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

I move:

That the Senate take note of the answer given by the Minister for Small and Family Business, Skills and Vocational Education (Senator Cash) to a question without notice asked by Senator McKim today relating to asylum seeker children on Nauru.

There is a humanitarian calamity underway in Australia's offshore detention centres on both Manus Island and Nauru. In the last five years, we've seen widespread physical abuse. We've seen assaults. We've seen sexual assaults, including of children. We've seen suicides. We've seen widespread self-harm. Right now on Nauru we have children in catatonic states who are refusing to eat or drink and are actually withdrawing from the world. And we have seen the deliberate destruction of hope for the future of thousands of innocent people. We've seen people killed and we've seen others deported back into the hands of the governments and countries which persecuted them. We've seen the Papua New Guinean navy storm the Manus Island detention centre at Lombrun, firing over 100 rounds from machine guns and shotguns into that compound, including into the sleeping quarters of that compound. Last week Medecins Sans Frontieres were booted off Nauru by the Nauruan government. And now there is a complete lack of medical care for Australia's refugees and political prisoners, just as there is a complete lack of appropriate medical care for Australia's refugees and political prisoners on Manus Island and in Port Moresby.

But, instead of dealing with this humanitarian calamity, the government simply doubles down on its policies of cruelty. And once again there has been no meaningful objection to any of this from the Australian Labor Party, who, let us not forget, put the overwhelming majority of the people who are currently on Manus Island and Nauru into those locations in the first place. Put simply, Australia is running a systematic regime of child abuse on Nauru. Australia is running a systematic regime of torture of innocent men, women and children on both Manus Island and Nauru.

If this were happening in Australia, every single member of this Senate would be jumping up and down, demanding that the perpetrators be brought to justice, be charged with abuse—in some cases, child abuse—and be sent to prison for many years. But, because of the cruel, horrendous policy lock step between the LNP and the ALP in this parliament, this tragic situation continues to exist. If this were happening in Australia, none of us would be sitting on our hands. None of us would be claiming that this is okay. We would be up in arms, and rightfully so. It is absolutely staggering that this parliament has to debate whether or not to save the lives of children that are deliberately being abused by our government. It is a staggering, horrible and disgusting state of affairs that we find ourselves in in this parliament, thanks to the ALP and the LNP.

Well, I'm here to tell the people of Australia today that there will one day be a reckoning. People will be held to account for what is happening in Papua New Guinea and Nauru to innocent people who exercised their rights under a convention, the refugee convention, to which Australia is a signatory. You will all be held to account one day for your actions and for your cruelty, and history will show how you voted every single time that you voted in lock step to maintain this horrendous regime of torture and child abuse. (Time expired)

Question agreed to.