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

I move:

That the Senate take note of the document.

This is the latest of the reports by the Commonwealth Ombudsman, who is now also the Immigration Ombudsman for people in long-term detention in Australia. It covers another 23 cases. I really think it is important for people to continue to inform themselves, both the general community and members of parliament, of the details of what we have inflicted on people.

In five minutes I obviously cannot go through all of the cases, but some of them are very difficult migration related cases where it has been difficult and has taken a long period of time to determine identity and status. I continue to repeat my concern that, unless there are extremely good reasons, people should not be locked up for prolonged periods simply because they present migration or removal difficulties.

The other point that needs to be made with all of these cases is that, whilst there have been changes made to the Migration Act in the last year or so—changes that included this reporting process that I am now commenting on—people should not kid themselves that these sorts of things cannot happen again. Yes, we have a few more safeguards in place to set off some alarm bells about the potential of it happening, but, as some of these cases show—and as some of the previous cases that I have spoken on that have been tabled in the Senate show—the power still exists under the Migration Act for people to be detained indefinitely and basically on the decision of the federal immigration minister. I think that is completely unacceptable.

The other issue that comes into question is the fact that, in some of the cases identified here, we are dealing with people who were lawfully in Australia on long-term or permanent visas. There was also a person who was married to an Australian citizen when they were picked up and another person who was an Australian citizen—people with mental health problems. I guess there are some parallels there with the Cornelia Rau incident, which sparked a lot of these reforms. But the Ombudsman’s report and the previous document—the minister’s response—note some of the changes and improvements that have been made regarding mental health care. It needs to be taken as a stark reminder that the Cornelia Rau incident and the Vivien Alvarez incident were not one-offs; there are now over 100 people in long-term detention. In my view, for very few of them was it justified to be in long-term detention; for a significant proportion of them, it was clearly a mistake for them to be in detention, certainly for any prolonged period.

I also note that some of these reports, as with some of the previous ones, do not just go to the problem of why people ended up being in detention for years—even though, as I remind the Senate, none of them were charged or even accused of any crime—but also into the harm that was done to many of them whilst in detention. If they did not have a mental health problem that might have led to them being there, as occurred in some cases, a lot of them certainly developed mental illness once they were in the detention environment.

The harm done by that was compounded in some cases by the decision of the minister to award people only temporary protection visas. Whilst any visa and getting out of detention should be welcomed, the temporary nature of temporary protection visas means that the uncertainty—the doubt about what might happen, the fact that the minister still has that total power over people, the fear they could be sent back, the fear that they could be put back into detention—continues. And all of that prevents recovery, whether in terms of health or rebuilding their life. So many of these reports reinforce why it is so important to scrap the temporary protection visa. That is something that certainly the Democrats will continue to push for as much as possible in the lead-up to the next election. I seek leave to continue my remarks.

Leave granted; debate adjourned.