Christine Milne (Tasmania, Australian Greens) Share this | Hansard source

It did occur, although I cannot understand how Senator Back was so disinterested in the debate that he did not notice that it was only the Greens in this parliament who stood up and debated at length the decision of the former Gillard government to open offshore detention. It was the Greens who stood up, when Senator Lundy was the minister, and questioned her rigorously about the claims that the Labor Party in government made about the oversight that would be given to the offshore detention centres. That will stay on the record and haunt her for the rest of her life, because Senator Lundy stood there and said that there would be oversight and that all of these things that have happened would not happen. But that was exactly what happened and those centres should have been closed down.

Now we have an even worse situation where this government does not even pretend to care that we have got 1,200 people stuck on Nauru, which has a failing economy. They do not even have enough money. They are going to run out of money even to run their generators. They cannot pay the wages; the place is going broke. You have got people locked up in the detention centre who, when they heard of the temporary protection visa deal and when they heard of the Cambodian deal, immediately went into such a state of distress that there were three suicide attempts and there was self harm going on. A 14-year-old girl has taken over leading the protests, because her father has gone into such a state of distress. People have refused to drink and people are sewing their lips together. Another young girl swallowed washing powder, causing her to vomit blood. She was sent to Sydney over the weekend. This level of self harm is particularly amongst children.

Ought we not be asking ourselves: how do we actually cope with the idea that it is because of the Australian government's policy that we are forcing children, young kids at 14 years old, to sew their lips together to try and kill themselves? Who is going to take responsibility for that? I saw that the minister was asked about the fact that there are allegations of guards who were saying to women on Nauru that if they want to shower for longer than two minutes, they have to do disrobe and they have to show their bodies. There are allegations like that and the minister says that, if that is found to be true, he would be, 'Pretty damn cross.'

Actually, he needs to be more than pretty damn cross. He has got to take responsibility. There is such a thing as ministerial responsibility. He has oversight of these offshore detention centres. Reza Berati is dead—murdered at Manus Island. We have young people who are actually trying to kill themselves. There are appalling allegations of exploitation. Now we have a deal with Cambodia.

Cambodia is one of the most corrupt countries on the planet. In January this year, the Australian government made a presentation to the Human Rights Committee condemning the human rights abuse record in Cambodia. So the government cannot pretend it does not know; it does. It reported that about Cambodia earlier this year; yet, despite that, the Australian government is paying a bribe of $35 million to $40 million to the Cambodian government, to the Hun Sen regime, to take our refugees. What are the conditions? Well, we know very little. What we do know is that this is a country with very little freedom of expression. As I said, corruption is endemic there. They have appalling international scrutiny.