Steph Hodgins-May (Victoria, Australian Greens) Share this | Hansard source

Thank you to my colleague and Australian Greens spokesperson for immigration Senator Shoebridge for your work on the Migration Amendment Bill and on this inquiry. Let's call out this legislation for what it is. It is punitive, unnecessarily cruel and a threat to multiculturalism in Australia. In the final hours of parliament in 2024, when we could have been working together to act on gambling reform, to pass nature laws or fix the housing crisis, Labor teamed up with Peter Dutton to push through draconian and cruel legislation designed purely to punish refugees, legislation that allows other countries to take up to 80,000 people currently in our community without any safeguards.

Under this law, refugees who went to offshore detention but who are now in Australia can be sent literally anywhere in the world without regard for their safety, without any guarantees they won't be deported back to the very countries from where they fled persecution. These people are lawfully here contributing to our community, paying taxes and doing their best to take care of their families during a cost-of-living crisis. They are our neighbours, they are our work colleagues and they are our friends. Now they fear for their lives and loved ones, not knowing when they will be ripped from their community. But this vile legislation is only one part of the brutal antimigrant and refugee package Prime Minister Albanese teamed up with Peter Dutton to pass last year.

Four years ago, the coalition government put forth a proposal to ban phones from people in migration centres. Four years ago, the public and Greens protested and advocated against this decision. And four years ago, Labor joined our cause. Labor recognised at that time this legislation was inhumane and unnecessarily cruel. They knew there was no cause for denying fundamental rights of communication to people trapped in the hell of mandatory detention, for people who came to Australia looking for safety. They recognised that this bill went against their values and their principles. Now, four years later, in government, Labor turned the exact same revolting proposal into law, stripping refugees and people seeking asylum in mandatory detention of their right to communicate, of their ability to contact their loved ones, to see their children's faces, connect with their home countries or to connect with their lawyers. Dutton and Albanese's anti refugee unholy trinity was completed with a final bill that included—