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

I move:

That the Senate take note of the answer given by the Minister representing the Minister for Immigration, Citizenship and Multicultural Affairs (Senator Watt) to a question without notice I asked today relating to immigration detention.

Indefinite immigration detention is grossly inhumane. It is massively harmful. It is profoundly damaging to mental and physical wellbeing. It constitutes cruel and unusual punishment. It is a form of torture. It has been a hallmark of Australia's immigration detention regime both here in Australia and offshore on places like Nauru and Manus Island for many, many decades. It has been one of the darkest and bloodiest chapters in our country's story. It was made a hallmark of our immigration system by the founding father of mandatory immigration detention in this country, former prime minister Paul Keating. Make no mistake—this is a design feature, and has been for decades, of our immigration detention regime. It hasn't been a bug in the system; it has been a deliberately designed bipartisan policy of cruelty. It has been enthusiastically embraced by the Labor and Liberal parties, the political duopoly in this country, for many decades. That's why I rise today, and I know I'm joined by the millions of Australians who do not support punishing innocent people, buoyed by the High Court decision yesterday, which reaffirms the principle that people should not be detained indefinitely in Australia's immigration detention regime. This decision has torn down a brutal policy edifice constructed and maintained by the major parties in this country over decades, a policy edifice that stands in stark contradiction to the values of our country.

In recent years, Australia has been a massive international outlier. We have been detaining people, on average, for over 700 days. There are people in our immigration detention system—they are still there, shamefully, today, post the High Court decision, I might add—who have been there for over a decade. What did we get from the minister today in response to the High Court decision? Not, 'We acknowledge the decision, and we will move urgently to comply with it.' We got a litany of excuses from Labor, including a refusal to rule out attempting to legislate its way around the High Court decision. The High Court stood up yesterday for humanity, for human rights, for common decency and for the principle that innocent people should not be arbitrarily punished by politicians. But the Labor Party today, the architects of mandatory immigration detention in this country all those decades ago, are scheming right now to work their way around the High Court decision. Well, I've got some advice for the Australian Labor Party: get with the program. The High Court decision was abundantly clear, and you have a responsibility to release not only the person who took that challenge to the High Court but everyone else currently detained in immigration detention who falls within the scope of that High Court ruling. Get to it, and release them urgently, because every day that goes past where you don't release those people is a day that you are illegally and unlawfully detaining those people. You need to move urgently. You need to respect the decision of the highest court in this land, based on the most important document in our current legal system, which is the Constitution of the country.

Colleagues, when we allow politicians to arbitrarily punish people and imprison them in a punitive way, we are on the pathway to tyranny. That is a dark path that we should not set foot on. Labor has to ensure that the High Court decision is respected and urgently release people from immigration detention in the scope of that decision.

Question agreed to.