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

As I was saying, we've all seen this story time after time. There is a dark thread that runs through the politics of both major parties in this country, and that dark thread has resulted in death and in refugees and people seeking asylum being brutalised and demonised in immigration detention, both on Manus Island and Nauru and here onshore in Australia. We know this story because we have seen it time after time and seen the rampant politicisation of the issue by the party that now sits in opposition. In Australia, the News Corp media is coming in behind that party, magnifying their fake, confected emergencies with regard to refugees and people seeking asylum and magnifying the demonisation of refugees and people seeking asylum. Then the Labor Party is rolling over and capitulating to the Liberals and to the Murdoch media.

That is exactly what has happened over the past few weeks with regard to the government's response to the recent High Court decision that effectively ruled that indefinite immigration detention is unlawful in Australia, and that is what we are seeing played out here today. I've got some advice for the government: stop letting Mr Dutton, the Leader of the Opposition, write your policy on refugees, people seeking asylum and immigration detention, because we all know the dark path that that will lead this country down. It's about time that we collectively stood up for human rights, for proper process, for the rule of law and for the separation of powers in this country. It's about time that we legislated like grown-ups in this place, where we carefully consider our response to things like High Court decisions, not legislate in a shoddy, xenophobic, panicked way because the Labor Party is too weak and cowardly to stand up to Mr Dutton's agenda.

That is what is going on at the moment. That is what is going on in this debate. I predict that that's what's going to go on over the next 48 hours in this place. If there is one thing we know about Mr Dutton, it's that he has built a career on demonising refugees and people seeking asylum and he's not going to stop now. My last piece of advice to the Labor Party is this: when you appease someone like Mr Dutton, they will simply take everything you give them, take another giant step over to the Right and go again. That's what's going to happen, and it needs to stop.