David Shoebridge (NSW, Australian Greens) Share this | Hansard source

It is remarkable but not unprecedented to see how closely Labor and the coalition align on this point and to hear both parties speak about 7,000 people—children, mums, dads, aunts and uncles—and never reference them as people but see them only as a political plaything that they have between them.

I want to thank Senator Pocock for his contribution, for talking about these 7,000 people as though they actually matter and talking about the teenagers who are right now going into their HSC year wondering if politics will ever give them a pathway to go to uni in the only home they've every know. I think we should reflect upon the difference in politics of talking about people as though they're people, as opposed to the way the coalition and Labor are doing it here, talking about them as political problems or political pawns or inconveniences to the case management of an administrative tribunal.

We heard the coalition come up and say they weren't going to provide a just pathway for these 7,000 people—the mums, the dads, the kids, the brothers and the sisters—because it's administratively inconvenient to them. That's the nature of their politics, and I understand that's the nature of their politics, but it's politics the Greens fundamentally reject.

The government stood up and said, 'Well, these people have already had a merits review,' and therefore they're not going to open the door to a review of the fast-track process. I remind the government that we abolished the fast-track process, and we supported the government's bill to abolish it because the government acknowledged, as did every informed observer, that it was an unmeritorious review. It was, as many have said, neither fair nor fast; it was grossly unfair.

To remind the chamber, the IAA fast-track process did not even pretend to observe minimum procedural fairness standards. Nobody had the right to a hearing. Almost 100 per cent of the claims were decided on the papers, because they didn't want to hear from the people who brought the claims. People were only allowed to provide a five-page written submission. They had no legal support, legal advice or support from the government in any case, and they often had only three weeks to provide their submission about their entire life. They were almost always prohibited from providing fresh information and were stuck with whatever the department had decided should be before the IAA. That's not a merit based process. Then the government said, 'Oh, by the way, there was a judicial review.' We know that that's not a merits review. We know that that never went to the substance of the matter.

Again, I urge the Labor Party—I think it's a lost cause with the coalition—to think about the core principles that are meant to underpin their movement, to think about what their members would want, even if it's politically inconvenient to them in the moment, and to think about these 7,000 people as people.