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

There's no other way to describe what is currently happening on Manus Island than as a humanitarian calamity. There are people entering their 15th day today without access to drinking water, food, electricity and much-needed medication, thanks to the instruction given by the Australian government and the Australian Minister for Immigration and Border Protection, Peter Dutton, to cut off the essentials of life, beginning on 31 October, to well over 600 people. We've then seen Papua New Guinea police and Papua New Guinea immigration personnel go into the camp, overturn water containers, drain precious drinking water into the dust and, yesterday, deliberately drill holes in every water container they could find to stop the detainees from being able to store any rainwater they are able to catch.

This is a humanitarian calamity of bipartisan making. Remember, it was the Australian Labor Party who put every single one of these people on Manus Island in 2013. It is still unexplained why over 1,400 people who were actually on the same boats as the people that are currently on Manus Island and Nauru are here in Australia on various categories of visas, most of them living in the Australian community, while there are still over a thousand on Manus Island, in Port Moresby or in Nauru who are like the corpses that used to be impaled on the walls of medieval cities. It is a sickening, disgusting situation that is a result of a cruel, bipartisan lock step on immigration policy in this country.

Make no mistake: the world is watching in horror. The BBC, Al Jazeera, the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, Radio New Zealand, The New York Timesthe list goes on of these global institutional media organisations who are reporting on these humanitarian crises.

Of course, it is the Liberal Party that have been running the detention centres on Manus Island and Nauru with extreme prejudice, in the most punitive and cruel way that they can, since they came to government, but the reason we still have these crises existing is that the Labor Party has forgotten itself. It's forgotten its roots. It's forgotten its compassion. It's forgotten its tolerance. If there is anything left in the famous light on the hill that Ben Chifley used to talk about with such fondness, that light is flickering; it is guttering; and, if it's still alive, it is in imminent danger of extinction.

Today I call on Labor Party members—and there are many good members of the ALP, senators and MPs who represent the ALP in this place, who we all know do not in their hearts support this policy—and I say to them: I'm pleased that you're speaking out. We are pleased about that, but it's not words that are going to solve this policy crisis; it is votes in this parliament that will solve this policy crisis. It is bums on seats that make laws in this place. It is the Labor and Liberal parties together who created this emergency by voting in favour of the cruel amendments to the Migration Act in 2013, and it is the Labor Party who have it within their capacity now to solve this issue.

If Labor stood up and voted with the Greens to end this humanitarian nightmare that well over 1,000 people are living on Manus Island and Nauru, the Liberal Party would not be able to stand up against it, because we know that the majority of the Australian people do not support what is going on on Manus Island and Nauru. Poll after poll has shown that over the last couple of weeks. We are seeing civil disobedience in ever-increasing numbers, and we will see more people engage in peaceful protest and civil disobedience in coming days and weeks. So I say to the Labor Party members who don't support this: thank you for speaking out, but please, please, vote with the Greens to end this humanitarian calamity.