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 seekers.

I wish to take note of Senator Cash's responses, and I use the word 'responses' advisedly, because it was very, very difficult to categorise Minister Cash's responses as answers to my questions. I want to make these points. Over the last few months we've seen an incredible groundswell from people right across this country in defence of the children who've been locked up for years in offshore processing on Nauru. The Australian people, over the last few months, have stood up and demanded an end to the cruelty and demanded that those children and their families be brought to Australia and given freedom and safety.

The cruelty of offshore detention is underpinned by an assumption that that's what the Australian people want. That's an assumption that is made time and time again by the Labor and Liberal parties. It's an assumption that assumes the very worst in people. That assumption is wrong. Australians do not want this cruelty. We are better than that. The knowledge that we are better than that is why the government have fought so hard to keep journalists out of Nauru and why they fought so hard to keep politicians, including me, out of Nauru. They have tried to keep their cruelty hidden so that the Australian people won't revolt in horror at what is being done in their name. But the Australian people have fought back, and it is yielding results. Their pressure has meant that dozens of children have been brought to Australia for medical treatment. However, Minister Cash today confirmed that many of these children are being locked up in onshore detention, here in Australia.

Freedom and safety mean exactly that. No child should be in detention. Whatever the question, the answer is never locking up innocent children and it is never deliberately harming kids. These kids have been so brutalised by the policies of the Liberal Party and the Labor Party that they cannot hope to properly heal while they are locked up. They cannot hope to properly heal when they're not out in our community. They cannot hope to properly heal while they don't have proper access to the supports that they need, including the education support that they need.

These kids and their families need to be given permanent protection in the Australian community. Every other man, every other woman, every other child that Australia has locked up on Manus Island and Nauru deserves freedom and safety, and I've got no doubt that the pressure from the Australian people will continue until those demands are met, because the Australian people are showing that we are better than the erroneous assumptions made about our values by the Labor and Liberal parties.

Question agreed to.