Sarah Hanson-Young (SA, Australian Greens) Share this | Hansard source

I rise tonight to speak to the government’s Anti-People Smuggling and Other Measures Bill 2010. This bill, as we have heard, seeks to strengthen the government’s anti-people-smuggling legislative framework as well as to ensure that people smuggling is comprehensively criminalised in Australian law. Yet, despite the Attorney-General stating in his second reading speech that the United Nations Global trends report ‘indicates that people seeking asylum in Australia reflects a worldwide trend driven by insecurity, persecution and conflict’, nowhere in this bill are Australia’s obligations to those seeking our protection under international law recognised.

I find it very concerning and disappointing that an incredibly complex piece of legislation such as that which we are discussing today has been introduced and is expected to pass with such expediency, with limited scrutiny on the full impact of the proposed measures. All we need to look at is the turnaround time for the inquiry by the Senate Legal and Constitutional Affairs Legislation Committee and the pathetic report that was put together on behalf of the majority of the committee. It was an appalling report that did not reflect the evidence given to the committee, which of course is why I authored a dissenting report. It did not reflect the views of those who are experts in the field and who made submissions. In fact, there was only one submission that supported this legislation, and that was from the government departments themselves. Every other submission spoke about how poorly drafted this piece of legislation was, how poorly defined the definitions within it were, how poorly the arguments as to why this legislation needed to exist in this form had been put by the government, and the lack of public consultation and review that this piece of legislation had had.

While it is clear that the Greens are in no way supportive of people smuggling, that does not mean that this Senate should give up its responsibilities as a house of review; its responsibilities to scrutinise legislation—and this legislation is so, so poorly drafted. While I speak to the legislation itself, I must say that the Greens will not be supporting this legislation going on to the next stage because it is clear that it needs to go back to the drawing board. The government themselves have said that in the absence of bringing forward any human rights act they will introduce a new human rights committee that will scrutinise and review legislation. This should have been the very first piece of legislation that went to that committee. Until this legislation goes to that committee, the Greens believe it should not proceed.

The failure of the government to articulate why it is necessary to introduce the measures proposed in this bill highlights that wider public consultation and debate is necessary before these measures can be seriously considered. While it is incredibly important for measures to be implemented to prevent asylum seekers from embarking on treacherous journeys across dangerous waters to get to Australia, I would argue that there are plenty of things the government could have announced in last night’s budget to do that.

What is the use of spending hundreds of millions of dollars on facilities in Indonesia and billions of dollars on border protection but not increasing the number of refugees you agree to resettle from these treacherous places? It is ludicrous that we talk about the numbers of people arriving here by boat but do not increase the numbers of people we resettle from places like Malaysia or Indonesia, where these people are warehoused in Australian funded detention centres with no hope of freedom despite already being classified by the UNHCR as genuine refugees. Last year Australia took only 70 people from Indonesian detention centres. Seventy people who had been recognised by the UNHCR were resettled by Australia, yet we cry foul at the idea of people jumping on boats, coming to Australia and seeking refuge.

The best way for the Australian government to stamp out the scourge of people smuggling would be to go to the source—that is, to resettle those people who have already been found, in places like Malaysia and Indonesia, to be genuine refugees through processes that Australian taxpayers fund. We should be putting those processes to more effective use and resettling those people, rather than spending the money there, waiting for them to get on a boat to Christmas Island and then spending another billion dollars over the next four years simply because we could not increase our humanitarian intake the way we should have.

This bill has nothing to do with the practicalities of tackling people smuggling. This bill is all about Kevin Rudd being able to go out and say: ‘You know what? I’ve stamped strong, loud and hard on refugees and asylum seekers. I’ve done it so well in this election that I’ve given ASIO the powers to tackle people smuggling.’ We know, through the evidence given to the committee, that this legislation will not deal with the actual issue. During the inquiry I asked the departments themselves, both ASIO and the Attorney-General’s Department, how effective this legislation was actually going to be, pointing out that the organisation of people smuggling is not done primarily from Australia; it is done offshore. They agreed. This legislation as it is currently written is badly argued and badly drafted. It is only for show for the Rudd government. It does not deal with the actual issues at hand. There is no mention of our obligations under international law, no mention of the definitions that we have signed up to under anti-people-smuggling protocols and our international obligations. There is an anti-people-smuggling protocol. Australia is a signatory to it. Yet we have not even incorporated the definition of people smuggling that the protocol uses. We have made up our own so that it suits us in this piece of legislation.

Like many in the legal profession, the Greens have serious concerns that this bill in its current form not only breaches our obligations under international law but also breaches our obligations under domestic law. We remain very concerned that this bill is a direct attack on refugee communities within Australia and on those who support them. Despite assurances from the Attorney-General’s Department during the course of the Senate inquiry that innocent individuals would not be caught under this poorly drafted legislation, the definition of ‘providing material support’, which nobody seems to be able to define, is such that anyone here in Australia who sends money to a friend or relative in a refugee camp who subsequently—without the awareness of the person who sent that money—uses that money to pay a people smuggler could be charged under this broad definition. This legislation is poorly drafted and too broad, and yet it does nothing to tackle the issue of people smuggling or the issue of our obligations to asylum seekers under international law.

The point is: if the intention is to catch those individuals who provide humanitarian support, then why not make it explicitly clear in the legislation? It has been argued that no court would actually convict somebody who is providing humanitarian assistance to someone overseas who may then use a people smuggler to get out of a horrific detention facility in, say, Indonesia. If that is the case then why allow those people to be investigated in the first place—under broadening the roles and responsibilities of ASIO, allowing ASIO to use their current powers of interrogation and surveillance and possibly charge them in the first instance.

The government says these are not the people we are targeting. These are good-hearted Australians doing what they have always done—support the most vulnerable people in other parts of the world, particularly in our own Asia-Pacific region. If the government’s intention is not to target them then it should go back and redraft this legislation, because this legislation currently captures them. It is far too broad.

Professor Crock from the Sydney Centre for International Law told the Senate committee that:

This legislation targets refugee communities in Australia who are sending remittances to their families overseas. Every time they send money across to a relative, if there is a chance that that relative is going to get on a boat at some stage, they are at risk of being put in jail for 10 years. This legislation will only be seen by the very vulnerable emergent communities in this country as a direct assault on them—a frontal attack.

Who is the government trying to win over with this legislation? They are not delivering anything that tackles the issue of people smuggling and they are not doing anything to deal with the fact that we have people in places like Indonesia and Malaysia, desperate for freedom, security and a future, who have been found to be genuine refugees. It does not deal with any of those things.

What is this about? It is purely so that Kevin Rudd can say: ‘I am as tough as Tony Abbott. I can kick refugees too. Just watch me.’ That is what this legislation is about. It is so that Kevin Rudd can stand up and think that he can be as tough as Tony Abbott. But neither of them are tough, because neither of them are actually dealing with the real issue. Australia has obligations under international law to protect asylum seekers, to process their claims. I know the government does not believe in processing people’s claims any more; they have suspended that. ‘That is all right. We will just put that aside for a little while. Who cares about international law or our obligations?’

It is actually not the tough, strong thing to do to kick those who are most vulnerable in the world. The strongest thing to do is stand up and face the responsibilities we have and find mature, practical, humane and fair ways of managing it—for example, increasing the intake of resettlement of offshore asylum seekers, not warehousing them in desert prisons like Curtin and not setting up a whole new system of laws and regulations that are going to be seen as a direct attack on those within the Australian community who support refugees and asylum seekers. Church groups around Australia collect money on a weekly basis for individuals and families in refugee camps or those waiting for the determination process. Imagine if something happens and those people get so desperate that that money ends up getting spent on people smugglers because they have to get out of that situation. These are the types of cases we are talking about. Yet, those people who—