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

If senators in this chamber don't think I'm right about conditions on Manus Island, if you think I'm over-egging the situation over there, have the courage of your convictions to go to Manus Island or Nauru and tell the people there who are being tortured that what they're suffering is actually worth it. But you won't do that, will you? You don't want to look in the eye these innocent people, your political prisoners, who you exiled there six long years ago. You don't want to look them in the eye, because it would make you grossly uncomfortable. You know that, if you went there, they would explain to you how terrible their situation is and they would ask you how you can possibly justify doing what you're doing to them just because you think it's in your political benefit in this country to do it.

Go and look them in the eye and tell them why you've stolen six years of their lives. Go and look them in the eye and tell them why they are suffering. Tell them why they've been abused. Tell them why they've had to watch their friends being murdered. Tell them why they've had to watch their children being sexually abused on Nauru. Tell them why they've had to watch their wives being sexually abused and raped on Nauru. Tell them why, on Manus Island, they were laid siege to for over three weeks after the Australian government ordered that food, drinking water, electricity and medical supports be cut off at midnight on 31 October 2017. Tell them why their friends have been attacked with machetes and grievously wounded. Tell them why they are incarcerated indefinitely in mental illness factories. Tell them why their gay friends on Manus Island have been exiled by Australia to a place where consenting sex between adult men is subject to many years imprisonment. Go and look them in the eye and tell them, if you've got the guts. But you know what? None of you have the courage to do that. None of you.

These people are like the corpses that used to get impaled on the walls of medieval cities in order to dissuade other desperate people from trying to gain entry. They are political prisoners, and they have been exiled to Manus Island and Nauru for over six years now. And yet we have a Prime Minister who claims that there are no detention centres in Papua New Guinea and that refugees are not detained on Manus Island. Well, what is that place with the guards on the gate and with the razor wire on the fences that people get locked into at six o'clock every night and are not allowed out of until six o'clock every morning? What is that place if it's not a prison? You know what? It's worse than a prison, because they have no end date on their sentence. It's worse than a prison, because they have no educational opportunities, they have massively substandard health care and they have no hope for the future. That is why we've seen a massive spike in self-harm since the election. When the LNP held onto power, the dreams of many of them, that one day they might be settled in New Zealand, were crushed. Many of them now simply don't get out of bed. They lie in their beds every day because they have no hope for the future. When you remove hope for the future from human beings, mental illness is an almost inevitable result.

We've got Prime Minister Marape making it very clear to the Australian government that he expects a timetable for the closure of indefinite detention on Manus Island. And, despite being asked by me today, the minister refused to answer my very simple question, which was whether or not the Australian government had agreed to provide such a timetable. I'll put money on this—I'll lay it on the table—the Australian government won't provide a timetable to the Papua New Guinean government as requested by Prime Minister Marape today. The reason they won't do it is that there are no meaningful negotiations for resettlement underway with third countries.

We know the US arrangement is coming to an end. There are a small number of people on Manus Island and Nauru who've been accepted and are scheduled for transfer at some stage in the near future. There are a smaller number of people in Papua New Guinea at least who are still in the US process. But the information I've got is that the Australian government is currently not in negotiation with any other country for a third-country resettlement option. That's why Prime Minister Morrison, the man who says he cries when he thinks about this, the man who says he prays for these people, needs to accept the New Zealand offer. He needs to show some compassion and he needs to show some humanity. If there's any group of people to whom our country owes a duty of care that is more deserving of compassion, humanity and understanding than the people we exiled to Manus Island and Nauru, I do not know of that group.