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

I move:

That the Senate take note of the answer given by the Attorney-General (Senator Brandis) to a question without notice asked by Senator McKim today relating to Manus Island.

What is happening on Manus Island right now is a sickening disgrace. It is a foul and bloody stain on our country's conscience. We've got a situation where more than 800 innocent people stretched out a hand to our country, in line with the refugee convention that Australia is a signatory to, and asked us for help. They stretched out their hand, and we have repeatedly kicked them in the teeth.

We've imprisoned them on Manus Island for nearly five years. For the overwhelming majority of that time, they were illegally prisoned there according to the Papua New Guinea Supreme Court. In those five years, they have endured deprivations that none of us in this place can even begin to imagine. They've witnessed murder. They've witnessed riots. They've witnessed assaults. They've been provided with utterly deficient medical care. They were attacked by members of the Papua New Guinean navy earlier this year, where more than 100 submachine gun and shotgun shells were fired into Australia's Manus Island prison, some of them ending up in sleeping quarters of innocent refugees. And, if that wasn't enough, then the Papua New Guinean navy loaded up a PNG navy vehicle and tried to ram it through the gates so that they could assault and attack Australia's political prisoners on Manus Island.

You wouldn't have thought life could have got any worse or more dangerous or more desperate for these people, but over the last two weeks it has. On 31 October, on the orders of the Australian government, drinking water to the camp was cut off, food was cut off, medication was cut off—remember, about 20 per cent of these people are on antidepressant medication because of the harm we have caused them and because of the persecution in their home countries that they have fled—and electricity was cut off.

Then, on 10 November, Papua New Guinea police did the absolutely unthinkable. After having been abandoned, the refugees in Australia's prison on Manus Island were using rubbish bins that had been left behind by workers contracted to the Australian government. They were using the bins to store drinking water that they were catching when the rain fell. On 10 November, the Papua New Guinea police went into the Manus Island detention centre and overturned that precious drinking water and drained it into the dust. Today, Papua New Guinea government officials have again entered the detention centre, and have bored holes in those rubbish bins so that the detainees have nowhere to store rainwater when it falls. That water was their lifeline. They relied on it for their very lives. In a textbook and inspirational example of peaceful and non-violent resistance, they stood by peacefully while their very lifeblood, that drinking water, drained away into the dust—