Nick McKim (Tasmania, Australian Greens) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I move:

That the Senate take note of the report.

This is report No. 9 from the Parliamentary Joint Committee on Human Rights, dated 18 August 2020. This report covers two highly draconian pieces of legislation which erode fundamental human rights in this country. Those two bills are the Australian Security Intelligence Organisation Amendment Bill 2020 and the Migration Amendment (Prohibiting Items in Immigration Detention Facilities) Bill 2020.

The first of these bills will allow ASIO to detain and interrogate people as young as 14—that is, children—for politically motivated activities and to use tracking devices without a warrant issued by the courts, and contains many other draconian elements. The second bill will ban detainees inside immigration detention facilities from having access to a range of items including mobile phones and will allow, in fact, for a blanket ban to be put on mobile phones in the possession of detainees inside immigration detention facilities. That bill will give staff inside immigration detention facilities greater powers—with less oversight—than police have when dealing with the general public. That bill is designed to silence the capacity of detainees to record and publish human rights abuses perpetrated against them and will have a chilling effect on their capacity to participate in political debate in this country.

Because this report considers those two bills, which engage so many fundamental human rights, it beggars belief that the chair along with government members of that committee have once again chosen to ignore the independent legal advice received by the committee. Human rights are under sustained attack in Australia. We are the only liberal democracy in the world without a charter of rights or a bill of rights, which makes this committee one of the most important committees in the parliamentary system. The committee's job is to provide a technical assessment of whether proposed legislation complies with Australia's international human rights obligations. It should never be run for political purposes. But, unfortunately, the chair and Liberal and National party members of this committee are doing just that. The only reason for LNP members to so blatantly ignore the committee's independent legal advice is that they are embarrassed that the government holds human rights in such contempt.

Australia is becoming a police state and a surveillance state, and the LNP members of this committee are aiding and abetting the government on that dangerous journey. They are doing so by masking the legitimate scrutiny of these bills by ignoring the independent legal advice to this committee when it suits them, thereby undermining the important role that the committee plays in scrutinising legislation. The blatant and rampant politicisation of this committee by the chair and other government members enables the ongoing erosion of rights and freedoms and liberties in Australia. It assists the government as it frogmarches this country down the dangerous path towards authoritarianism and totalitarianism. This is how fascism starts.

I seek leave to continue my remarks later.

Leave granted; debate adjourned.