Larissa Waters (Queensland, Australian Greens) Share this | Hansard source

I rise to speak with great sadness on the designation of Nauru as a regional processing centre. I think it is a tragic irony that, as we debate opening Nauru, in fact it is already full. It has capacity for 1,500 people and there have already been almost 2,150 refugees seeking our help in recent weeks and months. Where will we send them to next? Obviously, Manus is next on the list and Malaysia after that. Where else?

It troubles me that rather than take responsibility for the human rights of people who are legally seeking our protection and who we are legally obliged to assist and protect we are looking around for everywhere possible—anywhere but here. We are looking for human rubbish tips and we will have to keep looking because, as we have seen and the figures have shown over decades, this so-called deterrence approach simply does not work.

We have already seen yet more refugees from Afghanistan and Pakistan arriving in Indonesia since the announcement of this policy. I have a quote here from a Pakistani refugee, Alemzadeh, who says:

They know [about the new policy], but they don't stop. They say it's too dangerous to stay in Pakistan.

Of course it is, and that goes to the heart of the problem with offshore processing: this is not going to stop the boats. It is only when Australia is going to be so horrible and desecrate these people's rights and their very existence that there could possibly be a disincentive. I certainly hope we never reach that day. We are fortunate as Australians that we have never had to live under such brutal regimes, so we cannot possibly understand the pressures that these people are facing.

I call upon all members of this chamber to search your hearts, put yourselves in their shoes: if you were facing death or persecution and you felt so unsafe in your home country, what would you do? Would you just stay there while members of your family, your extended family and your community were persecuted, shot or tortured? Of course not. You would act like any other human being, any other parent, and flee to safety with your kids.

Clearly, the push factors will always be stronger than the pull factors. While we have war-torn nations in our region, which sadly it seems we will for a long time yet, people will have no other option. I think we need to start recognising that and designing our policies accordingly, which is exactly what the Greens have said. This is why we need to increase our humanitarian intake—not to 20,000 but to 25,000. This is exactly why we need to properly resource those refugee-processing centres that already exist. It is because people are waiting in those centres, sometimes for decades in limbo—they cannot work, they cannot send their kids to school and they are not able to access public health care—that they are getting on boats to come here. Who could live with that uncertainty? We need to give these people another option apart from getting on the boat. It seems to me that the most sensible option is to say: 'Yes, you will be processed more quickly. Just wait a bit longer; we will put some more people on the ground. There will not be just two people assessing applications; there will be lots more. You're going to get a safe pathway. Just be a bit patient. It won't take 20 years.' That is the way we give people a real option and stop them getting on those boats.

As I said before, unfortunately the figures bear out that this approach of deterrence simply does not work, and we know that. All of my colleagues have referred to the tragedy of the SIEVX, where 353 people, mostly women and children, died after John Howard's Pacific solution had been introduced. It does not stop the boats. Unfortunately, probably nothing that we do can stop the boats. What we can do is try to give people a safer option and try to impress upon them the fact that, if they just wait for a little bit, we will properly resource these processing centres and they can come as genuine refugees—as most of them are recognised to be—and they can come here safely, start their new life, not have to face that terrible persecution and risk of death in their own home country, and not have to face decades of limbo in the refugee-processing camps. We have other options.

It really saddens me that the Greens spoke to the government at length about this and we put our position forward. All of the solutions that we were proposing did not even require the sanction of this chamber, including increasing the humanitarian intake, properly resourcing those refugee-processing centres, working better with the Indonesian government and better implementing our obligations under the Safety of Life at Sea international rules. None of that required this chamber to act, yet the government still refused to adopt any of them.

Thankfully, the Houston report then came out backing some of those aspects of what the Greens were calling for, and I really welcome the fact that the government has now increased, or said it will increase, the humanitarian refugee intake up to 20,000 from just shy of 14,000, where it has remained static for many decades despite other categories having been increased. We welcome that, but where is the progress on that? The government has said that it will in fact increase those numbers. When is that going to happen? These are real ways that we can make a difference, by relieving that pressure and that feeling of folk in refugee-processing camps that they have no other option but to get on the boat. These are real things that we can do to alleviate that, and I would just urge the government to please move along with implementing that positive aspect of the Houston report that the Greens and the experts have been calling for for a long time. It does not need legislation. The government can act on that, and I say to them, 'Please do so.' I think we are all concerned about the loss of life at sea here and I welcome the fact that senators from all parties have expressed that desire. Clearly we differ on the ways to respond to it but, when we have the Houston panel clearly saying that increasing humanitarian intake to 20,000 is one way of reducing that pressure, I say: please, please hurry and implement that.

I want to take issue with something that a fellow Queensland senator, Barnaby Joyce, said in his speech. He was saying that the Greens could stop this and that we should be taking the government to task over this. I would just like to correct the record. The Greens tried and tried and continued to try to negotiate with the government about this issue. We have consistently proposed a comprehensive range of solutions, many of which do not require this chamber to tick off on them, and unfortunately, to the great shame of many Australians out there who think that we have bigger hearts and that we should do better, the government chose to vote and go with the coalition and to adopt the vast bulk of coalition policy. So I would like the record to reflect that Senator Barnaby Joyce's contention that the Greens could somehow stop this is in fact ridiculous when you consider that we will vote against it, and he and his party and the opposition will vote for it. I am afraid that Senator Joyce seems a little confused and I take this opportunity to correct the record. If he feels so strongly then he should come over here and vote with us against this designation of Nauru as a regional processing centre.

Obviously the Greens are opposing this but it seems that the government and the coalition are determined to continue on this race to the bottom to treat people as cruelly and inhumanely as possible under this so-called no disadvantage test, which still remains quite unclear and undefined. We still do not know what that means in terms of how long people will be locked up for, how long they will be abandoned in the middle of the Pacific Ocean with no access to health care, with no floorboards at this point, with no kitchens, with no toilet facilities, with no showers, I heard on the radio a day or two ago. At the moment they have got some tents. Is it any wonder that after facing the brutality and the persecution and the torture that they faced in their own countries, after battling the waves on the sea, if they end up on Nauru to have filthy living conditions and again be in limbo for years, for how long we do not know, there are going to be serious mental health implications from that, as we have already seen the last time we had this policy. That is why, even though with every fibre of our being the Greens resist offshore processing, we are going to try and improve the situation for those people who are dumped on Manus and who are dumped on Nauru and probably will be dumped in other offshore ports anywhere but here.

That is why my colleagues Senator Hanson-Young and Senator Richard Di Natale have introduced yesterday a bill to establish an expert healthcare panel to ensure there is an independent panel of doctors and physicians who are actually overseeing the health and mental wellbeing of asylum seekers. We need this desperately. This would make a cruel and inhumane policy slightly less cruel and inhumane, and I would urge all members of this place to please reflect on the terrible mental health outcomes, the suicides, the hunger strikes, the sewing of lips, just appalling things that people did to themselves, and reflect on the real need of some independent oversight from the medical profession and to report back to this place every six months so that we know what is going on there and we can make decisions in the full knowledge of what we are doing to people.

The Australian Psychological Society have outlined their concerns about offshore detention and processing. They have quite a long list of concerns, including the history of escalating mental health issues resulting from detaining people offshore, including suicide attempts, self-harm incidents such as hunger and water strikes, the lip-sewing, the riots, the protests, the fires and the breakouts. They also say that the remoteness of offshore locations restricts accessing of mental health and other services, as well as compromising the ethical delivery of such services. They talk about the fact that the links to community resources, to networks and to legal assistance are also severely limited in detention centres given the remote locations. They talk about the inequity in human and legal rights for those detained offshore and they talk about the particularly vulnerable groups such as unaccompanied minors, children and families and those with pre-existing torture and trauma experiences. They point out that these people are likely to be at particular risk when parked in offshore detention without adequate support. Lastly, they mention the lack of appropriate access to interpreters and translation services which limits basic communication and access to those already restricted services. In summary, they express their serious concern that sending such vulnerable people to countries other than Australia, and particularly those countries which are not signatories to the UN refugee convention, risks exacerbating existing vulnerabilities and adding to their sense of uncertainty, fear and despair. They conclude that these are extremely costly options in both the short and long term, and I would add there is both a financial and a human cost.

I urge all members of this place to seriously reflect on the need for this expert healthcare panel, the need for independent oversight of the mental health effects of offshore processing, the need for that evidence and that real human experience to be brought back to us here so that we may reflect on what our policies are doing. If the evidence suggests, as I fear it will, that this is doing untold mental health damage to people then it is for us to change our minds and take a more humane approach that will actually work to reduce the desire for people who are escaping torture and legal limbo to get on boats. It will treat people with dignity and it will treat them as we would have ourselves treated.

I have already talked about the fact that it remains unclear for how long people will be held in indefinite detention. Of course, that is tautological: it is indefinite. We await the details of this no-disadvantage test. But it still grates on my sense of humanity and fairness that we should aim to be just as mean, just as cruel and just as inhumane as other countries in order to deter people from coming here. What a sad day when we have to be as cruel and as bad as other war-torn countries in an effort to save people's lives. It just does not even make sense. It is not even logical. It will not work. We have already seen that. The data does not show that deterrence works. In fact, the data shows that deterrence does not work. So there is no logical reason for the no-disadvantage test. It is simply an embarrassment and a blight on the Australian character.

I also take issue with a number of the speakers in this chamber who have again had the temerity to call asylum seekers 'illegals'. I wish there were something in the standing orders that allowed the President or the Acting Deputy President to rule on inaccuracies, because it is to my great irritation that we hear constant inaccuracies that go unchallenged. And perhaps the most insulting of them is that it is illegal to seek asylum. It is not illegal to seek asylum. It is exactly why Australia signed the refugee convention: to recognise the rights of people fleeing the threat of torture, death and persecution and to recognise their right to seek asylum and their wanting to have a better life and for their kids to be able to go to school and grow up without the fear of being shot. So I again point out to the chamber that it is not illegal to seek asylum, and I urge senators to get some legal advice if they do not want to rely on what is obviously in the refugee convention. And please do not perpetuate that wrong, insulting, delegitimising and incorrect statement.

I have talked about the fact that at the moment the regional processing centres are vastly underresourced. I want to mention now the fact that there is sometimes mentioned a floodgates argument, which is that, if Australia were somehow kinder to people and upheld its human rights obligations under the refugee convention, there would be somehow a flood of refugees. I want to point out some facts. Currently, we accept 1.3 per cent of the world's refugees. That is not a large amount. In fact, in my opinion, we are already doing less than our fair share and we could certainly increase that amount. There will be no floodgates. We are at the bottom of the world here, but wherever we have war-torn countries of course people will keep coming. So we cannot expect that this policy of no disadvantage and of deterrence is going to stop the boats. We are kidding ourselves if we do. We need to accept that we have to do what we can and that wherever there are war-torn countries and conflict, people will seek our help; they will seek safety. It is the human condition. We all want what is best for our family, and I do not think anyone in this place would do anything different if they were in their shoes. So we need more than just two officers in those UNHCR assessment facilities in Indonesia. We have to speed up the processing times.

I want to lastly mention that again we have moved to improve the situation here in offshore processing with the establishment of the Expert Health Care Panel. Likewise, we have moved and will again move to try and limit detention from indefinite to just 12 months. Of course, we think 12 months is too long but we hope that 12 months might be an amount that the other parties would consider acceptable. It has already been voted down in the House, and my colleague will bring that back on today. Please, let us take an awful situation and try to improve it slightly for these people who we have the legal obligation and the moral obligation to do better by. I do think that Australians have the heart and the courage to do better, and I firmly believe that the community wants to see this place extending more of a helping hand and a more humane approach to this issue than we have seen demonstrated in recent weeks and months. Again, I ask everyone in this chamber and any Australian listening or reading the Hansard to put themselves in these people's shoes. You would do exactly the same thing. I am a parent and I would do anything for the safety of my little girl. We would all do the same, so please let us reflect on that in the course of this discussion.