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

Today I stand here with the overwhelming majority of legal and human rights experts in this country to condemn the regressive and dangerous Migration and Maritime Powers Legislation Amendment (Resolving the Asylum Legacy Caseload) Bill 2014 before us today. This piece of legislation, if it were to pass, would be a fundamental shift from what are known as due process, fairness before the law, a fair go under the refugee system and, of course, the proper checks and balances to make sure whoever is the government of the day is abiding by our international obligations as well as the basic rules and values of decency and fairness.

This bill should not be called the asylum legacy case bill. It should be called the immigration minister's outrageous grab for power bill. That is all that is in this piece of legislation. This bill is all about Scott Morrison, as the Minister for Immigration, grabbing more power for himself to dictate who will be a refugee, under what conditions they will be a refugee and whether or not they get access to a visa. Of course, overarching all of this is whether children and families remain languishing in terrible conditions on Christmas Island.

When it comes to the way we treat refugees in this country, never before have we seen a bill as insidious, as deceptive and as downright dangerous as this. It is a smorgasbord of suffering, a buffet of brutality, and it should not be allowed to pass this place today. Within this bill the immigration minister wants to make babies that are being born in Australia stateless. He wants to send those babies to camps of cruelty offshore.

He wants to give himself a licence to break international law. He wants to rip the refugee convention from the Australian law books. He wants to change the very definition of who is and who is not a refugee. He wants to fast-track the refugee determination process to remove the right of review, meaning there would be less protection for people who deserve it, less protection for people who may, as a result of mistakes, be sent back to death and torture.

He wants to deny protection to as many refugees as possible. He wants to introduce temporary protection visas for those who have been found to be in genuine need of protection, making them suffer even more for the fact that they dared to dream of freedom and safety for their families. That will leave thousands of refugees—genuine refugees who have been through the proper process, who desperately need protection and have every right to start putting their lives back together—in limbo effectively for the rest of their lives.

He wants to trick the Senate crossbench into thinking that a new visa that is being offered is a pathway to permanency when there is no detail of the safe haven enterprise visa in this legislation. If the minister thinks he can continue to trick this Senate and the crossbenchers in this place, he better think twice because he cannot. It is as clear as day that this minister has no intention of following through with the agreement that was made with the Palmer United Party and with the statements that have been made. He wants only more power for himself and less protection for refugees.

This is an unbelievable grab of power from the minister, and senators in this place have the opportunity to stop this minister, who is so arrogant and so drunk with power, from being able to have even more unfettered discretion. The immigration minister wants to give himself the ability to play God. He wants to be the judge, the jury and the executioner in all these cases. He wants to send refugees, including families and children, back to danger in their homelands. The whole point of this bill is to give as few refugees as possible the opportunity for protection. Even if they are granted protection, he will not even bother to give them a permanent visa that will allow them to rebuild their lives and allow them to contribute to this country. We have thousands of refugees living in the Australian community desolate, without work rights, without the ability to study and without even the right to be able to volunteer. All these people want to be able to do is get on with the rest of their lives—