Lee Rhiannon (NSW, Australian Greens) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The people of occupied Jammu and Kashmir are facing a humanitarian crisis that requires urgent international attention. The people who live in this region have a right to live in peace, with their fundamental human rights to self-determination recognised and honoured. Kashmir has been subjected to centuries of foreign rule. Today, Jammu and Kashmir are occupied and divided between India, Pakistan and China. This situation is a product of British colonialism. Britain partitioned the subcontinent. Nation states were created by drawing arbitrary lines on maps at the close of the Second World War.

Whilst many of us might associate Kashmir with pleasant holidays, the reality for locals is very grim. Kilometres of barbed wire run across the landscape. There is mounting evidence that war crimes and crimes against humanity are being committed in this region. These crimes should be investigated and steps should be taken to end the human rights abuses. Tragically, the violence in this region is escalating. There are worrying reports of blockades limiting supplies of essential commodities to the people of this region. This is from the website of Amnesty International:

Human rights defenders, journalists and protesters continued to face arbitrary arrests and detentions. Over 3,200 people were being held in January under administrative detention on executive orders without charge or trial. Authorities also continued to use 'anti-terror' laws such as the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act and other state-specific laws which do not meet international human rights standards.

Amnesty International has also released a report called Denied: failures in accountability for human rights violations by security force personnel in Jammu and Kashmir. This report documents the difficulties involved in resolving human rights violations. The report notes, at section 7, the Armed Forces (Jammu and Kashmir) Special Powers Act grants virtual immunity to members of the security forces from prosecution for alleged human rights violations.

So much of the violence in occupied Jammu and Kashmir violates the Geneva Convention of 1949 and the follow-up additional protocols of 1977. The distinction between civilian and non-civilian targets is not recognised. Indiscriminate attacks are not prohibited and state forces violate international guidelines. A Human Rights Watch report has identified mass graves of thousands of Kashmiris, possibly as high as 8,000. The Human Rights Commission inquiry confirmed there are thousands of bullet-ridden bodies buried in unmarked graves in Jammu and Kashmir. I understand the majority are young men.

Amnesty International recently called on the authorities in Kashmir to investigate alleged mass rapes of over 30 women in North Kashmir, in 1991, in the villages of Kunan and Poshpora. The women raped were aged between 13 and 70. Human Rights Watch has reported that between 50 and 100 women were raped by Indian Army forces on the night of 23 February 1991. At the time, Kashmir police stated that the case was untraceable and stopped the investigation in October 1991.

In 2011 India's human rights commission requested that Kashmir authorities launch a fresh investigation. In June 2013 Kashmir's Judicial Magistrate Court ordered the reinvestigation of the case. In August this year Amnesty International India temporarily closed its offices in India. The decision was taken shortly after Amnesty had hosted a function on recent events in Kashmir. There were concerns for the safety of Amnesty staff. Since July, Srinagar, the capital city of Kashmir, has had its mobile phone networks shut down, many newspaper offices have been raided and papers have been seized.

Tragically, civilians are often the target of attacks. In August, staff at a hospital in Srinagar covered their eyes with patches as an act of solidarity with the children and adults hit with pellets. The doctors and nurses are treating the civilians who are bearing the brunt of the war crimes. 'See our blindness' was one of the slogans on the doctors' placards. The action garnered international attention.

Australia has a strong connection with Kashmir. Successive governments have been engaged in finding a solution to the dispute that has been causing so much hardship since 1948, when the former coloniser of this land, Britain, withdrew from the region. In 1950 an Australian officer, Major General Robert Nimmo, was appointed Chief Military Observer. Australia held this position until 1966. In 1951 Australia sent eight military observers to UNMOGIP, the United Nations Military Observer Group in India and Pakistan. These Australian observers served in Kashmir until 1985. By that time, 150 Australians had served under UNMOGIP. I understand the Australian government withdrew, as they thought the dispute had been resolved.

Also in 1950, the United Nations Security Council appointed Sir Owen Dixon, the sixth Chief Justice of Australia, as the UN representative to organise a plebiscite in Jammu and Kashmir, but the plebiscite was never held. This is not a reflection on Sir Owen Dixon. It was a failure of the international community. Australia should renew its work to ensure that a plebiscite is now held.

I believe Australia has a special responsibility—as a candidate for the United Nations Human Rights Council for 2018-20—to advocate for the protection of human rights of the people of Kashmir and Jammu. The two nations associated with Kashmir and Jammu are Pakistan and India. Both these countries are nuclear powers. If the Turnbull government is responsible, it should be working to de-escalate the current extreme situation. Foreign Minister Julie Bishop should be exploring every avenue to resolve the current tensions and assist to promote peace and justice in this region.

On another matter, yesterday—it might have been today, actually, because we were here into the early hours of the morning—when we were debating the Fair Work (Registered Organisations) Amendment Bill 2014 there were a number of votes, but one of the votes concerned the need to establish a national commission to fight corruption. Again, we saw the Liberal, National and Labor parties voting together to vote that down. I find that very disturbing. This keeps on happening in this parliament. There really is no movement from the major parties on this issue.

I thought it was timely to pull together a range of organisations and a range of prominent Australians who have so much experience in this area, who have made very clear contributions of the need for a national integrity commission or a national anticorruption watchdog—whatever you want to call it. It is time we worked through this. I want to share the range of support there is with the senators tonight.

Transparency International Australia has done extensive work in this area: a national integrity systems assessment, published by Transparency International Australia and Griffith University, recommended as far back as 2005:

… new independent statutory authority be tasked as a comprehensive lead agency for investigation and prevention of official corruption, criminal activity and serious misconduct involving Commonwealth officials …

Including members of parliament . You could not get it much clearer than that. Transparency International, to their credit, have been consistent in calling for such a body. In 2012 they, again, put forward the need for a national anticorruption plan and made a series of recommendations.

In 2014 Professor AJ Brown, then the head of Transparency International Australia, said, 'a stronger national anticorruption agency' was required and 'Most of the federal public sector continues to lack effective independent oversight.' There it is. That is still the problem today. That is why we keep raising the need for movement in this area. Professor Brown also commented, 'The Australian Commission for Law Enforcement Integrity would need to be rolled into any new body or it would need to dovetail with it.' To quote him, 'There is no reason to continue to leave any Commonwealth agencies outside the jurisdiction of a properly resourced independent anticorruption agency.' He went on to say, 'The Commonwealth needs to make it a policy priority to get on with designing a comprehensive anticorruption agency structure that will work. There is no off-the-shelf model.' There is the challenge. Our job here as legislators is to make it work. Our job is to iron out those differences and get this body up.

The current head of Transparency International, Anthony Whealy QC, reiterated the call for a federal anticorruption body. He did that at the beginning of this year, following the release of the latest Corruption Perceptions Index by Transparency International. That call was similar to the call from the Law Council of Australia, which called for the establishment of a national commission in 2011. This was in a submission on Australia's compliance with the United Nations Convention against Corruption. It argued that existing criminal law enforcement had its place but was not on its own sufficient, and that ad hoc inquiries rely on political will at the time, meaning a standing national agency would be best placed to prevent and address evolving corruption risks. Again, it is another solid recommendations that we should be getting on and doing our job here.

The Accountability Round Table have also lent their voice to this, calling for the establishment of a national commission as the means to improve both coordination and leadership on anti-corruption. They have said that:

Each State in Australia now has an anti-corruption body. But by far the largest quantity of money, power and influence is in the control of the Commonwealth Government in Canberra. There is no reason to assume that the corrupting influences that exist in Sydney, Melbourne or Perth do not operate in Canberra, where the Federal government each year purchases tens of billions of dollars of goods and services ...

Then there is the comment from Professor George Williams, the Dean of Law at the University of New South Wales, who has long argued for a national integrity commission to fill the gaps that the state anti-corruption bodies are unable to address. He has said that:

The arguments for such a body are overwhelming. The litany of corruption and other scandals over a long period of time demonstrates that there is a need for a co-ordinated, national approach to anti-corruption. Past assumptions that corruption was limited to the state and territory level can no longer be sustained.

I acknowledge that there is a similarity in some of these comments but what is very clear here is that people who have such experience in the legal affairs of this country give enormous weight to the need for an anti-corruption watchdog.

Then there is Geoffrey Watson QC, former counsel assisting the New South Wales ICAC, who called for establishment of a national commission in 2015. He stated:

I am satisfied, based upon my work over four years with the two premier anti-corruption bodies in New South Wales—the Independent Commission Against Corruption (ICAC) and the Police Integrity Commission—that we are grossly underestimating the nature and extent of corruption, and in our ignorance we are failing to compile sufficient information so that we can understand and assess its effects on our community.

He continued:

It is only my personal opinion, but I think it would be quite mad not to introduce a specific federal anti-corruption commission. One of the principal arguments put by certain Coalition senators in arguing against the Greens' bill when it was presented in 2013 was that the problem—that is, corruption in the federal sector—does not exist. That claim, if true, makes Canberra the only corruption-free place in Australia and—wait for it—the only corruption-free place in the world.

That is Mr Geoffrey Watson really putting it out there so clearly. It is ludicrous so many of the arguments that have been entertained when we debate the need for a national ICAC.

We also have David Ipp, a former commissioner of the New South Wales ICAC. In 2014 he called for the establishment of a federal anti-graft agency with the powers of a standing royal commission. Mr Ipp told Four Corners in 2014:

It is so screamingly obvious that there is a breakdown in trust at the moment. …The only way of maintaining trust or recovering the trust is to demonstrate that there are adequate means of discovering corruption so that the public can be confident that what the Government is doing is not tainted by dishonest behaviour.

Every time Labor, Liberal and National vote together. When senators representing those parties get up and speak against having such a body, they are flying in the face of such considered opinion.

Then there is Tony Fitzgerald, who headed the Commission of Inquiry into Possible Illegal Activities and Associated Police Misconduct in Queensland in the late 1980s. He backed Mr Ipp's call when saying:

I think it's self-evident. The people who go into state parliaments and the major political parties are the same people who go into federal parliament. … I cannot understand why they'd be corrupt at one level, or be corruptible at one level, and not at the other.

Then we have Graham Samuel, former chair of the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission, who also backs a national anti-corruption body. Then there are numerous journalists who have worked very closely on this and done outstanding work in exposing the problems that we face. Bob Bottom, a retired investigative journalist who played a key role in the establishment of the New South Wales ICAC, is also a strong backer of a national body, as are Quentin Dempster, Nick McKenzie and Kate McClymont, all of whom have done such very important work in exposing issues in New South Wales. When you look at those issues in New South Wales and the corruption that has been exposed there, it flows over—there are so often links to the federal level. But those inquiries have not gone further, because we do not have that national body.

So the pressure is on for a national body. The evidence is overwhelming for a national ICAC. There is a big stumbling block when you have the two major parties working together and voting together to stop it. But the time will come and the embarrassment will be theirs. It is time for a national independent organisation to fight corruption at a national level.