Criminal Code Amendment (Keeping Australia Safe) Bill 2026

Senator SHOEBRIDGE (New South Wales) (09:48): Unprincipled, unethical, unconstitutional—that's what this coalition bill, the Criminal Code Amendment (Keeping Australia Safe) Bill 2026, is. In sinking to the complete bottom of some fetid tank of coalition politics, the coalition scooped into the bottom of that fetid mess of coalition politics and came up with this bill to make it a crime to bring children out of a war zone, to make it a crime for Australians or NGOs to go into a war zone and try and protect children.

That's what the coalition are proposing with this legislation. They bring it forward knowing it's unconstitutional, knowing it would get struck down within two minutes in the High Court—but they don't care about that. They want their hateful sound bite to feed a race debate in Australia and to feed Islamophobia in Australia, and that's what they're aiming for with this bill.

They know it won't work, they know it's a legal disaster, but they don't care about the reality. What they want is their Islamophobic, racist sound bite to feed what they perceive as their base—their shrinking base. That's what this legislation is about.

We see the coalition come up here and try and demonise children—Australian children—who have had no choice in their lives and their circumstances, who are living in a desert detention camp in a deeply unsafe part of the region and who've never known basic freedoms. They've never walked on grass, never smelt a flower and never had the chances that every Australian child should have.

This lot, this unprincipled, unethical bottom swill, come in here and try and get a political advantage by attacking those kids, making those children out to be terrorist risks for their own narrow political advantage. I don't know what the discussion in the coalition party room was before this legislation came forward, but, if you came together as a collective and you supported this unconstitutional, vicious attack on kids, and said, 'Yep, we can try and wedge the government on this; we can try and wedge other politicians on this by having no standards—zero ethical standards and zero legal standards,' then you deserve your disappearing voter base, you deserve the contempt of the Australian people and you absolutely, collectively, have the contempt of the Australian Greens for what you're doing.

Unlike those who want to demonise these kids and demonise their mums, I've actually been over into north-east Syria. I've been to the camp. I've been across the border, gone through the desert and seen the appalling conditions that these Australian women and children are being held in.

I've spoken to the administration in north-east Syria. Do you know what they say? They say that Australia is a wealthy country, far wealthier than Syria, bigger than Syria, with far more resources.

They say: 'These are your women and children. You have far more capacity to bring them back and, if there are security risks, to assess the security risks and to give these children a chance.' They ask: 'Why is your government not doing this? Why is your parliament not doing this?

Why are you making this administration in north-east Syria, a country that is war torn, stripped of resources and has taken the brave steps of actually being out there and defeating ISIS, look after Australian women and kids?' They say: 'So many other countries have expatriated their women and children out of the region. Other countries are doing it and looking after them.

What is wrong with Australia?' They genuinely ask, 'What is wrong with your politics that you won't bring your children home?' What I had to say to them was: 'Our values'—Greens party values and, I think, those of millions of Australians—'say, "Of course we should be looking after our children," but the politics in the federal parliament is racist, toxic and Islamophobic.

There are parties in the federal parliament who call themselves "parties of government" but are far better known as the "war parties" who will actually be doing everything they possibly can to demonise these children and use them as a narrow political wedge to get a narrow political advantage in feeding racism and Islamophobia in the country.' They shook their heads.

They actually spoke about how, in north-east Syria, they've been trying to fight extremism, and they realised that they had to do what they could to re-educate and bring people back into their society. The scale of the problems they were facing dwarfed anything Australia was facing in terms of social cohesion and social harmony. I spoke to women from the Syriac women's council and from the Syrian Women's Council.

We sat down in a room, and they spoke about how ISIS had torn apart their families and killed their relatives. Some of the women I spoke to—for example, the Zenobia women's council, down in Raqqa, had been on the front lines fighting ISIS. I was in a room surrounded by images of martyred women who had been on the front lines fighting ISIS.

They all said: 'What are you doing here? Why aren't you bringing your children home?' Do you know what they also said? It's something you'll never hear from the coalition.

They said, 'There needs to be a pathway through, but you need to find a pathway through.' There were women there who had lost family members. They were going into these camps, having lost family members to ISIS, and were desperately trying to find ways to reintegrate and re-educate. The degree of sophistication and common humanity on the ground in Syria is putting to complete shame this obscene political attack we're getting from the coalition here.

People who have had their relatives killed by ISIS can see that you can't keep kids forever in a detention camp, and you can't keep their mums forever in a detention camp. They realise there has to be a way through. They can see it.

When this coalition, and their mates in One Nation, come in here and make these arguments about demonising people by calling them ISIS brides and bringing the kids up in this dehumanising, brutal language, they seem to forget who it was that defeated ISIS in the first place. Who has seen the greatest number of deaths from ISIS? Overwhelmingly, it's Muslim communities.

Whether they're Kurdish, Yazidi, Syriac or Arab, it has been Muslim communities that have been on the front line fighting ISIS. They're the ones who got martyred in battles in Kobani and in Raqqa. Muslim communities are the ones who have done it.

They've taken on ISIS, and they've fought and defeated ISIS. Those same communities are saying to us: 'Bring your children home. Bring their mothers home.' Unlike the armchair warriors in the coalition—who've never been on the ground, never spoken to the administration, never seen the kids and never seen the women—they've fought and defeated ISIS.

Unlike these unprincipled scumbags in the coalition and One Nation, they are saying, 'Bring the children and women home.' That's what they are saying. Senator Kovacic: On a point of order, I would ask that Senator Shoebridge withdraw his comment, which I consider to be an parliamentary. The ACTING DEPUTY PRESIDENT ( Senator O'Sullivan ): Senator Shoebridge, I ask you to withdraw the comment.

Senator SHOEBRIDGE: Sorry, what am I being asked to withdraw? The ACTING DEPUTY PRESIDENT: I'm not going to repeat it, but, for the good running of the Senate, if you could just withdraw, then you can continue your speech. Senator SHOEBRIDGE: I want to be clear, Acting Deputy President.

I would— The ACTING DEPUTY PRESIDENT: Just withdraw, Senator Shoebridge. It's pretty simple. Senator SHOEBRIDGE: They are my and my party's collective views about the motivation and the rationale of the collection that is the coalition.

Senator Kovacic: Acting Deputy President, I don't consider myself or my colleagues in the chamber at the moment to be scumbags, so I would like that to be withdrawn. Senator SHOEBRIDGE: So we can move on, I will withdraw. The ACTING DEPUTY PRESIDENT: Thank you, Senator Shoebridge.

You now may continue. Senator SHOEBRIDGE: Looking into the moral abyss that the coalition have generated with this legislation is hard, I understand, for the coalition. The complete lack of any kind of moral compass—I understand that it must be awkward to realise you belong to a party that wants to make political hay out of a six-year-old Australian kid that is trapped in a desert detention camp.

I understand that it's awkward to look into the moral abyss you've created for yourself, but have a good look at it. Because I have been over there. I've spoken to a little six-year-old Australian kid whose only life has been a desert detention camp.

She sat there in the meeting that I had with her mum, one of her aunts and another woman and drew a picture of Rapunzel and flowers, and she said that she just wanted to be free. She'd heard that there was grass in Australia, and you could run around on grass. I spoke to her mum and her aunt, who had been—there are no educational resources in the camp and it's unsafe for the Australian kids to go to school because they're seen as wanting to come home to Australia and wanting a life separate from ISIS.

They're actually under threat, and they can't even go to the rudimentary education camps that are there. I've seen the hand-drawn lesson plans that the mums and aunts were producing, trying to remember what their primary school lessons were, and hand-drawn images of the continents around the world or the different bones of the body or basic maths lessons. They're trying to give their kids some kind of future so that they can be ready when they come back to Australia to at least have some of the starting points to help their reintegration.

I've seen that. No-one in the coalition has seen that, but everyone in the coalition wants that little kid to spend the rest of her childhood in a desert detention camp. That's what you want to do.

I know it's awkward looking into the moral abyss that you have created for yourselves and that you don't have any boundaries to where you'll take this politics or how you'll demonise. I know it's awkward, but we're just reflecting it back to you, your own selves. You're being reflected back to yourselves.

Have a good hard look at where you want to take this country and your complete lack of any kind of moral limitations. I come back to this: this bill wants to make it a crime to help bring kids out of a conflict zone. I've seen the former leader of the coalition Michael McCormack go to events from Save the Children and talk about how amazing the work of Save the Children is and talk about how they do life-saving work across the world and their absolute commitment as the world's longest continuous charity focused on children.

I've seen that happen. I've seen the statements made by the former coalition leader. Now that same man and his party—I said coalition; I meant Nationals leader—wants to criminalise Save the Children.

They want to put the people that he was supporting in jail for up to 10 years. The Greens oppose this bill, and I'm glad to see Labor opposing the bill. I think Labor is opposing it because it's unconstitutional, but the Greens say, yes, the Australian government has an absolute obligation to keep Australians safe.

That includes the Australian kids and their mums and it extends to that. We don't have rules like the coalition about who is or isn't Australian. If you're an Australian citizen, the Australian government has an obligation to do what it can to keep you safe.

I think back about that little six-year-old who was on a bus a little while ago thinking that she might be free and then went back to the desert detention camp and who you want to keep in that detention camp. You know, she spoke with a really strong Australian accent because she's spent her life amongst the Australians in the camp on a street that's called Australia Street.

I asked her about the picture and I asked about what's in the picture. She was pointing at them and said, 'Oh, they're roses.' I said, 'Well, what do you think about them?' She said, 'I've never seen a rose; I've never smelt a rose.' That's the future you want for her. We despise you for it and we see you.

We oppose this bill.