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

I have spoken to a number of these reports, which are presented by the Commonwealth Ombudsman, with government responses, assessing all of the cases of people who have been in immigration detention for more than two years and then every six months thereafter. This has been a requirement since 2005, initially put in under the Howard government at a time when the then minister, Minister Vanstone, acknowledged that there were significant cultural problems in the department, using those exact words in this place and outside of it. This is one of the measures, along with others, that were taken to try to get some improvement in the detention regime and to try to get some improvement in the situation of people languishing for long periods of time in detention.

There are a few things that need to be made clear about these reports. Firstly, they do not cover those who are held in detention on Manus Island or Nauru. It is important to remind the Senate that the first people sent to Manus Island and Nauru, when they were reopened under the Gillard government, was in late 2012, so it's getting close to six years for some of those people. That regime of so-called offshore processing and detention was expanded by Kevin Rudd in his short reprised term as Prime Minister in July 2013, before being locked in stone more fully under the current Liberal coalition government. Those people are not covered. In fact, not only are they not reported on by the ombudsman; they're not able to be examined by any Commonwealth or Australian government official, whether it be independently, by the ombudsman, by the Human Rights Commission or by anything else. So even the minimal degree of transparency we have in the Australian detention centres does not exist in the offshore detention regime, and that is all the more reason why I think it is important that we have the Senate look more closely at that. There is no transparency there and the Senate should look at that. I note my colleague Senator McKim's motion, which is on the Notice Paper for next week, regarding a committee inquiry into that.

Having said that, perhaps a sign of the lack of interest in improving the situation in our onshore detention centres from both the current government and, sadly, the previous Labor government is the fact that, when there was a comprehensive report—in fact a series of three reports was done by the Joint Standing Committee on Migration in 2008 and 2009—there was never any government response, either when Labor was in government, when those inquiries were first established, or under the current government. It's now almost 10 years since the first report was tabled—nine years for the others—and there was no government response for a range of recommendations. That, to me, says volumes about the lack of genuine interest in actually improving the situation.

The ombudsman noted in a report of August last year—and I assume they've got another one coming quite soon this year—where they do an annual overview of all of the section 4860 reports, that the last financial year saw 1,325 assessments done by the ombudsman, which is an increase of 35 per cent from the previous year. That is, 1,325 people had been in immigration detention in Australia for over two years—many of them for much, much longer. That year was also the first time a subgroup of detained people was examined by the ombudsman. They had been detained and had been returned to Australia from the so-called regional processing centres for medical treatment and had been in detention arrangements for over two years, and ongoing. That is a growing cohort as well. It simply shows how badly the system is broken. Let's not forget that the current government is willing to spend a billion dollars to keep the torture happening on Manus Island and Nauru. There have been 12 deaths and reports of others in severe health crises right now. They're prepared to spend a billion dollars on that rather than invest it in building community in Australia.

Question agreed to.