Janet Rice (Victoria, Australian Greens) Share this | Hansard source

I want to start this speech by acknowledging all those who have had the most horrific last 18 months. There are people who have lost loved ones, who have long-term illnesses, who are supporting families and friends with long-term illnesses. There are people who have lost employment, who have lost their homes, who can't afford to pay the rent. There are people who have juggled working from home with home schooling, who have suffered anxiety and depression from social isolation and people who have been locked down for weeks, and my heart goes out to everybody in greater Sydney at the moment and those locked down in Brisbane. I know as a Melbournian what you were going through. There are people who are separated from families, who haven't seen loved ones for over two years, who have missed saying goodbye to parents, who have missed funerals. There are people struggling with mental illness, for whom the anxiety and the depression and the stressors of just keeping your head above water have been overwhelming. And there are elderly people and people with disabilities who have had their world shrink around them, who have felt locked down in their homes for most of the last year and a half, who have had friends no longer able to visit. My mother, who lives at home by herself at the age of 89, says she and her friends just feel as if the world is telling them not to go out. Then we've got young people who are missing out on the rituals of coming of age, missing out on blossoming relationships, missing out on being on campus at uni, missing out on travelling to the big smoke, of leaving home and doing that big overseas trip on their own or with friends. And then there are the people who have had to go out to work during this pandemic despite the risks—the health professionals, the logistics workers, the childcare workers, the school teachers and the Uber drivers bringing the rest of us our home deliveries. And then there are the people who have been told that they should be in isolation, but they have taken the risk to go out and earn some money because there has been nothing else for them to do as otherwise there would be no food on the table, no money to pay the rent. We can admonish them and say, 'You're breaking the law. It's no good for the health of our community and it's helping the pandemic to take off.' But what would you do if it were a choice between going out and earning a quid and being homeless and on the streets with your family?

Of course the Greens are supporting this bill that is before us this evening. It will provide support for many of these people, but it's not enough. This bill will still leave people living in poverty, still struggling on JobSeeker payments of $43 a day. It will leave people with skyrocketing rents and no mortgage freezes. Rather than the minimum handouts that the government feels it can get away with, we should see JobSeeker again doubled to a liveable income of at least $80 a day, as it was last year. We should see JobKeeper reintroduced. Instead—and this is a choice—we have got the government giving minimum support at the same time it is giving tax cuts, billions and billions of dollars in tax cuts, to its rich mates. This is a choice, and this government is choosing to spend money to support its rich mates, rather than giving the rest of the community the support it needs to get through this pandemic.

We need to see the federal government pull its finger out, fix the botched vaccination rollout and invest in federally run fit-for-purpose quarantine facilities so that Australians can come home and be reunited with their families. There are still tens of thousands of Australians who are stranded overseas. They have been let down by Prime Minister Morrison. They are facing incredibly challenging situations around the world and they can't come home. Some are running short of money and have no support networks. All they want to do is to come home to Australia, but they can't. Some are facing acute health crises and incredible mental health strains. Some of them just want to see loved ones: dying parents, new family members, people they want to care for and support here in Australia. But they can't. And why? Because Prime Minister Morrison has let them down. They can't even return to their own country. It's important that we note that it is a basic human right to return to your own country. Amnesty International summarises this right:

The Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights say that everyone has the right to return home to their country, and shall never be deprived of the right to enter their own country.

The problem is that the government has introduced a cap on how many people can return to Australia each week. The cap was introduced so that there were enough facilities in Australia for returnees to isolate. The answer is simple: by increasing the capacity to allow people to isolate, you can increase or even remove the cap and get people home.

In February this year Adam Bandt and I wrote to the Prime Minister. We wrote about the devastating stories we have heard and the awful situations that people are facing in countries around the world. As part of that we called upon the Commonwealth to fund and to build more quarantine capacity. Our joint letter said: 'Prime Minister, to address this crisis we need more quarantine places. We welcome the steps taken by state governments to provide more places, but the Commonwealth must do more.' When he wrote back, the Prime Minister's letter said, 'The government is doing everything it can to help Australians who have faced difficulty returning, especially those who are the most vulnerable.' Of course we now know that this was not true. Imagine writing in February 2021 that the government is doing everything it can to help Australians who are stranded overseas. The audacity of telling the Australian public that when, in fact, the Prime Minister has failed comprehensively on the two jobs that would have made a difference. In June this year the Australian government proposed three new quarantine facilities. A year and a half into this pandemic and the Liberal Party finally started work on a plan—not that they finished developing the quarantine facilities, not that they started taking extra people into these facilities; no, they just put out a statement that they had a plan. Like so much of Prime Minister Morrison's government, the spin is loud and blustery, but when it comes to meaningful action it is too little and too late.

My office has heard from Australians around the world who are stranded overseas, and every day my staff members are working to support these people. We've tried as much as we can to elevate their voices so that we can make sure that the most vulnerable are getting the support they need. But it's incredibly hard when there's a quarantine bottleneck because Prime Minister Morrison has refused to act. We have heard from and continue to hear daily from people who are unable to enter Australia, despite being crucial carers for elderly family members in Australia; from people who are in incredibly vulnerable situations with really significant strains on their mental health; from people who planned to return and had wrapped up their jobs, only to have a flight cancellation throw out their plans, leaving them incredibly vulnerable. Why are there so many people who clearly meet the criteria of compassionate and compelling circumstances unable to return to Australia?

Australia owes a basic duty of care to its citizens, and that includes protecting their basic human rights, including the right to return to Australia. More quarantine facilities could have made that happen. But, instead, their return has been stymied by the failure of our Prime Minister on quarantine facilities. So to all those people stranded around the world, desperately trying to return to Australia: we see you, we hear you and we will keep working to make your voices heard in the Australian parliament and get you home as soon as we can. Today, when we are debating this bill for a level of support to help Australians get through this pandemic, we think of those people who are stranded overseas and what is not happening to get them home.

I also want to mention the many people who are not Australian citizens who have also been unable to return to Australia. Many have worked here for years and they have family here. But, because of the callous cruelty that the Liberal Party shows to so many people, they have been left in limbo for months and, in some cases, more than a year. The failure of Prime Minister Morrison's approach to building Commonwealth quarantine facilities shows in relation to the many people who clearly qualify for the priority migration skilled occupation list who have had their applications denied. It also shows in the incredibly harsh conditions that have been placed on people in India, compared to the lesser restrictions placed on people travelling from other countries. We need genuine action from our government to build the quarantine facilities that should have been finished months ago so that those around the world who are so desperate to return to Australia and be reunited with family can do so.

As we talk about the impacts of COVID-19, it's important that Australia actually look beyond our borders and do everything we can for our regional neighbours. Here is another big gap in the government's response to COVID—because other countries around the world are facing much bigger challenges than we are. I particularly want to mention the impact of COVID-19 on young people in the Pacific. I met with some wonderful young folk from Oaktree yesterday, who told me about the complex issues faced by young people in our region. When 50 per cent of the global population is under the age of 30, and nine out of 10 people live in countries classified as developing, the Indo-Pacific is experiencing a 'youth bulge', with 1.7 billion young people under the age of 25. Those young people are facing an increasing set of really complex challenges. Many face unemployment, or they work in insecure or informal employment. And that's before we start talking about the compounding impacts of the pandemic and the climate emergency that we face. We know, of course, that young people, because of that work in insecure employment, can be at greater risk of exposure to COVID-19 in some ways. Beyond that, the lockdowns have impacted their incomes, their ability to access education and their mental health. So many of these young people have had their schooling massively disrupted through the pandemic, and they're having to cope with COVID ripping through their communities, killing thousands of people and infecting millions, with vastly inadequate health facilities and limited access to vaccines.

So we call upon the Australian government. There are steps forward that the Greens are supporting in this bill, but it is not enough. There is so much more that needs to be done. We call on the government to take more meaningful action and, in particular, to support young people across the Indo-Pacific. That should include significantly increasing our aid budget, to much higher levels. That would ensure that we are providing development assistance to countries across the region and providing support to young people who have been impacted by this pandemic. It's not just in their interest; it's also in our interest, as Australia, to support the wellbeing of people across the region, to support these countries in dealing with the pandemic and not to foment unrest in those countries.

So the Australian government should be providing much more support for COVAX, which we've called for repeatedly for months now, to ensure that vaccines are available as widely as possible. It must also take action to advocate for the TRIPS waiver so that vaccines can be produced at lower prices and be more readily available. This bill provides a small level of the help and support needed in Australia, but locally and globally the Australian government can do more, and it must. We are here facing a global pandemic. There are choices to be made, and the choices that need to be made are ones that support the community and say, 'This is where resources are needed.' We should not be talking about more support for the big end of town, for billionaires, with massive tax cuts putting billions more dollars in the pockets of the already extraordinarily well-off. We should not be talking about handing out subsidies to our fossil fuel industries, who do not need them. We should not be having rorts that provide facilities that aren't required in decisions that are being made purely on the basis of politics. What we should have is a government that looks at what the needs of the community are, sees that there is a need there and can take action. This bill is a small start. It's a little bit of what we could be doing. But so much more is needed, and I urge this government to take that action so we can build a healthy, prosperous and sustainable Australia.