policy considerations in deciding refugee claims. But that is exactly what this bill is about.

This bill is about decisions of immigration policy being made independently of our relationship with Indonesia. But that is not what is happening here. Indonesia have got their fingers in the pie of our immigration policy now and will dictate to us, and this government has responded and changed the policy and will want to change the laws accordingly. That is clearly evident in the report and it was clear in the evidence that was given to the committee. This is a bill that excises Australia from the rest of the world and from our international obligations. There is no justification for it and there are no reasons for us to believe otherwise, given the evidence that we were provided with during the public hearings. The claims about the Ombudsman are absolutely and totally incorrect and were justified and backed up by the department. There will be access to the Ombudsman only to appeal decisions of Commonwealth officials. (Time expired)

Question agreed to.