It’s a sad an interesting day in the Senate, with the departure of all the Democrat Senators. Natasha Stott-Despoja is retiring and the others were not re-elected.
I listened with interest to their valedictory speeches – tragic, I know – and just want to acknowledge the work of Andrew Bartlett on refugees and asylum-seekers. It’s one of the issues on which he was a persistent, outspoken, critical and compassionate advocate for vulnerable and often vilified people. It was a personal pleasure to meet him, it was a professional pleasure to see his work on this (and on so many other human rights and justice issues) and I wish him – and all the other Democrat Senators – all the best.
Here’s a bit of what he had to say last night. His call to remember the past, and reject these abuses in our present and our future is a necessary one.
I want to emphasise the area of multiculturalism and immigration, which has been probably the biggest focus of my time in this chamber. The experience I have had in working with people in the community who did not support the approach taken by the former government—broadly speaking, supported by the opposition—towards refugees and asylum seekers is one of the most inspiring that I have had. I am talking about thousands of Australians who simply wanted to express an alternative view and to convince other Australians that there was a better way, that the way that things were being done was too extreme and too harmful.
I want to particularly mention one person, named Ali Sarwari, who was recognised as a refugee here and was living in Melbourne. I met his daughter, Sakina, and his wife on one of the times I went to Nauru. I do not know why, but it never leaves me, having to hear his daughter ask why she could not see her father and hear them continually talking about the pressure for them to be sent back to Afghanistan. They were separated. They were treated as being separate from Ali.
Even though their father and husband was seen as a refugee, they were not seen as refugees. They were imprisoned on Nauru for over two years, along with so many other children that I met when I was there. That one girl sticks out in my mind particularly. That man had to live here knowing his family were being pressured every day to go back to the horror that he had fled and knowing that his daughter was there wondering why they could not be together. He had to leave
and go to settle in New Zealand for that family to be reunited.That was a direct consequence of the temporary protection visa legislation passed by this chamber in 1999. That to me was an example, probably the starkest example, of a policy that was deliberately designed—consciously, specifically—to cause harm to innocent people. It sure as hell did. It did not deter boat arrivals, I might say, but it sure as hell caused a lot of harm. I know it is a complex issue, asylum seekers, and that needs to be acknowledged, but I would never want to see us again passing a law that so deliberately causes harm to vulnerable people, particularly children.
Let us not forget in this chamber the many children and others we locked up behind razor wire for years. Our government, on our behalf, even took court action and fought an appeal all the way through the courts to stop people in detention from getting access to mental health treatment, despite clear psychiatric diagnoses. It is unthinkable now, but it is true. I never want to forget that, even though it is distressing, because I do not want that sort of thing to happen again…
I say that not particularly to criticise—although, obviously I have many times—the past government and the former opposition for their positions, but to emphasise that it was politically rewarded by the Australian people. The Australian people validated and accepted that. As an Australian, I think we collectively have to take responsibility. We must acknowledge that that was done, ask ourselves why, ask ourselves if there is a better way and try to stop that happening again.
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