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

Thank you, Madam Acting Deputy President. The Labor and Liberal parties have shown their willingness to not only torture people—that is, to deliberately harm people in order to coerce outcomes out of another group of people entirely; they're basically acting like the old-style medieval cities that impaled corpses on the walls to try and dissuade other desperate people from seeking entry into those cities. That is exactly what they're doing with living human beings on Manus Island and Nauru: they are treating them in a way that they know will cause deliberate and significant harm, and they are doing it in order to dissuade other people from taking certain actions. I do not recognise my country when I talk about these matters.

The terrible tragedy of this situation is that most of this cruelty would be so much harder for the government to do if the Labor Party would actually show the slightest sign of standing up against it. I want to go on the record here and say that, in years to come, there will be a royal commission into the way we've treated these people on Manus Island and Nauru. Reparations will be made, apologies will be made and blame will be apportioned, and the blame will be apportioned to the Labor, Liberal and National parties in this place and to other senators in this place who've supported them in lock step every step of the way. When that day comes, I hope that the people that you have treated so appallingly on Manus Island and Nauru can take small solace from that. It will only be small because their lives will still have been damaged and some of them will still be dead because of what you have done to them. You will be held to account in the same way that, I hope, the Catholic Church will be held to account for what it's done. If you can't stand up and demand a stop to what, I believe, is early-onset fascism—reflected in the actions of the Labor and Liberal parties on Manus Island and Nauru and policy settings around that, and in the way that the minister currently responds to circumstances, such as Arash's where he is deliberately trying to use a denial of access to the US resettlement deal in order to coerce Arash's wife and baby daughter back to Nauru—then you are a party to that abuse. It is as simple as that. So let's actually stand together. Let's demand better from the government and let's demand better from the minister. If you don't, you will be remembered by history as collaborators to torture.