Anne Urquhart (Tasmania, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

Upon coming to government, the attitude of those opposite got worse. It started with the once-a-week press conferences to supposedly provide updates on immigration matters. These farcical briefings ended after a few months. Most believe it was because the minister realised that there was no point holding a press conference if he was simply going to patronise journalists and refuse to answers questions. In the year since the Abbott government was elected, there has been a cone of silence over the immigration portfolio under the guise of not wanting to provide information to people smugglers. Ironically, other ministers are more than willing to provide ongoing public commentary on national security matters.

In the past six months two young men have tragically lost their lives while in the care of the Australian government on Manus Island. I take this opportunity to pay tribute to Reza Barati and Hamid Kehazaei. Both lost their lives this year—Mr Barati through a failure of security measures and Mr Kehazaei through a failure of medical processes. We know that police in PNG have arrested and charged two people over the murder of 23-year-old Reza Barati. Both men are believed to have worked with G4S, the company which managed security at the detention centre at the time of Mr Barati's death. Mr Barati died from severe head trauma during a riot inside the Australian-run detention centre on Manus Island on 17 February.

Mr Kehazaei cut his foot at the detention centre on Manus and developed septicaemia because it was left untreated. He was eventually transferred to Brisbane's Mater hospital where he suffered a heart attack. The 24-year-old was later declared brain dead. In early September, his family back in Iran made the decision to switch off his life support. The lawyer representing the young man's family, Ruth Hudson, says there has not been enough information provided to the family and the Australian public about the specifics of his transfer from Manus Island to Brisbane. Ruth Hudson has said she would investigate three critical points in the timeline of Mr Kehazaei's treatment: the possibility of an inadequate initial diagnosis; the potential failure of not transferring him quickly enough to Australia; and the failure to provide adequate treatment.

A number of former Manus Island staff have also spoken about the conditions at the centre, including former G4S and Wilson Security guard Beau Mitchell. In an interview with the ABC, Mr Mitchell said he was not surprised an accident of this magnitude had occurred. Mr Mitchell said:

There's no air conditioning, the beds are extremely close together. The living standards are pretty quite filthy …

Often they'd be standing on concrete to have a shower that was literally falling apart underneath them, just completely rotting away.

…   …   …

The people that were actually working there did a fantastic job … if it was something quite severe they'd be seen quickly but if it wasn't an emergency it was a 2-3 day wait normally.

It appears that we have people trying their best in really terrible conditions, and we are not hearing anything about this from the government; they are completely silent, leaving it up to whistleblowers to inform the public about these squalid conditions.

If this track record is not bad enough, the government has now reached new lows by brokering a $40 million deal with Cambodia that is reported to resettle only a handful of refugees. In true Abbott government form, the Cambodia deal was brokered under a veil of secrecy. Australians were given no details of the deal until the ink was well and truly dry. In fact, the only way we heard about it was through the Cambodian press. In the absence of transparency and full disclosure from Mr Morrison, we also discovered from the Cambodian media what Mr Morrison will be getting for his $40 million. According to an article in the Phnom Penh Post, the Cambodian Minister of Interior, Sar Kheng, has said on this matter:

We will try to take four or five people, maybe two or three (initially).

If that is what actually transpires, we are looking at quite a few million dollars being spent on each refugee. It certainly does not sound as though Mr Morrison has achieved value for money in this deal, and it sounds very suspiciously like policy on the run.

We also need to ask questions about Cambodia's capacity to support these people. The president of Cambodia's Centre for Human Rights, Virak Ou, told Radio National that Cambodia is in no position to take refugees. On this matter he said:

We are a poor country, the health system is sub-par at most. I don't know how the refugees will send their kids to school.

According to UNICEF, 18 per cent of Cambodians exist below the international poverty line of $1.25 a day. With all these existing problems, it is hard to see how Cambodia will be able to support more people with their already stretched public resources. Similarly, we cannot close our eyes to Cambodia's human rights record. In fact, as recently as January this year the Abbott government was concerned enough to denounce Cambodia at a United Nations Human Rights hearing for its human rights abuses. Now, just nine months later, it appears the government expects us to believe that there is no longer a problem.

Australians need to be certain that the safety and security of refugees is protected, and it is the responsibility of the Abbott government to provide that assurance. So far, we have heard nothing about the measures the government is putting in place to ensure that the health and wellbeing of refugees is guaranteed. This is an ill-considered quick-fix deal through which Australia shirks its responsibilities as a global citizen. We also need to recognise the sheer hypocrisy of this agreement, especially when it was members of this government who were so brutally opposed to the Malaysia regional solution proposed by the Labor government in 2011. It simply does not make any sense to complain about the human rights implications of asylum seekers being sent to Malaysia but to have no concerns with stitching up a deal to send people to Cambodia. The truth is that this was more about political wins than the feigned concern about the health and wellbeing of asylum seekers. Prime Minister Abbott himself admitted as much when he apologised to Malaysia soon after getting into office. On this matter he said:

I offered an act of contrition, if you like, to Prime Minister Najib for the way Malaysia got caught up in what was a very intense and at times somewhat rancorous debate in Australia. He knows we play our politics pretty hard in our country.

This is an outrageous admission that our Prime Minister sees the global refugee crisis as little more than a political tool used to score points in domestic politics.

On this side of the chamber, we do not see any policy as 'a gift that keeps on giving'. Rather, we are committed to working through issues with fairness, equity and justice at the fore of our decision making. I implore the government to end the silence and adopt a similar approach.