Bob Brown (Tasmania, Australian Greens) Share this | Hansard source

I am not going to continue this fruitless discussion except to ask the minister to say that he is wrong in his assertion to the Senate—and he must not mislead the Senate—that the application of the ACC powers stops at the Northern Territory borders, because it does not. It extends to Indigenous Australians wherever they might be. The figures I used were less than 20 per cent and more than 80 per cent. I put it to the minister that underreporting of child sexual abuse is not confined to Indigenous communities; it is right across the community. The rapid increase in the number of reports of child sexual abuse in recent years attests to that. This is a racist application of laws which allow surveillance cameras and recording devices to be secretly put into people’s houses and which strip away people’s legal protections so that even if they are not suspected or charged with a crime they face interrogation. If they do not accede to that, they will go to jail. The minister knows that. If their property is requisitioned they must give it over or go to jail. This is legislation meant for international criminals, not for households in Australia. But it does apply now to households in Australia provided they are black. You cannot do it if they are white. There are no territorial borders in this. It does not matter whether they are in New South Wales, Western Australia or Victoria; this law applies if an Indigenous person is involved or suspected. That is what is wrong with it. There is no point in me debating this further into the night. Those are the facts. The minister can correct any of them but he has not so far. I am going straight from the provision of information from the government itself, and it is appalling. It is disgusting. It should never be and we should not be supporting it in this place.