Kim Carr (Victoria, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister Assisting the Leader for Science) Share this | Hansard source

In recent weeks, in the wake of the High Court's ruling on offshore processing, public sentiment has, understandably, been focused on the plight of the 237 refugees in this country who have been affected by the ruling—in particular, the 38 babies. I think fair-minded Australians have been angered by this government's inaction in resolving these people's future. Labor shares that anger and sense of frustration. But while public attention has been focused on the 237 refugees, we should also remember the 2,063 men, women and children whom the government has left languishing on Nauru and Manus Island. By failing to resolve the question of settlement in third countries, the government has left these people without any hope for the future. All of them have a compelling reason to be afforded a safe and decent future. The pressing issue now is what is to be done to resolve the plight of asylum seekers on Nauru and Manus Island. They deserve the dignity of resettlement, not the misery of indefinite incarceration.

Under the Abbott-Turnbull government, Australia has abdicated its responsibility to not harm these people. That is why Labor has been calling on the government to resume talks with the UNHCR and urgently secure a resettlement deal. The government has failed abysmally to develop a meaningful plan for resettlement. Its most notable achievement has been to waste $55 million on a botched deal with Cambodia, which I understand has seen four people moved to Cambodia. Apologies—it is not four; it is three, which is a remarkable productivity spend, isn't it? During the past two years, there have also been media reports that the government has held talks with authorities in the Philippines and Kyrgyzstan. All the while, asylum seekers are languishing in detention centres on Nauru and/or Manus Island.

A Labor government would make working with the UNHCR its priority in devising a resettlement plan. Labor would increase Australia's funding of the UNHCR to $450 million over four years, making this country one of the top five contributors to the agency. A Labor government would take the initiative of forging an agreement with countries in the region to deal with the flows of displaced persons in a humane way because we are willing to take a comprehensive approach to the plight of asylum seekers—a problem which will not be resolved in any other way. It will not be resolved by leaving people in permanent limbo under offshore processing arrangements. It will not be resolved by a piecemeal approach either. The actions that this government has pursued are not driven by compassion and there is no due regard for their unintended consequences.

This bill, the Migration Amendment (Protecting Babies Born in Australia) Bill 2014, has not been to the Labor Party caucus because it was introduced very late in the piece, but I can comment in general terms on the principles that underpin our approach on these issues. I might deal firstly with the essential point of the bill, which is to amend the Migration Act so that a child born in Australia to asylum-seeker parents could not be classified as an unauthorised maritime arrival, to be sent offshore to a detention facility. The proposed change departs from the principle that Labor has consistently upheld—that is, that children should inherit the immigration status of their parents. This means that, if a parent is defined as an unauthorised maritime arrival, then it is appropriate that their children, wherever they are born, have the same status. The principle applies throughout the immigration scheme, with a single exception: a child born in Australia to a permanent resident becomes an Australian citizen. The reason for this principle is considered important, in that it ensures that family members will not be separated because they have different immigration statuses. We do not want to create a system whereby a particular group of people are given preference or treated differently, and adhering to this principle is entirely consistent with upholding and respecting the rights of children.

The title of this bill, I would suggest to its proponent, Senator Hanson-Young, is in fact misleading. Labor has always argued that children should be protected from abuse and other potential harm. But according them full protection has not hitherto been understood to require giving them a different immigration status from their parents, and no-one wants to see children in detention.

That is why Labor are urging the government to continue the work we began in government to move families out of detention and into the community as soon as humanly practicable. We absolutely support the principle that children should not be in detention for as long as that takes or, for that matter, any longer than is required for the necessary health, identity and security checks. It is important that families be kept together wherever possible. That of course means ensuring that asylum claims are processed quickly so that no-one has to languish in these facilities indefinitely, without hope of resettlement. And, while children are in detention, awaiting processing, appropriate care must be provided to ensure their physical and emotional wellbeing. They must have access to the best health care, to education and to social support services. While Labor have supported offshore processing, we have never, ever supported the brutalisation of people as an act of deterrence, and we have certainly maintained that position throughout this whole conversation. People are entitled to live in safety, and the government must ensure that their safety is not threatened. It is shameful that the government has so often failed in this regard.

It is simply unacceptable that the government still refuses to allow transparency and independent oversight of Australian managed, Australian funded offshore facilities. Australians should know what is being done in their name and how their taxes are being spent.

Labor is committed to protecting the interests of children within the immigration system and to institute a strong, independent voice to advocate for the interests of children who are seeking asylum. The Labor Party, at its conference last year, resolved that a Labor government would appoint such an advocate, who would be independent of the Department of Immigration and Border Protection. This children's advocate would be given whatever resources or statutory powers are necessary to be able to do the job and to pursue the best interests of asylum-seeking children. These powers would include being able to initiate court proceedings on a child's behalf. This change would not restrict the ability of other interested parties to take court action against government decisions—nor would it reduce the minister's obligations in regard to unaccompanied noncitizen children. The independent children's advocate would also have access to all unaccompanied minors in detention and in the community to ensure that their rights are protected.

Labor recently supported legislation in this place that would have the effect of removing children from detention within 30 days. We supported this with certain caveats, including a requirement that the bill be returned to the House of Representatives for a vote early this year. That means the Turnbull government is facing a moment of truth. The way the government votes when this bill is presented to the House will be a clear indication of where it stands on the treatment of children in detention. If the government really wants to remove children from detention as soon as humanly possible, it should support that bill.

But under this government there has been a very sharp demarcation between what we what told we were going to get under Mr Turnbull and what has actually happened. The Abbott government's hard-edged, backward-looking, reactionary views were well known. They dominated, they characterised, the work of the government. Mr Turnbull, on the other hand, has a carefully cultivated image as a man who is tolerant, who is urbane, who is interested in the big questions of our time, who is a policy moderniser, as he said. We have seen Mr Turnbull, for years, try to kid people that he was different from the right wing of his own party, that he was perhaps intellectually superior to the right wing of his party and, more recently, that he was a champion of new politics. Remember all that, the new politics that we were going to get? He told us that things would now be different and that the future was about a new style, a new Zeitgeist. I remember when he criticised the Vice-Chancellor of Melbourne University because he was not bouncy enough in his optimism. We now know that the approach that Mr Turnbull took has been a fraud—a complete fraud. This broad, intelligent, public face of inclusion has been demonstrated to be a farce. On so many issues, whether it is refugees, same-sex marriage, climate change, the republic, tax or social justice, what do we see? We see a Prime Minister who is missing in action. We see a Prime Minister who has abandoned all the things that he carefully cultivated about being the new man in politics and who has resorted to the old politics which have dominated conservatives in this country for so long.

We now know that even the strongest conservative urgers and barrackers in the financial press, in intellectual circles and amongst the shock jocks are now questioning, in a fundamental way, what this government is all about. In fact, The Australian Financial Review asked the question on 8 February in its editorial: what is the point? What is the point of Malcolm Turnbull's government?

I was surprised to see that the flag carriers for conservatism in TheAustralian were offering the ultimate insult to the Turnbull government by suggesting that the Malcolm of today should not be confused with the other Malcolm—Malcolm Fraser. There could be no greater insult in the conservative lexicon than to suggest that someone is like Malcolm Fraser. He was a person who wasted his time. That is the reasoning these days. Malcolm Fraser was a person that missed opportunities, and they are now saying that that is exactly what Malcolm Turnbull is all about.

We know that Malcolm Turnbull has made a great claim of being a new man. We fully appreciate—and what is becoming increasingly clear—that he is an expert when it comes to the politics of fraud. But now that the public is waking up to it, he is panicking. Deep panic has been running through this government because he knows that he has been found out. He is a waffler and he has been found out to be a person who is, essentially, a placeholder as a Prime Minister. He wants us to gaze upon his magnificence, but he is really doing nothing. It provides an excuse for him to tread water and allows him to be a blowhard. He is desperately in search of an electoral strategy but not a strategy to transform this country. He has no clear view about the future of this country other than high-blown rhetoric which is not backed up with action.

He has now committed himself to the policies of his predecessor in all the areas that I have mentioned, whether it be the treatment of refugees, social inclusion, social justice, climate change issues, science or the importance of new knowledge needed to understand the great problems of our age. On the republic and same-sex marriage it is a complete joke. There could be no more obvious example of it than his attitude, where he has no policy framework, on taxation or a capacity to lead this country forward. So he is now hysterical about the fact that Australians have woken up to his smarmy waffle. The high hopes that somehow politics would be different have now been discovered to be a fraud. We now have a government that is essentially adrift. It is desperately in search of the next polling report so that it can seek some sort of election strategy rather than attempt to deal with the fundamental questions that this country faces.

I am concerned that this government, when it comes to questions such as those raised in this bill, needs to look for new approaches that go to the heart of the issue. There are people who are being taken into custody by Australian authorities under Australian law and who have been left to languish without any serious effort by government to do anything about their plight. We recently introduced a private member's bill to impose mandatory reporting of child abuse and to force the government to reconsider the approach that we are taking about people who are in facilities funded by the Australian government. The need to amend the Migration Act to impose an unequivocal obligation on staff and contractors in detention facilities to notify Border Force commissioners of child abuse is one such measure that can be taken to improve and make humane the administration of policies in this area. The government has to manage these programs much more effectively than it has. The government has to be committed to ensuring the humane treatment of people that are in our care. It is simply not satisfactory to allow the dehumanisation and brutalisation of people to be used as a policy weapon, as an act of deterrence, against people.

There can be no question at all that, when it comes to the issue of people being put in the hands of people smugglers, there is no compassion in encouraging people to face the dangers of the sea as an act of desperation. Labor's policy is one of fairness and compassion. It is one that reflects the realities of the situation but acknowledges that we do have obligations to treat people properly and ensure that we do not have brutalisation of people in our care. We must make sure that these fundamental rights are protected. While we are not likely to follow the same position of the Greens, who do not recognise the realities of what is happening with these people-smuggling syndicates, we are not going to support policies that allow the brutalisation of people that are in detention as a result of the laws of this parliament.