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

I move:

That the Senate take note of the answer given by the Minister for Foreign Affairs (Senator Wong) to a question without notice asked by Senator Birmingham today relating to immigration detention.

Minister Wong basically confirmed the worst-kept secret in the building, which is there is a stitch-up job on. That is the stitch-up job between the Labor Party and the opposition to rush through a hasty response to the High Court decision that was made this week that ruled that indefinite immigration detention is unconstitutional. We will see, undoubtedly, a piece of draconian legislation that will be jammed through both houses of this parliament this week without proper scrutiny. Even worse, the government has given Mr Dutton a free pass to effectively draft this legislation for them. Mr Dutton has a horrendous record of cruelty to refugees and of trampling fundamental human rights. For Labor to now work with him to draft legislation to try to circumvent a High Court decision is nothing short of scandalous.

Many of the people who've already been released as a result of the High Court decision, or who will or may qualify to be released as a result of the High Court decision, are refugees. In many cases, they've already been detained for a large number of years—detention that we now know was unlawful. And what's the government doing? What is Labor doing? They are working with Mr Dutton, a man with such a horrendous track record of torturing refugees, to craft legislation to impose further arbitrary punishment on refugees. Colleagues, the rights to liberty and freedom are not absolute rights, but they are fundamental rights in any liberal democracy. Laws that remove or curtail those rights should not be delivered carelessly or hastily through this place. But that is exactly what is going to happen in the last two sitting days of this week.

There are critical matters that need to be considered around these laws, like: necessity, reasonableness, and proportionality; whether and what safeguards will be put in place; whether there will be any provision for judicial review to what we are being bowled up in a secret stitch-up between Mr Dutton and Mr Albanese; and whether or not these laws, which will likely take a different approach based on whether someone is a citizen or a noncitizen of this country, run counter to the notion of individualised assessment of risk. There are a range of complex, nuanced matters that this legislation will address, and we will not have enough time to consider those matters as it is jammed through the parliament.

Make no mistake, Prime Minister Albanese and Mr Dutton, the Leader of the Opposition, are stitching up a secret collusion to jam laws through this Senate that will override or significantly curtail the liberty of many people in this country. And they're going to do it before they've even seen the reasons published by the High Court for the ruling that was revealed by the High Court earlier this week. What a disgrace. This is panicked. This is unnecessary. This is careless. This is reactionary. And it's being driven by the fear campaign stampeded by the Leader of the Opposition, Mr Dutton, and his colleagues in the Senate here on the opposition benches, and by the political cowardice of the Australian Labor Party, who don't have the moral gumption to stand up and push back against a man, Mr Dutton, who has built a political career on punishing refugees and trampling all over human rights.

We need Labor backbenchers like Mr Khalil and Mr Burns who actually do the things they say they stand for, and that is stand up for the rights of refugees and stand up for human rights. But that's not what we're going to get, because the Labor caucus is going to roll over and let Mr Dutton tickle their tummies just as fast as the Labor leadership has.

This bill will be a disgrace. It will be bad for refugees, it will trample human rights and it will likely be unconstitutional and overturned by the High Court in the future.

Question agreed to.