Christine Milne (Tasmania, Australian Greens) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Before I begin to the discuss the legacy of the Magna Carta I would like to join and congratulate Senator McEwen on her remarks in relation to Joan Kirner. I endorse them, absolutely. Tonight we are all very well aware that it is 15 June and we are celebrating the 800th anniversary of the Magna Carta.

I find it extraordinary that it is the conservatives—who say they stand for law and order—who are now out celebrating the Magna Carta, standing here tonight, talking about the Magna Carta, and yet in Australia we are in a really serious situation, where we have a government abandoning the rule of law. We have an amazing situation where the Magna Carta said, very clearly: 'No free man shall be taken or imprisoned, or stripped of his rights or possessions, or exiled or deprived of his standing, in any way, except by the lawful judgement of his equals or by the law of the land. To no one will we sell, to no one deny or delay right or justice.'

Gillian Triggs, the human-rights commissioner, made these references in a recent speech. She pointed out:

It is the symbolic power of Magna Carta that informs my concern that supremacy of the law over the sovereign (or in today’s parlance, executive government), is under threat in Australia’s contemporary democracy.

She is absolutely right. The rule of law should apply to everyone, equally. No government should be above the law. Yet what we have seen, for many years now—and increasingly so under this government—is government pretending it can be above the law. Today we discovered that it was from an Australian customs or Navy ship that somebody paid cash to people smugglers—bribed people smugglers—to return people to Indonesia.

It is, as many of the lawyers who have looked at this have said, a breach of section 73 of the Commonwealth Criminal Code Act, which prohibits people smuggling and could result in a term of 10 years jail. And yet we have heard Mr Ruddock, a member of parliament, saying the government would be saving money if it did pay-off people smugglers as opposed to having to look after people if they arrived here as asylum seekers. Paying off people smugglers amounts to bribery. The Indonesian Vice President, Jusuf Kallour, made that point today, and he is right. We have another Liberal MP, Andrew Laming, saying that even if the government were paying off criminal gangs it would not be of interest to his electorate.

How far have we descended in Australia? I go back to David Hicks. At the time, the Australian government abandoned the rule of law, made an assumption immediately that he was guilty and abandoned an Australian citizen to a foreign power that used torture to extract information and allowed hearsay evidence in trials. The Australian government did that. We have since had numerous examples of what I describe as a descent into chaos and brutality, as Australia's successive governments have abandoned the rule of law and have made laws which clearly infringe on our democratic freedoms, as Gillian tricks has said, 'of speech, association and movement, the right to a fair trial and the prohibition on arbitrary detention'. What have we come to in this country when the parliaments, successively, under Liberal and Labor governments, where the Liberal, Labor and National parties have gotten together and have actually passed laws that prohibit the absolute fundamentals of freedom of speech, association, movement and the right to a fair trial, and in relation to the prohibition on arbitrary detention?

When Reza Berati was killed, I thought that would be a line in the sand. But it was not. Nobody has been held to account for his murder. We have a four-year-old child being sent into indefinite detention, children being abused, sexual harassment and abuse of children, and yet this is deemed acceptable in Australia today. Well, it is not. It is an infringement of human rights. It is an infringement of the rule of law. Australia has gone rogue in terms of international law. It is only a matter of time before this goes to the International Criminal Court or to the International Court of Justice, in The Hague. It is only a matter of time, because you must uphold the rule of law. At some point, Australia must be brought into line. You cannot have a situation where a Prime Minister refuses to uphold the fundamental principle that everybody should be equal under the law. Who authorised money to be paid to people smugglers? Who authorised that—which minister, which Prime Minister? Or did cabinet? We have a law that says you cannot pay people smugglers, and the Australian government has authorised the payment. That is a fundamental breach of the law.

I really think in Australia today we need to consider this because everybody should be subject to the law. Independent judges should be arbiters of the law, and governments must be accountable for their actions. If we abandon the concept that everyone should be equal under the law and that parliaments should be making laws based on human rights principles and fundamental elements of justice, then we are descending into chaos, inhumanity and barbarity. That is where this country is going when it comes to the treatment of asylum seekers. At some point it has to stop. We get this absolute chant that this is somehow saving lives. All it is doing is pushing people back up the chain even further—and we have seen all the deaths of the Rohingyas, in particular, in recent times. We are pushing people further back. The reality of this century is there will be mass displacement of people as a result of war, conflict, global warming, extreme weather events and displacement of people. These things are already happening.

I just want to put a real challenge to the people of Australia. If you stand by and allow governments to behave as if they are above the law, then you are completely denying a fundamental principle on which our democracy is based. If you stand by and allow governments to abandon the law, do you think that when the time comes for you to face justice you will actually get justice? You will have nowhere to go, as we have learnt in other instances in the 20th century. Everyone must be equal under the law. This Prime Minister is not above the law when it comes to the criminal code and paying the traffickers in human misery.