Stirling Griff (SA, Centre Alliance) Share this | Hansard source

I personally do not support indefinite offshore detention. In fact, I don't actually support offshore detention at all. Unfortunately, this government not only embraces this policy but has worked particularly hard to demonise asylum seekers in order to keep on its course.

The minister now insists that asylum seekers be called 'illegal', even though he'd be well aware that they have done nothing illegal in seeking asylum in Australia. In fact, had they arrived by plane rather than by boat they would have had their refugee claims processed without problems years ago, and many would already have been settled in Australia. It suits government to treat these people as quasi criminals because it is so much easier to argue for their ongoing, and often inhumane, treatment if it can get the public to view asylum seekers without sympathy.

This almost came undone last year when there was snowballing momentum behind calls for all children to be removed from Nauru. In response, the government started to hustle to remove children from Nauru, but it was all too little too late. It took the medevac legislation to finally and speedily get every last child off that island, but not before some of these innocents had suffered severe psychological damage and physical illness. Of course, kids in offshore detention aren't necessarily doing much better, as we've seen in the media recently. In what sane universe do ministers who have children themselves turn a blind eye to the suffering of children, all in the name of an inhumane policy?

The government has backed itself into a corner by refusing to consider sincere offers from New Zealand to resettle asylum seekers who aren't settled in the United States. It can't seem to get its head around the fact that there are ways to deal humanely with the legacy case load without dismantling its border protection policy. In the black and white, reductionist world of this government, anything that strays from its hard-core policy will restart the boats—like the medevac legislation. That hasn't restarted the boats, has it? Not at all; far from it. We don't have hordes of leaky boats heading here because of the medevac bill—it won't benefit anybody who arrives now. It's also because boat turnbacks have been such an effective turnoff. We know that the US resettlement offer didn't restart the boats, and accepting the New Zealand offer won't do that either.

I'd like to remind the chamber of a well-researched article that former Home Affairs employee Shaun Hanns wrote for The Monthly last year. Mr Hanns worked at the coalface as a protection visa case officer. His previously sympathetic views of Australia's border protection policy changed dramatically after seeing the harm and loss he was creating in his fellow humans. His answer to the problem is simple, humane and well argued. It is, simply, 'keep the architecture; remove the people'. He makes the case that settling those currently in offshore detention in Australia will not restart the boats. In his words:

If you accept that the capacity of people smugglers has been seriously overestimated and that only concessions made to prospective arrivals change people’s decision-making, the answer to this vexing issue, at least in the short term, becomes obvious. Keep the architecture, remove the people.

The government needs to adopt this advice. It needs to change course and find a solution to this stalemate, because while it has enough of the public onside for now that will not always be the case. Its supporters will eventually demand an end to arbitrary and inhumane offshore detention, and that's assuming that PNG and Nauru will continue to play willing hosts, because it very much appears that this role is starting to wear very thin. When that happens, what will be the government's plan B?