Andrew Bartlett (Queensland, Australian Greens) Share this | Hansard source

These are seven reports from the Commonwealth Ombudsman in regard to people who have been in immigration detention in Australia for two years or more, a provision that was inserted in the Migration Act when the coalition was in government, prior to the Rudd-Gillard years, because of a recognition of how out of control our detention system was. There are seven reports here from the Commonwealth Ombudsman and seven responses from the minister. Rather than go through each of the individual cases, I'd simply point out that, collectively, these reports refer to 222 individuals who have all been in detention in Australia for over two years—some of them more than three, some of the more than four, and some over five years. These are truly people who have been forgotten and have been locked away indefinitely by virtue of our laws despite, let's not forget, never having committed a crime and despite not having ever been charged with a crime. Unfortunately, Labor and Liberal have continued to support the mandatory detention regime that has been in place in this country, to our shame, for over 25 years.

I wanted to mention particularly the fact that a family from my own state of Queensland is currently in detention in Melbourne. They've only recently come there. I really hope and pray that, in two years time, there's not a report tabled about them still being in detention. I am talking about a family of Tamil background—a husband and wife and two very young daughters—who were taken from the community of Biloela in the very early hours of the morning and who currently reside in a detention centre in Queensland. There was a huge public response, including and in particular from the community of Biloela, calling on the immigration minister to get this family out of detention, to let them back into the community where they have lived peacefully and constructively for over three years. We have a government that complains about how migrants aren't integrating properly in the community. It complains that we need to have more people moving to regional areas. Yet we had this family, who moved to regional Queensland to the town of Biloela, who were working in jobs that they have difficulty finding other people to fill and who were welcomed and supported in their community in regional Queensland.

I draw attention to the petition in relation to this family. It has been online just for a short period of time, and it's got a huge number of signatures. The petition was started by Angela Fredericks from Biloela, who talks about how this couple and their daughters are valuable members of this rural community of Biloela in Central Queensland. They had lived there for over three years and are a caring, hardworking family. This peaceful family were going about their early morning routine, with the husband getting ready to go to his job at the local meatworks and the wife preparing a bottle for the baby. At 5 am, their home was stormed by armed police and Border Force officers. Their seven-month-old baby and their 2½-year-old daughter were ripped from their beds. The couple were told they were being taken to a Melbourne detention centre and were given 10 minutes to pack up their entire lives. They were put into separate vans, driven to Gladstone Airport and then flown to a detention centre in Melbourne.

Border Force officers told them that if they didn't sign so-called voluntary deportation documents they would be denied access to a phone and would be separated and forced back to Sri Lanka—permanent separation, potentially, for the family. Despite begging to be returned to the community of Biloela where they had been welcomed and supported, after two days of pressure, they gave in and signed the documents. This family has been held in a single room surrounded by three armed guards. They were settled in Biloela after fleeing torture and suffering in Sri Lanka. Despite the advice of many human rights organisations on the ground, the current government, no doubt aided by behind-the-scenes political deals with the Sri Lankan government, is now pretending that Sri Lanka is safe for Tamil people, which is why they're trying to force this couple and their young children back to Sri Lanka. The document says, 'Our community in Biloela is not ready to let this family go. They love contributing to our society. We want them here.' They call on Mr Dutton: 'Please return this family to Biloela, their home, where they are wanted and welcome,' and I join in that call. (Time expired.)