Anne McEwen (SA, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

This week has seen considerable attention given to the ongoing incarceration of an Australian citizen, David Hicks, in the United States detention facility at Guantanamo Bay. A rally was held on the lawns of Federation Mall at the front of Parliament House on Tuesday this week to remind all senators and members that David Hicks has been imprisoned for five years and is still waiting to be charged and tried for any crime. That rally was attended by a number of Labor and minor party members but I did not see any coalition members there.

Senators and members in this place, mainly from the opposition parties, have signed a letter addressed to the newly elected Speaker of the House of Representatives in the United States congress, Nancy Pelosi, requesting that the US congress take steps to have Hicks tried or returned home to Australia. Two motions noting Mr Hicks’s plight were put to the Senate. The Labor Party supported one of those motions but not the other, because our position is, and always has been, that Mr Hicks should be speedily tried by the United States for any alleged crimes or returned to Australia. The minor party that moved today’s motion would not agree to a Labor Party amendment. It was unfortunate to see a motion that should have been about fairness and justice used in an obvious attempt at wedge politics, a tactic we often see from the Greens.

This week has seen various articles in the media about Mr Hicks’s current situation, including reported comments that United States officials cannot guarantee he will actually appear before the US military commission within the next 12 months despite the fact that he has been incarcerated for five years. Then there is the ongoing debate about whether a military commission is a tribunal that offers any hope to those seeking a fair trial or just an attempt by the United States to be seen to be doing the right thing when in fact it is not. It is, as the shadow Attorney-General said this week, a legal experiment whose outcome we do not know.

For those of us who have followed the history of the Hicks case, it has been interesting and heartening to see the growing acceptance by the Australian community that there is something very wrong about a person being held in prison for five years without an opportunity to face a fair trial. Those who support Mr Hicks’s right to justice—and indeed the right of all persons to justice—are buoyed by the number of prominent Australians, including even some government members, who are publicly stating that the Hicks situation must be rectified quickly.

It is clear that the Australian people are well able to distinguish between the need to apply the law to people who are found to have committed illegal acts and the right of all people to defend themselves against accusations of illegal activity in a tribunal that is properly constituted and conducted. The Australian people can distinguish between what is needed to stop terrorism and an individual’s right to justice.

It has taken a while for the Prime Minister to come closer to the view that is held by most Australian people. For a long time, the Prime Minister, the foreign minister and various attorneys-general were uncritical of the United States’s treatment of an Australian citizen languishing in a foreign jail without any prospect of a fair trial. As we know, it is not a regular jail that Mr Hicks is in but a military facility. Last year the United Nations said it should be shut down because its operations violated international treaties and its prisoners were denied justice. We have heard so many reports about the appalling conditions at Guantanamo, including treatment of inmates amounting to torture, that it is no longer possible for the Australian government to pretend that it is an acceptable place for anyone to be incarcerated for five minutes, let alone five years.

As we know, American citizens are not detained at Guantanamo. They have more rights and protections than that and cannot be held at Guantanamo. Indeed, it would be illegal for an American citizen to be held at Guantanamo. However, the US government maintains the right to operate the Guantanamo facility, despite calls for it to be closed down.

We know that the Australian government has a cruel attitude towards people being locked up for extended periods of time, regardless of their citizenship. We saw that only too clearly with the detention of women and children who sought asylum in this country only to be locked up in detention centres behind barbed wire. That continued to occur until the government saw that the public thought that was unacceptable treatment and changed tack. We also saw it in the dreadful treatment of Cornelia Rau, an Australian citizen who was locked up by her own government in a detention centre right here in her own country.

Just as the Prime Minister has figured out that he had better start talking about climate change because it was a matter affecting the government’s standing in the polls, he is now responding to a turning tide of public opinion in the matter of Hicks. The government has come on board and has started to make a few demands of the United States government. It has started to say that maybe the United States should get its act together and put the allegations against Mr Hicks to the test. Having sat on its hands for five years while it toadied to the United States, our government responds now when it sees that the Hicks matter is going to be an electoral liability. Of course, we should not be surprised at these reactive politics, because this is a government that shows no leadership in the areas of justice and fair treatment.

Instead of acknowledging the treatment of Mr Hicks as wrong, for years the government has tried to justify its abandonment of one of its citizens by reiterating the allegations against Hicks as if they were fact. It has accused all of us who support calls for Hicks to be afforded basic justice as being soft on the war on terror. It has remained silent about the gross abuses of international conventions and human rights that occur at Guantanamo Bay. What would you expect from a government that lied about asylum seekers throwing their children overboard and a government that swallowed the lies about weapons of mass destruction, thereby committing us to an unwinnable war?

It is testament to the Australian people that, despite the lack of leadership from the federal government, they can see that the ongoing saga of David Hicks is a matter of justice, not a matter of judgement. In closing, I would like to acknowledge the many people who have worked tirelessly, and continue to work tirelessly, on the Hicks case because they care about the preservation of basic human rights, including the right to a fair trial for all citizens of all nations. I would particularly like to mention the dignity and the dogged perseverance of Mr Terry Hicks over a very long period of time.