Joe Ludwig (Queensland, Australian Labor Party, Manager of Opposition Business in the Senate) Share this | Hansard source

I move:

That the Senate take note of the document.

This document is as a consequence of some pretty dreadful outcomes for Cornelia Rau and Vivian Solon. People might recall that they were people who the Department of Immigration and Multicultural Affairs treated very badly. This Ombudsman’s report has been made under section 486O of the Migration Act to try to instil an oversight role into the decision making of the department.

Again, I do not hold the department fully responsible. The minister who presides over this department, you would have to say, has not had her eye on the ball. In fact, I would use even stronger words in respect of that, if I may. This incompetent minister has ensured that this department has not been able to gain the prestige that it really deserves. In the last couple of years some pretty awful outcomes have been visited upon people by the department under the stewardship of the minister. The sorts of issues that have come up relate not only, as I have said, to the Vivian Solon and Cornelia Rau matters but also to having detainees placed in a truck and transported across a desert for four or five hours without a rest stop—without a break, without water and without a toilet stop.

Those sorts of things, you might say, are pretty horrible. It is pretty abhorrent for Australia to hear that that is what we do to people we detain in our immigration detention centres. But it is not only that. The document then goes on to find that there are also some other pretty extraordinary things that we do in this area. In this area we now have the ability—or at least the Ombudsman does—to have a look at those matters and provide an assessment and recommendation which the department can turn to and look at. In particular, the minister can act upon it.

In this report, the Ombudsman recommends that removal plans be delayed until the paternity of Master Z is conclusively determined. I will not go to the details. But what it is now starting to do is inject a little humanity into the decision-making process. That is long overdue, certainly. What we now have is the Ombudsman looking at not only the legal issues but also the health and welfare issues. We have the Ombudsman looking more broadly at the overall matters that might go to how the department exercised its recommendations or view in respect of these people. This was an instance where Miss X had been detained with her de facto husband and children since November 2003. They were there because of the family overstaying their tourist visas. But we then also have other circumstances that might impinge upon that.

We do want an orderly and fair immigration system, but one that also has an injection of humanity. In this instance, we are starting to at least move that way. But of course, as I said earlier, we have a Minister for Immigration and Multicultural Affairs, Senator Vanstone, who really wants to throw it out. Within the last 10 months, the department started to look at a range of more humane practices—to ensure that kids were not in detention centres, that matters would be reviewed and that the Ombudsman would have an oversight role—but what we have is an immigration minister who wanted to bring about a designated unauthorised arrivals bill. Thank goodness, that was not proceeded with. What we had was a situation where we were going right back to where we started, where an immigration minister was again going to tell us that the Prime Minister would make determinations—or perhaps that Indonesia would do so—is a better explanation of the immigration policy in this country. At least we can now say that we have a system whereby the immigration department can now get on with business rather than having Senator Vanstone trying to run it. I seek leave to continue my remarks. (Time expired)

Leave granted; debate adjourned.