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

That little girl deserves, now that she is in Australia, our protection, our help, our care and our support.

The other baby I want to mention in this debate today is a little girl who I am going to call Mia, for the sake of protection and privacy in this place; that is not her real name. Little Mia is now just four weeks old. She is the youngest and most recent child to be born in Australia who faces the fate of deportation back to Nauru. I met little Mia last Friday. She is in detention here in Australia with her family. As a little four-week-old baby she is incredibly small and underweight. Her mother is stressed, depressed and very anxious about the fate that awaits them in being sent back to Nauru. I told little Mia's mother when I saw her on Friday that there are many Australians who will do everything they can to ensure that her little girl does not have to live her childhood in detention on Nauru.

This piece of legislation is part of the attempt to ensure that children and babies like Baby Asha and little Mia are able to stay safely in Australia while their parents' refugee claims can be assessed efficiently and fairly. If they are found to be owed refugee protection they should be allowed to stay, and of course no-one is arguing that if somebody is not a refugee they should get to stay here. You assess their claims and process their applications and if they are not refugees then you send them home. But keeping a small child, born into this limbo of uncertainty, in the abuse of detention is simply inhumane and unconscionable. As we know, many experts have come forward publicly in various Senate inquiries in this place that are continuing to gather more and more evidence. They speak out bravely about the conditions on Nauru for children, women and families being unsafe and dangerous. We know that Nauru is no safe place for these children, and we have a responsibility as Australian law-makers to ensure that we do not see a law that banishes a child, by virtue of who their parents are, to indefinite detention in a place that is now renowned for being abusive and dangerous and one that harms children.

It is indisputable that the detention of a child damages them. Every paediatric expert in this country who has visited Nauru and has treated children in detention knows that detention itself harms children. This is supported by the evidence collected by this Senate through its inquiry into the conditions in Nauru and the medical expertise and evidence put forward to the Human Rights Commission's report, The forgotten children. The immigration department's own Chief Medical Officer only two weeks ago said there was no doubt that detention is not good for children. The government's own advisers make it very clear that detention harms children.

In 2015 alone there were over 100 reported cases of self-harm on Nauru, including, sadly, children. Dozens of allegations were made in relation to sexual assault and abuse, including, sadly, towards children. And while we have these statistics—and these are of course the ones that have been reported—not one conviction has been made by the Nauruan police. So not only is it unsafe for these children, mothers and families to be in detention on Nauru but also there is no justice for them when something goes wrong. Of the children on Nauru, 50 per cent do not attend school. That is the evidence put forward by the department's own contractors at various Senate estimates and other inquiries.

It was interesting to read earlier this week some polling that was done in relation to Australians' attitudes to who they trust on this issue. Politicians and government officials are, not surprisingly, considered to be the least trustworthy when it comes to the issues facing children in detention. However, the people the public trust more than any others on this issue are the doctors—the medical experts. Overwhelmingly, the Australian public is starting to see that, if a doctor is saying that a child should not be sent to Nauru, it is about time the federal government listened.

Over the weekend, of course, we saw the President of the Australian Medical Association, Professor Brian Owler, be very clear in the AMA's condemnation of children being in detention and children being sent to detention on Nauru. The AMA has stated again that the detention of children is akin to state sanctioned child abuse. Those are incredibly strong words from that medical organisation.

Why do we have this situation where even Malcolm Turnbull, as the Prime Minister of this country, who said that no-one wants to see children in detention, is now turning a blind eye to the deportation of children back to Nauru and where children remain—a four-week-old baby girl remains—in detention? The reason is that those who support the detention of Baby Asha, little Mia and the 37 other babies born here in Australia, given Australian birth certificates but given no rights or compassion—the reason for their detention, for those who support it—is that we must do this in order to stop the boats. How absurd for a government to argue that, in order to stop the boats, we need to keep children locked in detention, in harm, in an abusive environment.

I do not believe at all that that is the only option available for saving lives at sea. If Malcolm Turnbull or anybody else in this government thinks that the Australian public and doctors are going to continue to buy the idea that we must harm these children and that their harm is simply collateral damage for a broader government policy, they are really misreading not just the complexities of this policy, not just the complexities of this issue, but the desire for compassion and care in the Australian people. It is not the only option. It is not the only way you protect people. And it is morally bankrupt to argue that a child deserves to be abused in order to protect other children. It is illogical; it is morally bankrupt; and the Australian public are waking up. They are absolutely waking up to this farce of an argument.

We do have the ability. This bill refers only to those babies born here in Australia. We have the ability to protect these children. If the argument is that giving four-week-old Baby Mia the opportunity to live a childhood free of detention, free of harm and free of abuse will open the floodgates to boats, if that is seriously the argument that this government wants to mount, it just proves how insincere, how blinded and how irresponsible this government really is. No-one can seriously argue about giving Baby Mia the opportunity of a childhood free of harm and free of abuse—that this child, who is already here in Australia, born in an Australian hospital, delivered by Australian doctors, should be classified as an arrival by sea. It is absurd. It is absolutely absurd.

There is a larger debate, of course, about what we do to ensure that the people who are detained on Nauru and Manus Island are looked after and that they are given the opportunity to have their claims assessed effectively, efficiently and with fairness and, if they are found to be refugees, given the opportunity of a future. That is a broader discussion and a broader debate, one that we must have in this place, but that is not what this bill today does.

This bill simply says that a child who is born in Australia in an Australian hospital is considered to be just like every other child delivered in the normal way and has the opportunity to have their claim assessed here in Australia. People may argue, and the government will—we will hear Senator Macdonald stand up shortly and say—that, if we give Baby Asha or Baby Mia the opportunity of a childhood, that will send a signal to people smugglers. That is what the government will say.

If you as a government cannot find a better way of managing people smugglers than abusing children, get out of the way and let some other people get on with doing it properly. It is absolutely unconscionable that we abuse children in order to allow the government to stand in front of a sign that says they stop the boats.