Home Affairs Legislation Amendment (2025 Measures No. 1) Bill 2025
Ms WATSON-BROWN (Ryan) (12:29): The Home Affairs Legislation Amendment (2025 Measures No. 1) Bill 2025 is another cruel attack on refugees and immigrants by the Labor government. It removes their basic right to natural justice. Not content with their anti-refugee laws last term, passed through with the coalition, Labor are now doubling down.
What does this bill actually do? It is designed to forcibly remove people to Nauru without their having any right to see the application that the government is making. It removes any right to an appeal process, with no opportunity for them to make representations about why their removal would be unsafe or explain to the government of Nauru why they shouldn't be deported there.
And they're making it retrospective as well, to cover for previous illegal breaches of procedural fairness that are being challenged in court. These are basic rights for procedural fairness that should apply to everyone—no exceptions. Everyone is equal under the law, no matter where they're born.
The Nauru president has made it clear that he intends to send people Australia deports there back to the countries that they have fled. Make no mistake: this puts these refugees' lives in danger. It is unspeakably cruel.
This is Labor with a majority, 94 seats, attacking refugees and depriving them of basic procedural fairness and natural justice. The fact that there is no-one from the government speaking to this bill speaks volumes, doesn't it? It speaks for itself.
They should be ashamed because, as long as they keep fanning the flames of anti-migrant and anti-refugee sentiment, they will keep seeing a rise in far-right extremism, and we'll keep seeing what we saw over the weekend. It's the oldest trick in the book. Every time there's a crisis, Labor and the Liberals point their fingers at immigrants.
Some do it overtly; others just dog-whistle. But the intent is the same. The intent is to distract—distract from the fact that it's tax breaks for investors that are driving housing unaffordability; distract from the fact that the major parties are not willing to tax massive multinational corporations to fund the public hospitals, the schools, the housing and the transport that we need; and distract from the fact that it's massive monopoly supermarkets that are driving surging supermarket prices.
Just last year, Labor and the Liberals went after international students, scapegoating them for the housing crisis. Now they're cracking down once again on refugees, spending $400 million of taxpayer money to deport a few hundred refugees to Nauru. This is the tragic outcome of a bipartisan 'tough on borders' agenda.
Then they scratch their heads and wonder why Nazis feel emboldened to hold rallies in our cities. Labor and the Liberals put out strongly worded statements defending our 'social cohesion'. They should look in the mirror.
If you govern for massive corporations, if you let life get harder for everyday people and if you dog-whistle at immigrants, you are providing the oxygen for the far right. Shame on you. I guess it's good to know who Labor and the Liberals will target and who they'll protect.
Labor and the Liberals will break— Mr McCormack: That's outrageous. You cannot say we are protecting those people. Ms WATSON-BROWN: You're breaking our own laws to indefinitely detain a refugee fleeing persecution.
The DEPUTY SPEAKER ( Ms Chesters ): Member for Wannon, a point of order? Mr Tehan: Just to assist the House, I think the member should withdraw the imputation that she's just made, because I think all of us think it was beyond the pale. Ms WATSON-BROWN: I'll withdraw and proceed.
Labor and the Liberals will break our own laws to indefinitely detain a refugee fleeing persecution, but they will let the CEO who illegally fired 1,800 workers walk away with a $20 million payout. Labor and the Liberals will subject refugees to systemic abuse in detention centres in places like Manus Island, but they will give less than a slap on the wrist to the big banks found to be engaging in systemic misconduct and exploitation.
Labor and the Liberals are now deporting hundreds of refugees to Nauru, a very poor country in the Pacific, but they are giving gas corporation Santos, who let a methane leak go on for 20 years, a huge tax break. It's about hypocrisy. Labor and the Liberals protect the rich and powerful, and they throw the defenceless under the bus.
The great Tony Benn once said, 'The way a government treats refugees is very instructive because it shows you how they would treat the rest of us if they thought they could get away with it.' That's Tony Benn, not me. Let's not let them get away with it—for refugees, for the rest of us. Do you know who are causing the housing crisis?
Labor and the coalition are. Do you know who are not? Immigrants.
Here are the facts. We had next to zero immigration during COVID. Did house prices fall or flatline?
No. They increased dramatically. Over the past decade, the population has increased by 16 per cent and dwellings by 19 per cent.
The truth is that it's incredibly convenient for the major parties to blame immigrants for the housing crisis because it lets the real culprits off the hook. Labor and the coalition are on a unity ticket, turbocharging the housing crisis via negative gearing and the capital gains tax discount. Labor and the coalition are on a unity ticket, abandoning any real effort to build public housing like governments used to.
A quarter of the homes built post-World War II were public housing—that's 25 per cent public housing—and now it's just one per cent. Pathetic. Mr McCormack: It's the states.
Ms WATSON-BROWN: It was the federal government, the Housing Commission just after World War II, to set those facts straight. Labor and the coalition are on a unity ticket to do the bidding of the property industry, giving tax breaks to property developers to build unaffordable housing. Labor and the coalition want you to believe that migrants are causing the housing crisis, because it protects those really responsible—that is, their policies, the banks and the property industry.