Linda Kirk (SA, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I rise this afternoon to speak in favour of the amended motion before us. Those of us from South Australia have for some time been appalled by the detention of David Hicks, which has now been for a period in excess of five years. I can tell the Senate that in South Australia there is an increasing groundswell of members of the community who regard his ongoing detention as a grave abrogation of the rule of law. In simple terms, really, he is just an Australian citizen not getting a fair go and who is being treated as a second-class citizen when compared to the treatment that has been afforded to US citizens by the US government. I would have thought that most people in the Australian community would agree with that and see this as a pretty fundamental matter—but not the people on the other side; not the members of the Howard government. It appears that there is no-one in the Howard government who is prepared to acknowledge this indisputable fact.

The ALP, and our new leader Kevin Rudd, have said that we believe that David Hicks should be repatriated to Australia with the utmost speed and that he should be subjected to the force of Australian law. That is the reason we are now able to agree with this amended motion of Senator Stott Despoja’s, which provides in the last line that he be ‘repatriated immediately for trial in Australia’.

I must congratulate Senator Stott Despoja on the motion that she has prepared today and on the work she has done on this issue. In fact, she and I have worked together. We have put aside political differences to work together as South Australian senators, in Adelaide in our home state of South Australia, to advance this matter and to attempt to get justice for our constituent David Hicks. In fact just last month in January she and I called on the Howard government to facilitate a cross-party delegation of MPs to visit Guantanamo Bay. The purpose of our visit would be to provide support to Mr Hicks and also to inspect the conditions of his detention and to report back to the parliament. What response did we receive from the government? Absolutely none.

I have previously applied to visit my constituent David Hicks in Guantanamo Bay. In fact it was 18 months ago. Not surprisingly, I received a response from the US Department of Defense in July 2005 informing me that, with only a few exceptions, non-US nationals are not permitted to visit Guantanamo Bay and parliamentarians from third countries have not been permitted to visit the facility. I was disappointed by this response because, at that point, many members of the US congress, including their staff and members of the press, had gone to Guantanamo Bay.