Lisa Singh (Tasmania, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary to the Shadow Attorney General) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Since the election of the new Abbott government in September last year, I have met with a number of concerned individuals and groups in civil society, each with very important issues that are being ignored and/or being exacerbated by the new coalition government. Tonight I would like to highlight an issue that touches the very heart of what the current Abbott government stands for. It shows a lack of compassion and understanding—these are absent completely from their actions.

Immigration has been a long-debated issue in this parliament and there is no easy fix to it. But the attitude of the current Abbott government's policy lacks basic humanity, compassion and accountability. It is creating animosity with our neighbours and it is treating communities as pawns for political gain. The tensions between Indonesia and Australia continue to rise as Operation Sovereign Borders pushes literal borders. The failure of the government to fulfil key promises made to Papua New Guinea, making them again a political pawn in their immigration policy, continues also.

In particular, the treatment of asylum seekers has lacked dignity and there has been no ownership of the issue by this government. Instead they hide it under a veil of secrecy and a lack of transparency—not providing the public with any clear answers. Minister Morrison stooped to an all-time low when, on 19 December last year, he issued a new direction under section 499 of the Migration Act. His new direction 62, to be applied retrospectively, seeks to create a second class of resident in Australia—a resident who, despite being found to be a genuine refugee and despite successfully adhering to the rules and the regulations in place, will be unable to sponsor family members in coming to Australia. The minister's direction to the Department of Immigration and Border Protection instructed staff to accord the lowest possible priority to the processing of family stream visa applications for people who have arrived by boat in Australia.

I am not questioning the right of the minister to issue the direction, but I do question why such a directive is needed. If the intention is to deter people arriving by boat in Australia, then why apply the direction retrospectively to people who are already here? Why punish people who have already become permanent residents? In an unnecessarily cruel letter sent to applicants, they are informed that, if they are deemed to be an illegal maritime arrival, the lowest priority will apply to all family stream applications. It goes on to state that the visa application would not be processed for a number of years and is unlikely to be successful. This applies even where families face compelling and compassionate circumstances such as persecution on the basis of their religion, sexuality and race in their country of origin.

This is a directive that has been applied to sponsors who are already permanent residents wanting to sponsor their family to come to Australia. They are not asking for any monetary support from government. They are working hard in Australia, raising funds to sponsor their family to come and join them here in Australia to help rebuild their lives. These residents contribute to the Australian community. They work and they engage, yet this government seeks to curtail their rights. They are not seeking a free ride; they are paying to sponsor their family to come to Australia. They have already started their application process. They had already received letters from the Department of Immigration and Border Protection alerting them to the fact that their application was in train only to receive this direction 62 saying something completely opposite.

Penalising those in our community who have proven their legitimate claims is simply abhorrent and wrong. It is an unprecedented attack on the integrity of the treatment of individuals in Australia. It is absolutely cruel and it is inhumane. The concept of fairness underpins the processing of asylum seekers in Australia, so is it fair to retrospectively penalise legitimate refugees after they have been granted permanent residency? I do not think so. Is it fair to penalise someone, because of their method of arrival, for the rest of their life here in Australia? Is it fair to undermine a system which is based on merit and legitimate procedures? Quite simply, it is not fair. It is not taking ownership of the refugee issue. It is another example of the incompetence of the minister and the cruelty in applying a directive retrospectively to permanent residents living in this country who have already started the process of bringing their family to join them to help rebuild their lives.

Unfortunately this lack of ownership extends to the running of the Manus Island detention centre that we have become all too familiar with in recent weeks. In Senate estimates I raised the issue of unaccompanied minors being detained on Manus Island. It has become increasingly apparent that the age verification process is inadequate and that we are failing minors by putting them in vulnerable situations by them going to Manus Island. The minister himself has said that Manus Island is an inappropriate place for unaccompanied minors and children.

The Amnesty International report which was released in December last year identified at least three detainees at the Manus Island Regional Processing Centre as children under the age of 18, and they spoke to at least three other detained asylum seekers who gave their ages as between 15 and 17. Age assessment, understandably, is not straightforward for many reasons. There could be lost documentation, false claims of adulthood or inadequate assessment processes. Because of these factors, minors are at risk of being assessed as adults and treated as such, and that is something that the department and the minister need to take very seriously. Christmas Island assessments are done too rapidly. They are done in a 48-hour turnaround and they are difficult to have reassessed once an asylum seeker has already arrived on Manus Island, where there is no assessment of age for them to be processed by.

However, today even more information has emerged to question the age verification process. In an article in The Guardian today, it has been revealed through leaked notes that 14 asylum seekers on Manus Island claimed, between November and January this year, that they were unaccompanied minors. The document contains details of every asylum seeker on Manus Island who has raised claims of being a child. It also contains worrying indications that many asylum seekers are transferred to Manus Island without having their ages properly verified. This goes to the heart of the issue of the age assessment process that is conducted on Christmas Island.

I will share one of the case notes in this article from TheGuardian article. It says:

M states that he told Immigration at Christmas Island he was 16 years old and that they sent him here because he couldn't provide the necessary documentation.

How can you expect an unaccompanied minor who after fleeing persecution has arrived here seeking asylum to have an original birth certificate on hand? They are displaced and are simply not going to have a nice, formal copy of their birth certificate. It is simply ridiculous for the department to expect them to have that and, without such necessary documentation, to make the call to send them to Manus Island—a place, by the way, that Minister Morrison has said is an inappropriate place for children to be sent.

Professor Mary Crock is an expert in policy on unaccompanied minors and she has been very shocked by this but has also raised the issue of psychosocial cognitive testing to be used when it comes to age assessment. This is used to determine the ages of young asylum seekers. But she has said that these tests are not being used properly on Christmas Island. I would think such psychosocial cognitive testing would provide a better outcome when determining the age of young people seeking asylum than simply asking them if they have an original copy of their birth certificate or any other documentation.

If Minister Morrison is serious when he says Manus Island is an inappropriate place for children to be sent, what is he going to do to ensure the necessary age assessment processes are in place to avoid any more children being sent to Manus Island in the future? This report today on the leaked notes that The Guardian has put forward is alarming. It is alarming to know that there were up to 14 children on Manus Island. I only hope that there were no children on Manus Island at the time of the recent riot. I know that Minister Morrison maintains there are no unaccompanied minors on Manus and that there were not any on Manus during the unrest, but the question is: how does he actually know that if the age assessment process carried out was (a) of an ad hoc nature (b) undertaken with a 48-hour turnaround and (c) not done as thoroughly as it probably should have been, using a psychosocial cognitive testing process that Professor Crock has pointed to as the best way forward?

These are really significant issues that have been raised today. They are just another example of the fact that this minister is simply incompetent in dealing with the guardianship of young people seeking asylum in this country and in dealing with the handling of the Manus Island detention facility in total. He needs to come clean and provide both the public and the parliament with a clear understanding of the way forward when it comes to dealing with asylum seekers in offshore detention facilities, because his record to date is pretty poor, let alone the ongoing punitive measures that he has put in place through direction 62, which I referred to earlier. It is a punitive measure that is punishing people who are now part of our community. They have been granted refugee status, they are permanent residents and they have the right to settle and live a productive life in our country and to contribute to our country with the opportunity of their family joining them to live with them, just like we all live with our families. I think it is very cruel, I think it is inhumane and I think it is something that should definitely be looked at to be reversed or at least not applied retrospectively to those who are already living here.