John Faulkner (NSW, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I speak about document No. 2 in the Notice Paper list, the DIMIA 2004-05 annual report—all 528 pages of it. I want to talk about just a few things that you will not find, as well as some that you will find, in this annual report. This report does not tell you anything more about the outrageous scandal of a mentally ill Australian resident, Cornelia Rau, who was locked up in detention, except that it was the cause of a little scrutiny in the department. It takes the same scanty approach to the deportation of Vivian Alvarez Solon. It draws a veil over a pregnant New Zealand woman detained in a Brisbane prison for 23 days by immigration officials before being released. And it draws a veil over Ian and Jamie Hwang—11 and five years old at the time—who were forcibly removed from Stanmore Public School and wrongly detained for more than five months, even though they were legally in Australia on valid bridging visas.

You will not read about Peter Qasim, who had seven years in detention. He declared he was from Kashmir and the government claimed they were unable to confirm his background, despite three language experts brought in by the government stating he was likely to be from Kashmir. What about the late Harry Seidler’s citizenship and passport fiasco? You will not see that. You will not see the Hamberger report. A damning, independent inquiry found that five unnamed detainees were manhandled by GSL officers, subjected to sensory deprivation and denied access to food, water and toilet facilities during a 6½-hour journey in a small van—and the department misled the media about it.

You will not read the case of Mr X, a stateless man from Bangladesh and an insulin-dependent diabetic. The immigration department was planning to deport him even though he would have most certainly died within weeks of leaving Australia. You will not read the case of Mr T, a mentally ill Australian citizen who was detained in 1999, correctly identified after five days and released, only to be redetained in the same facility for 242 consecutive days. You will not see any reference in this annual report to the promotion of the departmental secretary of DIMIA who had oversight of all of this, Mr Bill Farmer, to Australian Ambassador to Indonesia.

We know this department was a shambles between 2004 and 2005. This department represents one of the greatest public administration fiascos in the history of the Commonwealth of Australia—a department so tainted by the Howard government’s politics that it has developed an obsession with detention and deportation. If you read this annual report, you will not know any of that. You will not know that Minister Vanstone and her discredited predecessor, Mr Ruddock, have overseen bungle after bungle and disaster after disaster, and that the department has been in chaos. But we know what is not in the annual report. We know the mistakes, the wrongful detentions and the wrongful deportations, and we wait to see what other disasters and incompetence will be revealed as time goes on. You can be sure you will not see them in this annual report of 528 pages, so I thought someone at least should today, in the Senate, put on the record the department’s real performance—put the real record on the record.

Before I conclude my remarks, I just wanted to take this opportunity to congratulate my leader, Mr Beazley, for accurately describing Mr Wilson Tuckey on these immigration issues as ‘weak and worthless’. You are absolutely right, Mr Beazley. Mr Wilson Tuckey was out there defending the indefensible. He was out there defending this department—this turnstile of incompetence. He was supporting Senator Vanstone, the most accident-prone minister that we have in the Howard government. (Time expired)