Lidia Thorpe (Victoria, Australian Greens) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I move:

That the Senate take note of the responses by the Minister representing the Minister for Home Affairs to my questions today.

I asked about innocent people seeking refuge who are locked up at the Park Hotel prison. Let me make this very clear: they came not in contravention of border protection rules, as the minister made out. May I remind the Senate that our international obligation is to grant protection to people seeking asylum who have been granted refugee status.

The only disrespect that has occurred in question time today is this government's inhumane treatment of people seeking refuge in this country. How can this government claim that this is not locking people up? Locked in one room for up to nine years! A young fellow has been in there since he was 15. It's heartbreaking. He's locked up; he's still there. He has spent his adult life, his whole adult life, in a hotel room against his will, being tortured by the Australian government—tortured! He peeks out the window with a sign, saying: 'Help me, please, let me out. I need fresh air. I want to talk to people. I want to see people. I need food, fresh food, not stale bread.' And we've even heard about maggots in food.

I just can't believe we live in a country that continues to deny people's human rights and continues to terrorise innocent young people and take away their dignity and their human rights. What kind of people are we as a country if we can do that to a 15-year-old who's still in a room in which he's been locked away for nine years by the Australian government?

I'm sure everyone knows how lockdown has been for us in our homes, with our families, with fresh food. You can go to the park with your dog sometimes. Just think for one moment about these people—these innocent people who came here seeking our help. Think about them for one moment when you're in lockdown, because they don't have the freedoms that you have. They certainly don't have the privilege that you have. Imagine you're in your room for nine years—as privileged as that might be, it is still nine years in there—and you're holding a sign to the window that says, 'Please, let me out.'

This government has no empathy. I don't know what empathy training was done, but maybe we need to improve the training, because there's certainly no regard for human rights. There's certainly no regard for the decent treatment of innocent human beings. I stood outside the Park Hotel as what you would call an activist or a protester. I stood outside that hotel with non-Aboriginal elders who were crying. They were in pain, seeing the pain in these innocent people's eyes as they looked down on them from their window, begging to be free. This is not about activists. This is about freedom for innocent people. (Time expired)

Question agreed to.