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

It is no surprise that no Labor senators stood to speak on the second reading here, because what we are faced with is yet another bill to make life far more difficult and potentially put refugees' lives at risk being jammed through this parliament because of collusion by the LNP and the ALP, who, as always, are in lock step on the shameful way that we treat refugees in this country. The Migration Amendment (Clarifying International Obligations for Removal) Bill 2021 now is going to be ushered through with an exemption from the cut-off order. It will be denied a Senate inquiry, and we are now facing debate being guillotined in 10 short minutes time, thanks to a dirty deal between the ALP and the LNP, who like nothing more than colluding with each other to destroy the lives of people who come to this country seeking our help and protection from persecution.

This bill comes about because the government introduced section 197C of the Migration Act in 2014, when the now Prime Minister was Minister for Immigration and Border Protection. I put on the record that that provision, section 197C, was supported not only by the LNP but by the ALP and was of course not supported by the Australian Greens. That section requires the government to disregard its nonrefoulement obligations when deporting people from Australia under section 198 of the Migration Act. The introduction of that provision, 197C, therefore created a tension between the government's stated policy of compliance with nonrefoulement obligations and its now self-imposed obligation to remove people from Australia irrespective of nonrefoulement obligations.

That section, 197C, was challenged in the Commonwealth of Australia v AJL20, which was a landmark case based on a habeas corpus argument. AJL20, the person that was the subject of that case, languished in indefinite immigration detention because he couldn't be returned to war-torn Syria when it wasn't safe to do so, and yet the government refused to grant him a protection visa. That person languished in indefinite immigration detention, like so many others. Let's be clear about this: Australia's record on immigration detention is the shame of the world. There are no countries similar to Australia that have average lengths of immigration detention anywhere near what Australia has. It is not unheard of for people to spend more than a decade in immigration detention in this country, and the average time that people spend in immigration detention in Australia is significantly longer than in any similar country in the world; for example, the United Kingdom or Canada. Last year Justice Bromberg ruled that AJL20's detention had been unlawful and ordered the government to release him from immigration detention immediately. He further ruled that the government cannot hold people indefinitely in detention for no reason. They must be actively pursuing an outcome for the detainees they keep locked up, whether that be deportation or release into the community or a third country. This was a landmark precedent, and now the government is coming in, with the cooperation of the Labor Party, and trying to subvert Justice Bromberg's decision, or the effect of Justice Bromberg's decision.

This legislation will have serious impacts on the visa cancellation process, particularly for refugees who may face cancellation for minor incidents, because under these powers the decision-maker would no longer be able to consider the risk of indefinite detention or harm from refoulement while making the decision to cancel their visa. Instead, these considerations could only be dealt with through a separate, later protection visa application made while the person is in detention. Not only are the government and the Labor Party colluding to try to achieve those outcomes; the government has also inserted into this bill the inclusion of a new power to reconsider a person's refugee status, so that even if someone has previously been found to be a refugee by the Australian government—that is, it is found that we owe them protection—the department or minister could reopen that decision at any time under proposed section 197D(2) of the government's amendment on sheet RV151.

This is a complicated, highly complex amendment to a complicated, highly complex section of the Migration Act. What chance has this parliament had to scrutinise it? Absolutely none: rammed through the House this week, jammed through the Senate as we speak, under an exemption from the cut-off order. There has been no Senate inquiry whatsoever, so we've not been able to hear from stakeholders on this issue. This is a disgrace. This bill could result in people dying. Those who vote for this bill will have blood on their hands. But do you know what? They'll be comfortable with that because they've already got blood on their hands; for example, Reza Berati's blood and the blood of the other at least 13 people who died in our horrendous, racist offshore detention regime. Now these major parties want to put more blood, potentially, on their hands by ramming through a bill that would allow for someone's refugee status to be overturned and for them either to languish in indefinite detention as a result or to end up being sent back to danger and persecution.

We would have liked to interrogate this bill in the committee stage. We have some questions about whether or not the government has actually been refouling people under the 197C provisions. There are only two possible scenarios here. One is the government has been returning people back to face danger, which would be an extreme international embarrassment and contrary to our international obligations, or it's been in breach of its own stupid law, and we would like to know which it is. We're not going to get a chance to ask those questions today because the government, along with the Labor Party, is guillotining this bill through, and in five minutes time there'll be no further opportunity for debate, no further opportunity for questions in this place, and the remaining questions on this legislation will be put without debate. This is what the Labor Party has allowed the government to get away with in this place.

This bill will lead to more refugees languishing in indefinite immigration detention in Australia without a habeas corpus claim. What is this country coming to! You've got to be careful how you allow governments to treat refugees, because, if you let them get away with treating refugees like they are subhuman, which is what the Liberal-National coalition and the ALP do, sooner or later they'll be coming for the rest of us. If you want any evidence on that have a look right now at what we've dealt with over the last two weeks for Australian citizens stranded in India. We let the coalition and the ALP, despite the best efforts of the Australian Greens, get away with deliberately harming people by detaining them indefinitely in offshore detention. Now, because the government's become emboldened and wants to have an election based in part at least on border control along with, of course, the beating drums of war that are so beloved by the coalition, we have a situation where the government is threatening to put Australian citizens attempting to come home from India, which has been ravaged by coronavirus, in jail if they try. That is what happens when you allow governments to get away with treating people as subhuman: sooner or later you get scope creep, you get bracket creep, and other people are treated in that same way. That is the situation facing Australian citizens who wish to come back to this country from India.

I also wanted to ask questions about the dirty deal that Labor did. These two pieces of legislation that are being debated together, despite the Greens' attempts to separate them, appear to be collectively the result of a deal between the coalition and the ALP. The Labor Party selling their soul so cheaply for a minor increase in transparency with regard to introducing a requirement to table notice of certain character decisions that are made under section 501 of the Migration Act just goes to show how little the modern Labor Party in Australia value human rights and how cheaply they are prepared to sell themselves to this government: very, very cheap. You couldn't even get a decent deal out of the government for your complicity in riding roughshod over human rights, riding roughshod over Australia's international obligations. And those are not just contained in the refugee convention and the protocol to that convention, I might add; there are numerous other international statutes and agreements that Australia has signed up to that this legislation flies in the face of.

For Labor, the price of selling their soul yet again will not only sit very heavily on all those who support them as the progressive party; it will sit particularly heavily on all those who will be affected by this brutal and callous piece of legislation. Defending human rights should be core business for all of us in this place, and yet time after time it is only the Australian Greens who stand up for human rights, who stand up for the rule of law in this place and who stand up for fairness and justice in this country. So we would have liked to have moved an amendment to this bill. I understand I'll have to try and do that by leave now. I want to say to colleagues: just when you think this parliament could not sink any lower in the way that it treats refugees and people whose only crime was to reach out a hand to our country and seek our assistance and protection, the bottom comes out of the debate and down the elevator we go. This is yet another chapter in a dark and bloody story.