Linda Reynolds (WA, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

Thank you, and through you, Mr Acting Deputy President, I would like to thank Senator Wong for extending me different courtesies than I extended to her when she spoke on this same issue.

But, coming back to the very inconvenient truth and some of the facts: we have here a new issue arising altogether, that of the drying-up of information from the department of immigration pre and post the election. There were seven flip-flops on this in the one day. First of all it was post 18 September that the drying-up started. Then it was in December 2013. Then we had this extraordinary flip back to before 17 September, during the caretaker period. Then, even more extraordinarily, the president said: 'Actually the information started drying up before the caretaker period, and we'd been noticing a drying-up of information from the department before caretaker'—that is, under the previous government. Then, in answer to more questions, the president said that she had in fact written to the secretary of the department of immigration on 17 September 2013 about this drying-up of this information. We then said, 'Was that in relation to Sovereign Borders?' 'No. It wasn't in relation to Sovereign Borders or to this current inquiry. It was relating to the snapshot report.' The next flip-flop on this was that the drying-up of information happened on 5 August. Then it went back—answer No. 5—to after 7 September. Then it flipped back to after 18 September. Then, extraordinarily—and I have to read this one out because it left me completely confused—it was presumably during the caretaker period but it was actually after that as well. That is somewhat confusing. So here we have seven different answers on when the information dried up.

The letter that went to the secretary of immigration was not in this time line. The president had provided a comprehensive report on the time line of all of the correspondence that had gone from the HRC to government and to the department of immigration. Over the course of the testimony, we found that there were at least two pieces of critical correspondence that were not listed in here, including the one to the secretary of the department of immigration. Interestingly, remember it was 17 September when the president wrote to Mr Bowles about this drying-up of information for the snapshot report. But, in the snapshot report itself, it says that the information in fact was received from the department of immigration on 16 September, a day before she wrote to the secretary of immigration. So what remains completely unaddressed yet is this. She said that, once Operation Sovereign Borders got underway, it was clear that information was not as readily available. Well, that has been comprehensively refuted in her own testimony that day, and it is still not clear why it was called and when it was called, as Senator Moore so rightly said.

I am also very supportive of the Attorney-General and his actions and those of the Secretary of the Attorney-General's Department. One of the things that became very clear in the estimates for Immigration the day before, and then in this inquiry, was that the Human Rights Commission had a range of issues that were not addressed that should have been addressed in the report, on basic, fundamental natural justice and procedural rights. The Secretary of the Department of Immigration and Border Protection confirmed this last week. I would like to read out now his response in the report. He says, on 10 November:

… the Department has already identified a wide range of concerns regarding the manner in which evidence and information provided to the Inquiry has been evaluated and utilised …

Whilst the Department acknowledges that the Commission has made some substantial changes to the findings and has also made some changes to the final report, I note that these changes appear to only partially address the specific examples raised …

What were those specific examples he raised in the Human Rights Commission report on such an important issue? Claims not affording procedural fairness or right of reply; untested claims and subjective observations; overreliance on the commission's own experts; little or no weight afforded to policy and procedure of the department and its contracted service providers; and dismissal of evidence provided to the commission. For those who have not yet read the Department of Immigration and Border Protection's submission, it absolutely brings into question this whole report, in my mind, due to lack of procedural fairness and equity.

Let's face it; the other issue is: why did we need this report? You could ask any Australian: 'Is detention a good thing for children?' Of course it is not. We had a report 10 years ago. We all agreed then that detention was no place for children or for adults. We stopped the boats, we closed the detention centres and there were no children left in detention. I think the biggest shame in all of this is that those opposite have been playing the man—that is, the Attorney-General and the Secretary of the Attorney-General's Department—when the facts are very clear. We need to get back to—and I would ask all senators in this place to get back and have a look at—the facts of this case.

The facts are that we currently have seven different reasons from the president and her office about why it was called. We have four separate and distinct reasons for when it was called. Last week—and this has remained untested in all of the other colour and movement on this—Sovereign Borders was, was not, was, was not and then was a factor, and there were seven different answers about when this supposed information dried up. These are the things that I think the Senate should now be pursuing to get clarity on this issue. I also believe that these absolutely demonstrate why those on our side were frustrated with the evidence that was provided in November, which caused the Attorney-General and the government to lose confidence in the president. Again, nothing that I heard in that hearing on examination of the testimony provided any clarity on those two key questions. In fact, what I heard further complicated them. So I very much support the Attorney-General and the position he has taken on this issue, and I would ask all of us to look at the facts and the issues.

I am a very strong supporter of the Human Rights Commission and of having a Human Rights Commission, but it must be politically impartial. We have a right to expect that it will on occasions be critical of the government in discharge of its statutory function. However, the commission must maintain the confidence of both sides of politics, and it must not be politically partisan. I believe from my review of the evidence that the only possible conclusion from Professor Triggs's inconsistent evidence last week is that the decision to hold the inquiry into children in detention was politically partisan. It saddens me to say that, but the evidence on the key questions that count, I think, clearly demonstrates that it was a partisan report on a critical issue for this country.

I support the Attorney-General and the actions he has taken, and I strongly support and endorse the actions of the Abbott government to stop the boats, to stop people drowning and to get kids out of detention.