Home Affairs Legislation Amendment (2025 Measures No. 1) Bill 2025

Mr WILKIE (Clark) (12:47): Much has been said and written about the Home Affairs Legislation Amendment (2025 Measures No. 1) Bill 2025, and I applaud my crossbench colleagues for doing a much better job than I would ever be able to do to explore particularly the legal dimensions of the bill. It is entirely understandable that the speeches that have been given by my colleagues have been needed, because this bill would be a fundamental departure from how Australian law currently operates by removing the right to natural justice.

That we would even contemplate that, let alone have a bill before us, beggars belief and diminishes our country. But, because my colleagues have spoken at such length about such matters, I actually want to focus on some other dimensions of this that are perhaps a bit more gritty. I was very pleased that the member for Indi spoke about international law, and that's where I'll start my contribution.

If this bill becomes law, Australia will be in clear breach of the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court. The Rome statute was a statute agreed upon by our predecessors in this place and ratified by our predecessors in this place when they agreed that the forced removal of someone to a third country is a crime against humanity. That might sound a bit overly dramatic, but that's what we are contemplating today—to bring into law something that would have Australia stand guilty of crimes against humanity.

This is another case of where we think that international law only applies to countries like Russia or China or Syria or Iran and that international law doesn't apply to good countries like us. It doesn't apply to the United States. It doesn't apply to Israel.

It doesn't apply to Australia. It only applies to the countries that we want it to apply to. That is completely and utterly unacceptable, and that should worry us a lot.

We should be the first country in the world, as an important middle power, to be advocating for international law and the rule of law, which have served this country so, so well ever since the end of the Second World War. The other point I'll make is how this stands to be such a gross misuse of public funds. For a group of about 280 people, for there to be a political fix—let's face it: the government's in a hole.

They've got to do something about this cohort. They're not getting much cooperation from the opposition, who sees everything through the prism of political opportunity. The government's in a hole, so it's going to throw, over a few years, about $2 million of Australian taxpayer money at each of these approximately 280 people.

That's an appalling misuse of public funds. That should alarm us. Even the people who want to be rid of this cohort of people should at least be worried about how we're spending this money, and we're going to be giving it to a country of which, when I look at a recent Transparency International report, 50 per cent of Nauruans surveyed said that they thought the Prime Minister and the officials in the Nauruan government are likely to be involved in corruption.

But yet we're going to hand over $400 million in year 1 and, I think, $70 million every year after that for, presumably, as long as any of this cohort of people are living in Nauru. That's appalling. In fact, I'd liken it to a form of colonialism that we even think we have the right to ask the Nauruan government to take these people and that we are able to bring such financial force to bear to effectively force them to take these people.

I'm reminded of a previous life more than 20 years ago now. I remember reading a cable that came back to Canberra from our top diplomat or one of the diplomats in Nauru, and the cable explored all of the money and the assistance that we were pouring into Nauru. I can still remember the last sentence of that cable from more than 20 years ago, and it said, 'We have bought Nauru.' And you know what?

We're doing exactly the same again. I think it is a form of colonialism. I also want to pick up on the point that the member for Ryan made.

The member for Ryan, I think bravely, raised the issue of racism. I note that the comment was withdrawn, but I don't think we should be so quick to—I wasn't, but I don't think other honourable members should have been so quick to jump on the member for Ryan for floating the idea that there's an element of racism here. I put the question back to my colleagues.

It's a genuine question. Would we be reacting the same way if this group of people had come from other countries? Admittedly, a lot of the other countries would take people back and would accept them being sent back, but not all.

If these people in this cohort had come from other countries, would the government or the community have the same emotional response to this? I think it's a question that needs to be explored. The DEPUTY SPEAKER ( Ms Chesters ): I believe the member for Wannon has a point of order.

Mr Tehan: Once again, the imputation being made is absolutely horrendous, and I would ask the member to reflect on what he said and to withdraw. Mr WILKIE: Of course I will withdraw it, but I think these are matters we sometimes should reflect on. I'm not saying that this group of people—let's face it: there are some very unsavoury people in this group.

Mind you, some of them have never been charged or convicted of an offence. Some have been charged and convicted of an offence and have done their time and deserve a fresh start. Some of them have spent so long in detention in Australia that they have done multiples of the time they might have spent in prison if they ever had been charged and convicted.

It's not 280 people all out of the same mould. This is quite a diverse group of people, and they are all being dealt with with the same blunt instrument. To the degree that there are some members of this cohort who are unsavoury and judged to be a continuing threat to public safety, I'm the first to say they shouldn't be allowed into the community, but there are other ways to deal with those people rather than shipping them off—or flying them off, I suppose—to what I liken to a gulag, or a hulk that might be on the Thames.

I haven't been to Nauru, but I know enough about it to know it is a tiny speck of an island almost on the equator in the middle of the Pacific Ocean—a hot, dry, harsh place. Hardy people live there; full marks to the Nauruans. But it's not where you would send people from this country to get rid of them.

It's a horrid place in that regard. We should be looking at ways to deal with these people ourselves. Deputy Speaker Chesters, you might remember, some years ago now, I tabled a bill that would have ended mandatory and indefinite detention.

Even that bill—advised by human rights lawyers and other people and organisations—went to the point of saying that, if someone were a genuine threat to public safety, then an application could be made to a court, and a court could decide whether that person should continue to be detained. Why don't we do something like that? Instead of shipping our problems off to other countries and giving them almost half a billion dollars, why don't we deal with it ourselves?

We are one of the wealthiest and cleverest countries in the world. We pride ourselves on being good international citizens that comply with international law. We're proud of the fact that we live by the rule of law in this country.

Surely, if there's one country in the world that could set the example on how to deal with this, it's us. I don't mind if the government and the opposition pull out my old bill that would end mandatory and indefinite detention and go to the relevant part—they could lift it, they could use it; I'd be delighted if they copied it—and, instead of these 280 people being treated as a job lot, go through them one by one and work out what the best solution and the best outcome is for each and every one of them.

For those that do need to be kept in detention, we should frame our laws so they allow a court to make that decision. I think that would be the humane, legal and decent way to respond to this. That would send a signal to people who might seek to come to this country via irregular means.

Let's face it; our so-called border security policies—I'd call them our irregular immigration policies—are based on punishment and deterrence. They've been that way probably ever since a Labor government introduced mandatory detention decades ago. It might have been the Hawke government, if memory serves me correctly.

So no side of politics has clean hands here—no side at all. In fact, I think the only people in this place who have got clean hands at the moment are the crossbench, who are fighting for natural justice, fighting for the rule of law and fighting for adherence to international law and for acting as a decent country with integrity. What we've got instead is this political fix—a political fix because the government's in a hole.

They're in a hole because they've got to do something with this group of people. They've got the opposition on their back, who never miss an opportunity to try and score political points when it comes to irregular immigration in this country. So we're going to ram this through with a bill of $400 million in the first year for 280-odd people, and $70 million a year every year thereafter—I assume until there are none of the 280 left.

This is an appalling turn of events. I certainly won't be supporting this bill. I would be happy to support another bill brought to this place that sought to come up with a humane, decent and principled way to deal with this cohort of people, one that would look at each on a case-by-case basis and ensure that there was some mechanism like a court making decisions on ongoing detention for anyone who was genuinely a threat to public safety.