Nick McKim (Tasmania, Australian Greens) Share this | Hansard source

I seek leave to move a motion relating to deaths in Australia's offshore detention centres on Manus Island and Nauru and the need to evacuate the people there to safety in Australia.

Leave not granted.

I move:

That so much of the standing orders be suspended as would prevent Senator McKim moving a motion to give precedence to a motion relating to deaths in Australia's offshore detention centres on Manus Island and Nauru and the need to evacuate the people there to safety in Australia.

Australia's offshore detention centres in Manus Island and Nauru are a shameful chapter in the story of our country. This sorry and horrendous chapter in our nation's story, which was co-authored by the Labor Party and the Liberal Party, has to end, and it has to end by immediately closing these detention centres and bringing everyone who is there—man, woman and child—to safety here in Australia. They have to be evacuated, and they have to be evacuated now. On Manus Island, in particular, the situation is extremely dire and dangerous, and it is becoming more dire and dangerous by the hour and by the day. We have a situation in which over 850 people who have been detained by Australia on Manus Island have been denied their liberty, have been tortured, have been shot at, have been assaulted and have been murdered—and all that's just inside the camp. Outside of the camp we've seen a significant series of attacks by knife—attacks by machete—on refugees in the town of Lorengau and in the capital of Papua New Guinea, in Port Moresby.

Papua New Guinea is not a safe place for the people that Australia has detained there for four years. Neither is Nauru a safe place for the people that Australia has detained there for over four years. The overwhelming majority of people that Australia has detained on Manus Island and Nauru have been found to be genuine refugees—that is, they have a well-founded fear of persecution, which means they cannot, without being placed in danger—in some cases danger of death, arbitrary imprisonment and torture—be returned to their home countries. They can't be left in PNG and Nauru. They cannot possibly be forced back to their home countries. The only safe place for these people is to be evacuated from Manus Island and Nauru and brought here to Australia.

There are now eight people who have died on Manus Island and Nauru whilst being Australia's responsibility. They have effectively died at Australian hands. The names are as follows: Reza Barati, Sayed Ibrahim Hussein, Hamid Khazaei, Omid Masoumali, Rakib, Kamil Hussain, Faysal Ishak Ahmed, and yesterday, Hamed Shamshiripour. I now intend to stay silent for one minute in honour of all these men who have died while Australia's responsibility, and I invite the Senate to join me.

A minute's silence was observed—

Mr President, last month, a letter from hundreds of detainees was sent publicly, and I want to finish by reading it: 'Our souls are destroyed under your cruel regime of years of torture and trauma, by your contribution. Evacuate the camps now—

(Time expired)