Andrew Bartlett (Queensland, Australian Democrats) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I would like to speak briefly to document No. 1, which deals with the inquiry into the Vivian Alvarez matter, the report by Mr Comrie and reports to the Minister for Immigration and Multicultural and Indigenous Affairs from the secretary of the department on the implementation of the recommendations of the Palmer report. There is a whole range of documents further down the list dealing with the Commonwealth Ombudsman’s reports into individual cases, and I might speak on a few of those later, but I think the opportunity needs to be grasped whenever possible to highlight just how appalling this case was.

I note the comments made by the Ombudsman to the Senate Legal and Constitutional Committee in its hearings examining this case. He said this was one of the more damning reports that the Ombudsman has produced about a Commonwealth department. He said it is about the most damning report that has been prepared. Some of the reports that he has produced about other individual cases are certainly not as comprehensive—they are only a few pages long—but they also provide some very horrifying stories. It is worth emphasising that sometimes there were suggestions in statements made by members of the government that the Cornelia Rau and Vivian Alvarez cases were oddities, rarities and exceptions that prove the rule. There are continual references to the huge number of visa decisions the department has to make each year and that, obviously, you will get a few of those wrong.

That is all true, but there is a difference between getting a decision wrong, inflicting monumental injustice on people, and having no regard for the suffering that that has caused. That is probably the worst aspect of this report. Beyond the incompetence, beyond the flawed interpretation of the act, the worst aspect was the total disregard for this person’s wellbeing and the appalling actions of a few departmental officials who, when they found out what had happened—that this woman, an extremely ill Australian citizen, had been wrongfully deported from Australia and left on her own—ignored it and looked the other way. An extra two years of suffering occurred that would not otherwise have occurred.

That has to be emphasised as often as possible, because that is the absolute nadir of the culture of the immigration department at that time. I am ashamed to say that at least a couple of those people were from the DIMIA office in my home town of Brisbane. We have to ensure that such an attitude is completely and utterly eradicated. My concern, as I have said a number of times, is that until we change the act and some of the underpinnings of the government’s policy we will not be able to change that culture and completely eradicate mind-sets like that.

I also emphasise another comment the Ombudsman made at that time when he said:

Nearly all of the problems of administration that are highlighted in the Alvarez ... [report] have been raised in the past. The Ombudsman’s office, prior to my time, did an own-motion investigation, for example, on the conditions in detention centres. The human rights commission did a report a year or so ago on children in detention.

As our annual report indicates every year, there are problem areas such as record keeping; lack of clarity in memoranda of understanding ... issues about the adequacy of medical and health diagnoses in detention centres ... the regularity of visits by mental health professionals ...

He went on to say that there were problems with compliance and missing notebooks, problems with people not being fully cognisant of the legislation and privacy being used as an inappropriate obstacle to the circulation of information. They are all quotes from the Ombudsman about issues that have been raised, as he said, in their annual reports every year, and many other reports as well, including Senate committee reports. The real problem is not that the government did not know what was happening; the real problem is that, like those public servants, they were told what was happening but they ignored it. These sorts of injustices are the consequence.

Question agreed to.