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

I move:

That this bill be now read a second time.

I seek leave to table an explanatory memorandum relating to the bill.

Leave granted.

I table an explanatory memorandum, and I seek leave to have the second reading speech in relation to this Medevac bill incorporated in Hansard.

Leave granted.

The speech read as follows—

The Migration Amendment (Restoring Medevac) Bill 2025 will bring back the Medevac legislation that saved lives when it was active in 2019.

This Bill would replicate what occurred in 2019, when people held in Papua New Guinea and Nauru, and their families, were transferred to Australia for medical care when assessed by two or more doctors as requiring treatment.

This bill replicates the intent of the Migration Amendment (Urgent Medical Treatment) Bill 2018 proposed MPs Kerryn Phelps, Andrew Wilkie, Adam Bandt, Julia Banks and Rebekha Sharkie as well as Senators Nick McKim and Tim Storer's amendment to the Home Affairs Legislation Amendment (Miscellaneous Measures) Bill 2018.

This legislation was known as 'Medevac' and was supported by members of the crossbench, the Australian Labor Party and Greens.

I thank all involved in creating the initial bills for this 2025 bill.

The 2018 Medevac amendments were unfortunately repealed in December 2019 under the Migration Amendment (Repairing Medical Transfers) 2019.

When 'Medevac' was in place 192 people were transferred to Australia and received urgent, often-lifesaving, medical treatment.

Since the repeal in 2019 people seeking asylum held in PNG and Nauru have been unable to access adequate medical treatment. There are currently nearly 100 people seeking asylum held on Nauru and around 40 in PNG who have been denied permanent resettlement for over a decade. Many are in desperate medical condition, too often as a direct result of the cruel treatment they have suffered under the offshore detention regime.

Offshore detention emerged during a period of toxic politics that saw a race to the bottom on how to treat people seeking asylum. As a consequence, people who came to Australia seeking safety and to rebuild their lives were forced, coerced and deceived into going to so called 'regional processing countries.'

While the agreement with Nauru endures, there is no current agreement with PNG, despite Australia still being responsible for the refugees held there and continuing to be actively engaged with the PNG Government regarding them.

In January 2025 the UN Human Rights Committee ruled that Australia remained responsible for the arbitrary detention of people seeking asylum who are redirected or transferred to offshore detention facilities, in two cases brought forward by people held on Nauru.

This confirms what the Government has been told for years, going back to Medevac was last in place in 2019 when the Australian Human Rights Commission said: "Transferring asylum seekers to third countries does not release Australia from its obligations under international human rights law."   .   .This bill applies to all people transferred to a regional processing country when an agreement was active. It also applies to those still held in PNG who were forcibly relocated there from Australia. As much as the Australian Government may wish it not to be true, they have a clear legal and moral responsibility to the people who were in Australia seeking safety and the Government chose to remove.

When this bill last passed, the Labor Party supported it. Now they are in government they seem to have forgotten this policy. I urge Labor to support this bill again. Do not let the fear and division of the last few years, indeed the last few weeks, win.

It is well known that the medical treatment provided to refugees and people seeking asylum in regional processing countries is often grossly inadequate.

When Doctors Without Borders published their 2018 report on the medical conditions in Nauru, they found widespread mental and physical illness. One particularly disturbing rare psychiatric condition they saw in people held offshore was called Resignation Syndrome, which one in every four children had. Professor Louise Newman of the University of Melbourne described the syndrome as follows:

"Children may stop talking and isolate themselves in bed; they may also stop eating and drinking. The most serious stage of the disorder is when children enter a state of profound withdrawal and are unconscious or in a comatose state.

"This comatose state appears to be a state of 'hibernation' in response to an intolerable reality. They are unresponsive, even to pain. They appear floppy, without normal reflexes, and require total care, including feeding and intravenous fluids, as otherwise, they risk kidney failure and death from complications caused by immobility, malnutrition and dehydration. This is a life-threatening condition needing high-level medical care."

The conditions in these facilities were so bad that children entered into a coma to endure it. People are still held in these, or similar, conditions today.

More recent reporting from the Asylum Seeker Resource Centre found that every single person currently held on PNG was ill, with one in 5 being so unwell their lives are at imminent risk. On top of that not one single person they spoke to could access adequate medical support.

I know this to be true, because at the end of last year I travelled to PNG to meet with those held there after a decade. What I saw should shame every person in this place. People with futures taken from them, for no other reason than seeking safety at a time that was political inconvenient for some here.

I want to relay just one story that I was told, of someone who needed to be evacuated for medical treatment. He was approved under Medevac at the same time as five others. On the day his plane was meant to take off all four of his friends approved for transfer came to Australia for essential treatment. They got the medical care they needed. But no one told him when his flight was, so he missed it.   .   .When he secured another flight, he went to the airport. While he was sitting in the airport, waiting for medical treatment to address his chronic pain the Medevac Bill was repealed. He was not allowed to get on the plane. Five years later that man is still in PNG, still without treatment, still in pain.

That is the image I want everyone to have when you vote on this bill. A man who fled the country where he was born because he might be killed. Came to Australia to seek safety and build a life. But instead was taken away in the middle of the night and forcibly held in a detention centre where he watched his friends die. Became ill because of the horrors the Australian Government put him through. And when there was a glimmer of hope, of fairness, a slim chance that at least some of his pain would be eased, he was left there alone watching the plane he should have been on take-off, watching that slither of justice disappear.

Because of decisions made here.

That is what this bill is, a slim sunbeam of hope. Hope not just for those people who have been denied a decade of their lives and basic dignity. But hope for us too. That we can be a better than what we are now. That the cruelty we have inflicted does not need to continue. I worry that if we do not take a stand against this hatred and division, then it will spread and take deeper root in our society.

I urge everyone to support this bill.

I seek leave to continue my remarks later.

Leave granted; debate adjourned.