Dean Smith (WA, Liberal Party, Shadow Assistant Minister for Competition, Charities and Treasury) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Before the Senate at the moment is a very necessary, timely, practical and least intrusive method to improve Australia's ability to interrupt the illegal organ harvesting trade throughout the world. Many in this place, including government senators, pride themselves on their commitment to advancing human rights throughout the world. As someone who's been in this chamber for 12 years now, I make this observation: human rights issues are canvassed, supported and advocated for more broadly across the Senate than they have been for a long time. Senators from the Left and senators from the Right now make advocating for the improvement of global human rights issues part of their business.

As we heard from Senator Scarr and other senators in their contributions last week, we have the most grievous abuse of human rights happening not just in our region but throughout the world—that is, taking ethnic and religious faith minorities and taking political prisoners of conscience and forcibly removing organs for trade from them. Once upon a time, this would have been unbelievable, but, as the United Nations and government's own Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade has said, there is now credible evidence that this illegal activity—the most egregious attack on someone's individual liberty—is happening and is increasing throughout the world. This parliament can sit idly by and do nothing, or it can embrace, like I said, a practical, timely, necessary and least intrusive way of starting to collect some valuable information, anonymity protected, that will allow Australia to do its part to disrupt the trade.

The government had two points of opposition with regard to this bill. One was that people might lie on the incoming arrival card. Actually, unfortunately, people might lie on a whole range of issues that they're asked to disclose on the existing passenger arrival card. I suspect that concern is actually not very real. Secondly, the government's objection was that it thought that schedule 2 of this bill was unnecessary because the character test arrangements, requirements and powers that already exist in the Migration Act will be sufficient. That's a fair point, and it's a point that I have listened to. That's why, in the committee stage of this bill, we'll be asked to deal with two amendments—just two. One is to follow Senator Scarr's advice about a statutory review mechanism that would be in place that will allow an independent person to report to the minister on the operation of the scheme after three years. That is just good public policy. That's not revolutionary. But, having looked closely at the evidence that was provided to us in the Senate Foreign Affairs Defence and Trade Legislation Committee, and having listened closely to Senator Ciccone's contribution in the second reading debate just recently, the second amendment will be to remove schedule 2. The existing arrangements in the Migration Act more than adequately deal with matters around character and cancellation.

So, after a long time, after having people visiting this parliament, talking about this issue—Uighurs, Tibetans, the Falun Gong, just to name a few—the Australian parliament in the next short while might be able to put its hand up and say that it doesn't just talk about these things; it also acts in a responsible way. I'll leave my remarks there. As I said, I foreshadow that I'll talk to two amendments. I understand that arrangements have been made so that other senators might make a contribution before the committee stage.

David Shoebridge (NSW, Australian Greens) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

by leave—I rise on behalf of the Greens, and I do this together with my colleague Senator Steele-John, from both the Migration and the Health portfolios, to indicate that we will be supporting the Migration Amendment (Overseas Organ Transplant Disclosure and Other Measures) Bill 2023 as amended. This is a bill to amend the Migration Act to require people who are entering Australia to respond to specified questions in relation to organ transplants outside Australia. It will also provide for the annual publishing and analysis of that information. There's a second schedule to the bill, seeking to amend the character test. That isn't an aspect of the bill that we support. We think it is unnecessary, and we are also on the record as raising our concerns about the expansive use of the character test. But I am pleased to see that the mover of the bill, Senator Smith, will be moving amendments in committee to remove that schedule, and we will support those amendments and then, in due course, support the bill.

The proposal in the bill to amend the incoming passenger card is to include three additional questions on the incoming passenger card that is provided to everybody entering Australia. The first question is:

Have you received an organ transplant outside Australia within the last 5 years?

The second question, if the answer to that question is affirmative, is:

For each organ transplant you received outside Australia within the last 5 years, what is the place (the country, and the town or city) of the medical facility at which you received the transplant?

Further, if the first answer is affirmative:

For each organ transplant you received outside Australia within the last 5 years, what is the name of the medical facility at which you received the transplant?

There's a reason we're supporting this. In the last two decades, there has been a significant rise in the international transplant tourism industry, if you could call it that. It's a matter that I have worked with doctors, ethicists, community organisations, religious organisations and spiritual groups on for over a decade, first in the state parliament, where I sought to introduce legislation that would make it a crime on the statute books of the New South Wales parliament for people to engage in unethical organ transplants anywhere in the world, if they were ordinarily resident in New South Wales, to provide extraterritoriality for the offence. I know that many medical ethicists and community groups continue to press for this parliament to pass extraterritorial laws to make it crime for any Australian resident or citizen to engage in unethical organ transplants around the world and to equate the unethical organ transplant industry with other grossly exploitative industries such as slavery or child exploitation. I remain of the view, personally, that there are powerful reasons for this parliament to do that.

This bill takes us one step further towards being a good global citizen so that Australian citizens and residents do not travel the globe and take advantage of poor, exploited peoples or take advantage of people without political power whose governments either consciously or with indifference are permitting them to be exploited for their organs. This is a matter that the Falun Gong practitioners have raised repeatedly with parliaments around the world, and they have sought to have the evidence of their exploitation by an authoritarian government acted upon. This isn't the space to detail that evidence, but there is disturbing evidence in that regard.

It would be wrong to paint this as being against just one country. We know that unethical organ transplants happen in a variety of countries around the world, including in other countries in our region, where poverty is used to exploit people, often for a tiny sum of money, and where a kidney will be taken, often with lifelong impacts, sometimes death, for the person whose poverty was exploited so a kidney could be provided so an Australian could jump the queue and have their health protected. But we know it's not just countries in our regions but countries across South Asia and countries in the Middle East, and, indeed, there is also some concern for countries in South America where unethical organ transplants are notorious. They're so notorious that the Australian government has recently amended its Smartraveller advice to deal with transplant tourism.

I will read from that advice:

The need for organ transplants in Australia is more than the availability of donor organs. Some people may look to travel overseas to get a transplant. 

'Transplant tourism' is a term sometimes used when you go to another country and pay for an organ transplant. 

Kidney transplants are the most common organ transplant people travel for.

And then it says this on legal and ethical issues:

Be aware of transplant tourism's legal and ethical issues before considering it. 

Transplant tourism can undermine a country's transplant program. People who can afford to pay can 'jump the queue'. This means someone who has a more serious medical need for an organ may miss out. 

You might unknowingly get an organ through illegal or unethical means without the consent of the donor. The lack of available organs has created an illegal black-market trade. In many cases, the donor is unknown. They are quite possibly poor, exploited or forced to donate. 

The unethical or illegal trade of human organs for transplantation is called organ trafficking. Organ trafficking is a form of modern slavery. It's a crime in Australia and many other countries. 

You'll be subject to the laws of the country you travel to. These may include severe penalties for transplant tourism or related acts, such as:

Australia's Criminal Code criminalises the movement of people into, from or within Australia for the unlawful removal of their organs. There are penalties of up to 25 years imprisonment.

That's the context admitted to and acknowledged by the government, and that's the context within which this private member's bill has been moved: to gain the information about where Australians are travelling to, and whether they are travelling repeatedly to one, two or three countries to get organ transplants, so that, at a minimum, Australia could work cooperatively with countries where it's unlawful, to seek to address that. In countries where it may be lawful and, indeed, promoted to have unethical transplants, we would have a further body of information to determine what, if any, further work this parliament should do to consider, amongst other things, an extraterritorial offence for Australians who engage in unethical organ transplants.

It is hard to imagine a more exploitative practice than a wealthy country which doesn't have sufficient organs through the donation system that it has established permitting its citizens to use their wealth and privilege to travel to third countries and use that wealth and privilege to jump the queue and take organs from that country, even if they were supplied in a voluntary system. It's even more so where there isn't a genuinely voluntary system—where it is about economic coercion, economic power and a lack of real consent or, worse still, about state oppression against oppressed peoples. Of course we should be moving in this direction.

I want to thank Senator Dean Smith for bringing the bill and taking it to the committee. It's unfortunate that a majority on the committee didn't find a basis to support the bill. I can indicate, on behalf of the Greens, that we think this is a step forward. We think it's an act of global decency. We think it's the kind of action that Australia should take. The argument against it that not everybody will honestly fill in a passenger card is hardly a reason not to support this, if for no other fact than it's an offence to falsely fill in a passenger card. If that is the only basis upon which we can hold people to account for unethical organ transplants, well that, too, is a step forward in accountability.

Tim Ayres (NSW, Australian Labor Party, Assistant Minister for Trade) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Rather than proceeding to a division, I might ask that it be noted that the government opposes the bill as a whole.

Andrew McLachlan (SA, Deputy-President) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

It will be noted.

Question agreed to.

Bill read a second time.