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

I indicate the Australian Greens will be supporting Senator David Pocock's amendment. The Australian Greens have a very similar amendment on the books to the one Senator David Pocock has just moved. I note that during the Senate inquiry by the Legal and Constitutional Affairs Legislation Committee, the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees recommended:

… statutory safeguards be introduced in the Bill to expressly exclude the application of the ballot to visas that respond to Australia's international refugee and human rights obligations to those seeking protection. This would include refugee and humanitarian visas and especially where the right to family unity exists.

That is one of the reasons why the Greens recommended, in our minority report to the Senate inquiry, that the bill be amended to explicitly prohibit the use of powers provided in the bill for any visa subclasses within Australia's refugee and humanitarian program.

I hope this amendment passes through the Senate today because it is critical that the ballot process not be used in regard to refugee and humanitarian visas. There are well-established processes that the Australian government engages in to determine priority for filling our quotas under the refugee and humanitarian visa program, and those processes, although not always perfect, have endured and provide at least a modicum of fairness in prioritising those who have the highest need. A ballot system, of course, would be completely inappropriate for humanitarian and refugee visas.

I acknowledge the points made by Senator Wong in her contribution earlier today when she spoke about the fact that many of our Pacific island neighbours and friends support a ballot system for this particular visa class—just to be clear, not for refugee and humanitarian visas but for Pacific engagement visas. We obviously, having supported this legislation, accept the proposition that a ballot should be used in regard to this specific class. I want to be very clear though: the government will have to bring in disallowable regulations in order to be able to use the ballot process for any particular visa class, and the Australian Greens absolutely reserve the right to examine that on a case-by-case basis and to vote to disallow any of those instruments if we determine that it would not be in the public interest or in the best interests of people engaging with our visa process for those regulations to be created. So I want to place very clearly on the record that we reserve our right in regard to all such instruments.

I also want to say that one thing about the ballot process is that it removes either the reality or the perception that somehow patronage or status can be used in order to leverage visa outcomes. A ballot is a ballot, and hopefully—I have no reason to doubt it—the ballot will be run fairly. What that does is make sure that, no matter what your status in society is, no matter how much money you have, no matter who you know and no matter what your connections or your patronage lines are, it will be a fair process for all, and the Australian Greens absolutely believe in fairness of process.

The last thing I want to say in this contribution is this. Minister Wong has made a lot of comments today and publicly about Australia's engagement with Pacific nations and with our Pacific family, and fair enough too. I understand why she's said those things as foreign minister, and it is true that our engagement with the Pacific region is now conducted in a more mature and engaging way than it was under the previous government. I have no doubt about that, and I thank and congratulate Minister Wong and everyone who is involved in that engagement. But there is an elephant in the room with regard to our engagement with Pacific nations, and that is this government's addiction to coal and gas and its absolute refusal to stand up to its corporate donors and stop approving new coal and gas projects.

Our Pacific neighbours are desperate for the Australian government to stop approving new coal and gas projects. They have said so publicly time after time. They have begged this government to stop approving new coal and gas mines, and the reason they are begging, imploring and asking time after time after time for this government to stop approving new coal and gas mines is that their countries are literally disappearing under the surface of the ocean thanks to sea level rise driven by climate change caused to a very large degree by burning fossil fuels, including coal and gas. Yet this government, entirely predictably, is refusing to heed the requests of our Pacific island friends and is instead doing the behest of the big coal and gas corporations in this country. What a surprise! It's because the big coal and gas corporations in this country are massive political donors to the Australian Labor Party.

The big coal and gas companies in this country are repositories for tired, old Labor senators and members of the other place and their senior staffers. They roll out of this building into cushy jobs on the boards and into senior executive positions of coal, oil and gas companies—big fossil fuel companies—and the PR companies that advise them. There are a litany of former Labor and, for that matter, Liberal senators and MPs who are now comfortably entrenched and making massive profits out of being involved with fossil fuels. The patronage here and the revolving door out of this parliament into corporate boardrooms are obscene, corrupt and need to end.

The people paying for it are the Australians who lose their lives in bushfires. The people paying for it are the Australians who lose their lives in floods. The people paying for it are our Pacific island neighbours, who this government calls friends. They are watching their countries disappear underwater. It's a disgrace and it is massive hypocrisy. It's obvious to anyone who wants to see it the prioritisation of the interests of fossil fuel companies over the interests of people that this government calls our friends and neighbours in the Pacific.

I say to Senator Wong, Senator Watt, the rest of this government and everyone in the opposition—and they are not without culpability here too, because big fossil fuel companies have their hooks into the opposition just as deeply as they have in the Labor government—until you stop approving new coal and gas mines, you should stop pretending our Pacific island neighbours are actually our friends, because you're not treating them as true friends would treat them. You are treating them with contempt. You are treating them with arrogance. You are dismissive of their extremely valid, real-life concerns about losing their homes—the places their ancestors grew up in, were born in, lived in and died in. They are watching those homes disappear and you are turning a blind eye and a deaf ear to their pleas for help. You have to be better than this and you must be better than this. Until you're better than this, stop pretending that you really care for their futures.