MIGRATION LEGISLATION AMENDMENT (IMMIGRATION DETAINEES) BILL (NO. 2) 2001:
Second Reading speech 28/8/01
Senator BROWN -We in Australia are seeing 438 people in a boat off our
shores at the moment, which brings this piece of legislation into very great
focus. The latest news to hand is that, according to the Indonesian
Ambassador, those people will not be given the ability to go ashore in
Indonesia. The Australian government, backed by the opposition, has said
that the people on the Tampa, the Norwegian ship, should not be allowed to
land on Christmas Island or on Australia proper. The Prime Minister has
washed his hands of the fate of these people, with Mr Beazley standing at
his side, by saying that it is a matter for Norway or Indonesia. So the
numbers are now reduced, if what the Indonesian Ambassador has said is
correct, down to Norway being the one noncommittal country. Without
expecting that the people will be shipped to the other side of the planet to
escape this callous rejection of them from the shores of Australia or of our
northern neighbour, we have to have a good look at what this particular
incident is doing to us. I will come back to the people on the ship in a
moment.
What is it doing to this country which has such a proud reputation for being
multicultural and for going to the aid of people who are in difficulty? This
country recently took an extraordinary risk in putting in a huge amount of
human effort and resources into assisting our near neighbour East Timor in
its moment of tragedy. This country has a reputation, in which it
glorifies-and I like to be an Australian who thinks this way-for being a
country of a fair go and a country, therefore, that respects all human
beings as deserving of a fair go. That reputation is now being tested. You
cannot have that sort of philosophy ending at a border drawn somewhere
against people on the other side.
The world is looking at this ship with these poor people aboard, and it is
wondering where the humanity is that is going to give them succour. It is
seeing that Australia, the country these people wished to get to, has turned
them down and said that it is up to Indonesia, a much poorer country with
great recent internal difficulties and without the clear line of authority
and ability to move on behalf of the national interest, I would submit, that
the incumbent government here in Canberra has. But the Howard government, in
the wake of five years of increasing harshness and implied vilification in
many cases of people coming to our shores, has turned its back on these
people and said that Indonesia might be a country with greater humanitarian
reception for them. Indonesia, for the time being, has said no, and Norway
is left, in the Prime Minister's estimation, as the next country which
should take these people. The reality is that he is wrong. Yesterday, he met
rapidly with his cabinet when the news broke of the rescue taking place
between Christmas Island and Indonesia-and let us not forget in a situation
of quite considerable domestic political embarrassment-
Senator Patterson -Talk about the people smugglers who got them into this
situation.
Senator BROWN -and decided that the ship should turn around. Having asked
the captain of the ship to take the people on board, he then said `But you
can't come here,' when those people said, `We want to land in Australia.'
Australia now stands indicted because of the action of the Prime Minister
and his cabinet, which action was highly motivated not by the interests of
the asylum seekers but by domestic political expediency in the run-up to the
election. In doing so, the nation's reputation is going down in the eyes of
the whole world. In the coming days this incident, which has now become an
international incident and which is playing on the television screens of
people right around the planet, will do this nation enormous harm.
On this occasion the asylum seekers are no different from those taken ashore
in recent months and recent years, except for one fact: we have a government
going to an election badly needing a distraction. In doing so, it is
prepared to play to the basest motive of fear in the people. That fear is
being played up, and the interjection which came just a moment ago from the
government member opposite shows how easily words are used-quite
improperly-to impugn those people on the boat and to make us fearful that
there is some sort of immediate threat to our own wellbeing from their
presence on that ship. That is patently not so. When you get a political
situation like this and a government that has decided that, for reasons of
its own, it can use these people as pawns in the run-up to an election, all
manner of principle and fair dealing goes out the window, and that is what
is happening in this situation. The Prime Minister is even prepared to allow
Australia's reputation as a fair, honest, welcoming and humane country to be
shoved down for an immediate base political purpose. It is disgusting that
the Prime Minister and the cabinet made that decision yesterday. As the
people on the Tampa, including the captain and his crew, get used as
hostages for the Prime Minister's political advancement, as he sees it, the
rest of the world will count us down as a nation. I object to that. Neither
I nor the Greens will be part of it.
My office-like everybody else's office, I have no doubt-has had a huge
reaction to what is going on off Christmas Island at the moment. We have had
angry calls, and we have had some calls during which the phone should have
been put down much faster. But, fortunately, I have got tolerant staff who
try to give people a hearing. But, in my case at least, the preponderant
calls are coming from good-hearted Australians who say, `We don't want to be
party to this increasing incarceration of people seeking asylum in our
country,' or their being turned back in their tracks almost as an echo of
the policy performance put forward by One Nation's Pauline Hanson just a
couple of years ago and seen then as so despicable. That is what our
government is doing now and, very sadly, that is what our opposition is
endorsing in this case. I thank the people who are of a different thinking
out there in the electorate. I thank those people from all walks of life,
religions and philosophies who are saying: `We will not be part of this.
This is not the Australia we want. This is not the set of principles we want
to see when it comes to dealing with people, including women, children and
men, in distress on the high seas just off our coastline.'
Let me talk about these people for a moment. There are, as we comfortably
sit or stand here tonight, 1.2 million Afghani refugees-our mind is
concentrated on some 400 at the moment but there are 1.2 million of them-in
refugee camps in Pakistan in deplorable conditions that none of us would
want to see our families in. If we were able to alleviate their suffering,
then the diaspora that is coming from that huge body of people might not be
occurring. But in a country which is rich by any standards less than $1
million has gone from this government to help that 1.2 million people
suffering in despicable circumstances in the last year. In that same time,
$120 million has been spent in detention centres very little different from
jails here in Australia for people like them who have managed to make it to
our shores without appropriate papers.
Instead of going and trying to turn the tap off, the government-and the
opposition-is putting a finger on the nozzle at the other end. It has got
its priorities wrong. Its meanness of spirit in denying its obligation to
help people like those Afghani refugees in despicable circumstances is part
of the problem. The body politic in this country must share some of the
blame. We are not an isolated country. We are not an island to ourselves
anymore. We have a government that, above all, promotes globalisation,
because it wants to make money out of being in the global community. But
when it comes to the movement of people, rather than money, it draws the
line, because in these circumstances money is more important than people.
That is what it is about. That is where we are at.
I have heard from the opposition today about how these people, the refugees,
including Afghanis, are displacing other people who want to come to this
country. One thing is being overlooked here. It is very easy to say: `They
are queue jumpers. They are getting in in front of other people who could
come here on humanitarian grounds'-`taint so. Let me read a letter dated
yesterday from Mr Bert Gray from Beacon Hill to the Sydney Morning Herald.
He says:
In defending his punitive treatment of asylum seekers, Mr Ruddock claims
that he is giving priority to the millions of refugees in camps in countries
of first asylum. Yet Herald correspondent Christopher Kremmer (Herald, June
16) reported that of the 1.2 million refugees in Pakistan, only 450 had been
referred by the UNHCR to Australia last year, and the number this year is
likely to be 600.
Given the often desperate conditions in these camps, can Mr Ruddock explain
why the number of off-shore humanitarian places for refugees was slashed
from 15,000 in 1995-96 to 5,700 in 2001-01?
We have cut the number of humanitarian refugee places, and I will tell you
how we have balanced that: by increasing the number of so-called skilled and
wealthy people able to buy their way into this country. It is not other
humanitarian refugees whose places these asylum seekers coming in boats to
this country are competing with; it is wealthy migrants being afforded entry
into Australia in greater proportions than ever before in recent history. I
do not wish for them not to come here, but I do believe that the government
should stop this quite false argument and vilification that the people being
denied here are queue jumpers. The government itself, through its own
policy, has closed the door on thousands of humanitarian refugees coming to
this country.
When I turn to the specific bill in hand, what we have here is a piece of
legislation to allow strip searching-
Senator Patterson interjecting-
Senator BROWN -I am sorry? The member opposite, Senator Patterson, does not
want to repeat that interjection. That is for her. But this legislation does
allow for strip searching of asylum seekers from the age of 10 upwards who
find themselves in detention centres in this country. My first point on this
matter is that those detention centres ought not be working in the way that
they are. They are essentially jails. Countries taking a far greater burden
of asylum seekers-comparable countries in Europe and North America-have not
found them necessary. But that is the reaction of this government and this
opposition. Because of this mentality that people coming to this
country-women, children and men-fleeing desperate circumstances are
criminals until proven otherwise, we have created a system where we receive
them into jails. The treatment in those detention centres then leads to a
cycle of violence and psychological despair. We are going in the direction
of the American prison system which, as reported yesterday, contains two
million people. I am very familiar with the lockdown situation in the United
States, which defies all human dignity, including that of those who have
created it. It is very similar to the Port Arthur asylum treatment of over
150 years ago.
What I warn against here is the increasing repression within these detention
centres of people who are already distressed coming to our shores. Here we
have strip-searching, with provisions-and we will go into those in the
committee stage. I have been in jail as a result of peaceful protest in
Tasmania and I faced repeated strip searches in jail. That is okay for me,
because I knew where I was, I knew that I was close to home and I knew that
there were people around and that it would not be long before I got out of
jail. But this indignity, without the required specification-I will get to
that in the committee stage-is another step towards making these prisons
places of inhumanity which Australia in future will look back on with the
most deep and dire regret. I will not be part of this increasing
criminalisation of asylum seekers and the harshness with which they are
received on to the shores of this great nation. I oppose this piece of
legislation.
-----------------------
Media release
Wednesday, 29 August 2001
Howard Turns Tampa Situation into Crisis
NZ's Helen Clark Does the ALP's Job
Greens Senator Bob Brown has called on John Howard and Kim Beazley to help
calm down emotions and prevent the Tampa crisis getting further out of hand.
"The boarding of the Tampa by the SAS has turned what was a worrying
situation into a crisis," Senator Brown said.
"430 asylum seekers seeking entry into Australia is not a national emergency
but John Howard has turned it into one.
"This move to uses troops is abhorrent.
"Every hour this crisis goes on Australia's reputation sinks further. Our
tourism industry, or marketing potential, our economy go with it.
"The Prime minister has shown ineptitude and lack of heart is his dealing
with the situation from the start.
"He should have phoned the NZ Prime Minster Helen Clark at the start. She
has shown a willingness to deal with the situation humanely: she would have
taken the asylum seekers ashore.
"And the Labor Federal Opposition doesn't deserved to be called an
opposition. Its lack-lustre perforce is an embarrassment.
"Helen Clark in New Zealand has shown Labor how to keep humanity to the
fore," Senator Brown said.
Further information: Ben Oquist 02 62773170 or 0419 704095
Ben Oquist
Greens Senator Bob Brown
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