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

I will shortly move the amendment in my name, but I just want to tie up the matter that Senator Keneally and I have been exploring. I find it extraordinary that this is appears to be the first that this has come to the government's attention. Has Home Affairs not been involved in the drafting of the government's response to coronavirus? Seriously, there are people here who will be destitute, who will be unable to self-isolate, because your government completely cut them off the SRSS and basically threw them out on the streets at the mercy of the whims of fate to rely on organisations in the non-government sector and in the charitable sector for their very survival. I urge the government to come to grips with a looming humanitarian and health disaster. I want to be very clear: that is what we are facing here, and I urge Minister Ruston, Minister Cormann and Minister Dutton—if he is at work or whoever is doing his job at the moment—to come to grips with this issue.

While we are on visas I also want to bring to the government's attention the fact that we at any time in Australia have a significant number of temporary visa holders, some of whom are in the categories that Senator Keneally and I have been raising in the debate in the last half an hour, whose visas will soon expire. There needs to be a mechanism that provides for the extension of the expiry dates of temporary protection visas that would expire during the period of the coronavirus crisis. This is not rocket science; this is actually government 101. I'm appalled and disappointed that these matters have not been addressed by government and apparently are yet to even be considered by government.

There are the two issues. One is income support for people who are on temporary protection visas. Two is that a number of people whose temporary protection visas will expire during the coronavirus crisis and who, through no fault of their own, won't able to leave the country, need to have their visas extended, otherwise you know what is going to happen? You're going to chuck them all into immigration detention, which you so much love for people who have overstayed visas in this country. By the way, while you are at it, you can free low-risk people who have spent more than one week in immigration detention, because, if the coronavirus gets into immigration detention centres—and already at least one guard of an onshore immigration detention facility in Australia has tested positive to COVID-19—it will spread like wildfire, people will die and their blood will be on your hands.

My colleagues and I have spoken in our second reading—I'm sorry, Chair, if I could just ask for guidance: did you wish to go to Senator Cormann's amendment now?