Lisa Singh (Tasmania, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

If Senator Brandis continues to listen to my contribution, he will see how OPCAT is very much relevant to the bill before us. The convention against torture, which we have been a party to since 1989, creates an obligation for states to prevent torture within their jurisdiction. But the optional protocol goes a step further. It requires states to establish national preventative mechanisms to monitor the places—particularly places of detention—in which there is a high risk of torture. It also establishes an independent international Subcommittee on Prevention of Torture with the responsibility of visiting nations and inspecting and monitoring those same places.

Under the Howard government, the coalition rejected OPCAT, as it rejected the concept of multilateralism and of learning from our partners across the globe. I am pleased that the Labor government has reversed this short-sighted policy, signed OPCAT and announced its intention to ratify the protocol. The experience of the many nations who have ratified OPCAT and implemented an NPM—which can be a new institution or an existing body—is that OPCAT has helped them deliver better human rights protections and administrative and judicial detention systems that are less liable to litigation and risk. In jurisdictions similar to Australia, like the United Kingdom and New Zealand, ratification has helped to create useful standards or identify system-wide and recurrent issues in detention facilities. This experience provides a firm, evidence based argument for countries like Australia, and I hope allies such as the United States, to accede to the protocol.

In these cases, OPCAT has served to emphasise the notion that torture and cruel and degrading treatment is neither acceptable nor helpful. There can be no excuse or justification for practices that hurt or humiliate people in order to intimidate, punish or coerce them. No matter what the suspicion, conviction or circumstance, people are entitled to have their human dignity respected.

There was considerable discussion within the Joint Standing Committee on Treaties, of which I am a member, about the OPCAT recommendations, and I want to thank all members for their engagement with the issue. The committee's recommendations reflect very much what has gone on in other jurisdictions. For example, I know that in my home state of Tasmania Breaking the cycle: strategic plan for Tasmanian corrections explored options for the establishment of an independent prisons inspectorate.

I have no doubt that Australian authorities and agencies will be able to use the new functions that will flow from OPCAT to learn how to deliver police, judicial and correctional practices that are more aware of human rights and the risk of torture, inhuman and degrading treatment. A more human-rights-aware community, especially in those areas where the risk of human rights breaches is elevated, can only be a good thing. OPCAT will have implications for children who remain in detention in Australia, and the valuable information sharing that will go on with the new commissioner is important in relation to OPCAT and those other human rights instruments that fall under the jurisdiction of our Australian Human Rights Commission.

I would like to thank the various non-government organisations such as UNICEF and a number of other youth organisations for their support along this journey to bring this bill to the parliament. As I said at the outset, the bill provides a much-needed focus on the rights, safety and needs of children and young people, who are amongst the most vulnerable in our community to neglect and ill-treatment, giving them advocacy and a voice. I also commend this bill to the Senate as it is the culmination of so many people's work for so long—people who have dedicated their lives to protecting children and young people in often incredibly difficult circumstances. Our focusing on the rights of people, especially vulnerable young people, in Australia as well as elsewhere in the world, is overdue. I am very pleased that human rights has received much more attention in the last four or five years than it did in the previous decade.

We know we are talking about a group of people who are amongst the most vulnerable, who can fall between the cracks. Without our strong institutional support, which is provided through the introduction of a National Children's Commissioner, which this bill provides for, they could continue to fall through the cracks. Providing for the best interests of children and young people in Australia through this advocacy of a National Children's Commissioner is something that we should commend and support, and we thank those who have worked for and supported the bill along its journey to the parliament.