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

I very much appreciate your assistance and your counsel there, Mr Acting Deputy President. I wanted to make some observations about the situation on Manus Island which, of course, Senator Macdonald referred to and, in fact, he referred to me personally. I will place it again on the record in this place that I've visited Manus Island five times in the last 12 months. I want to say that the many hundreds of men who Australia has abandoned on Manus Island are still there. They are still doing it tough. They still do not have adequate supports. Most of them have no idea what is going to happen to them in the future. And many of them have been profoundly harmed by the experience of the last five years; profoundly harmed by the indefinite detention to which the Australian and Papua New Guinean governments have subjected them; profoundly harmed by the lack of basic human services and supports; and profoundly harmed by becoming—through no fault of their own; through doing nothing wrong whatsoever other than stretching out a hand to Australia for assistance—Australia's political prisoners.

The men on Manus Island and the men, women and children on Nauru are like the corpses that used to be impaled on the walls of medieval cities in an attempt to dissuade other desperate people from trying to enter. These people, our fellow human beings, have been treated disgustingly and disgracefully in order to try and send a message to other desperate people that they should not try to seek asylum in Australia and arrive by boat. The United Nations has time after time declared that Australia is in breach of international law and declared time after time that Australia is in breach of conventions that we have signed as a country. Our global reputation as a compassionate country is in tatters, and these people—the men on Manus Island, and the men, women and children on Nauru—are still suffering every day as a result of the policy lockstep within which the Labor and Liberal parties are operating in this country.

We still have no idea how many more, if any more, will be sent to the United States as part of the people-swap arrangement, where Australia agreed to accept people seeking asylum in the US in return for the US agreeing to accept some people from Manus Island and Nauru. This is a dark and bloody stain on our country's history, and it's time that people in this parliament got active, rediscovered their humanity and worked together to bring an abrupt end to this terrible chapter in our national story.

Decades ago, Australia was held up around the world as a human rights leader and, in fact, was actively involved and showed great leadership in crafting some of this planet's most important human rights conventions. And where are we now? We're lagging because we torture people in this country. The Labor and Liberal parties support torture of innocent people. We are deliberately harming these people. No matter how much members of the Labor and Liberal parties in this place and other parties that support the disgrace that is occurring on Manus Island and Nauru put their hands over their ears, there are still cries for help. As someone who's visited the Lombrum prison run by Australia on Manus Island, I can tell you the cries, the psychological harm and the physical harm will never ever leave me.

Question agreed to.