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senate vote 2016-02-25#1
Edited by
mackay staff
on
2016-08-11 14:46:48
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Title
Bills — Migration Amendment (Protecting Babies Born in Australia) Bill 2014; Second Reading- Migration Amendment (Protecting Babies Born in Australia) Bill 2014 - Second Reading - Put the question
Description
<p class="speaker">Sarah Hanson-Young</p><p>I rise today to speak to the bill, which amends the Australian law to allow babies who have been born to those seeking asylum, who have been born in Australian hospitals and who have been issued with Australian birth certificates to be able to stay in Australia and have claims for refugee protection to be assessed here. The reason we need this bill is that the current government is currently considering deporting 39 little babies back from Australia to Nauru to be banished from any opportunity to be awarded a safe and secure childhood and future here in Australia.</p><p>This bill would amend the Migration Act to make it very clear that babies born here in Australia—in Australian hospitals and issued with Australian birth certificates—are not to be classified as unauthorised maritime arrivals. The reason we need this is because the government last year, in the haste of a High Court proceeding, moved legislation in this place to classify any child born in these circumstances to be recognised and characterised in the Migration Act as an unauthorised maritime arrival. This is just absurd.</p>- ### Motion text
- > *That the question be now put.*
<p>These children, safely born here in Australia, arrived just like every other Australian born baby. Currently in Australian law, they are now classified as unauthorised maritime arrivals. These babies arrived into the world safely here in Australia. They were born in the safety of Australian hospitals, with the care and support of Australian medical staff. The idea that they are characterised as arriving by sea is illogical and absurd. Just on those basic points, we need this legislation to amend this ridiculous situation that is currently on our statute books.</p><p>We know, of course, that the Australian public is very concerned right now for 39 babies—young children—who are in this situation, whose parents came to Australia by boat. They were transferred off to indefinite detention on Nauru. Because of a number of reasons, namely the lack of appropriate medical facilities and safe avenues for giving birth on Nauru, the mothers were transferred back to Australia and the babies were born here on Australian soil.</p><p>These children are now the subject of a huge political debate in this country. Malcolm Turnbull wants to send these children back to Nauru. The Australian people increasingly reject that proposition. Increasingly, people are arguing that surely an Australian baby, born here, should not just be given the opportunity to have a childhood free of the abuse of detention but also the opportunity—if they are indeed to be found in need of protection and they are refugees—to able to be assessed here efficiently and to be integrated safely in our communities. These children deserve the right to a childhood. I argue that there is no future for a child in detention on Nauru.</p><p>As I have said, there are 39 babies who are currently here in Australia. Thirty-seven of those were subject to the recent High Court legislation, and two are not. The fate of being deported back to Nauru faced them all. One of those little girls is Baby Asha, who we have learned a lot about in the last few weeks. She is a little girl who was born in Australia and sent back to Nauru. She has had to live the first six to eight months of her life in a tent in a detention camp on Nauru. Because of the unsafe environment and because the provisions provided to that family for their young daughter were nothing much more than a kettle inside a tent, that child has—as a result of an accident—had to be transferred back here to Australia for medical assistance.</p> <p class="speaker">Ian Macdonald</p><p>Please tell the truth.</p> <p class="speaker">Gavin Marshall</p><p>Order!</p> <p class="speaker">Sarah Hanson-Young</p><p>That little girl deserves, now that she is in Australia, our protection, our help, our care and our support.</p><p>The other baby I want to mention in this debate today is a little girl who I am going to call Mia, for the sake of protection and privacy in this place; that is not her real name. Little Mia is now just four weeks old. She is the youngest and most recent child to be born in Australia who faces the fate of deportation back to Nauru. I met little Mia last Friday. She is in detention here in Australia with her family. As a little four-week-old baby she is incredibly small and underweight. Her mother is stressed, depressed and very anxious about the fate that awaits them in being sent back to Nauru. I told little Mia's mother when I saw her on Friday that there are many Australians who will do everything they can to ensure that her little girl does not have to live her childhood in detention on Nauru.</p><p>This piece of legislation is part of the attempt to ensure that children and babies like Baby Asha and little Mia are able to stay safely in Australia while their parents' refugee claims can be assessed efficiently and fairly. If they are found to be owed refugee protection they should be allowed to stay, and of course no-one is arguing that if somebody is not a refugee they should get to stay here. You assess their claims and process their applications and if they are not refugees then you send them home. But keeping a small child, born into this limbo of uncertainty, in the abuse of detention is simply inhumane and unconscionable. As we know, many experts have come forward publicly in various Senate inquiries in this place that are continuing to gather more and more evidence. They speak out bravely about the conditions on Nauru for children, women and families being unsafe and dangerous. We know that Nauru is no safe place for these children, and we have a responsibility as Australian law-makers to ensure that we do not see a law that banishes a child, by virtue of who their parents are, to indefinite detention in a place that is now renowned for being abusive and dangerous and one that harms children.</p><p>It is indisputable that the detention of a child damages them. Every paediatric expert in this country who has visited Nauru and has treated children in detention knows that detention itself harms children. This is supported by the evidence collected by this Senate through its inquiry into the conditions in Nauru and the medical expertise and evidence put forward to the Human Rights Commission's report, <i>The forgotten children</i>. The immigration department's own Chief Medical Officer only two weeks ago said there was no doubt that detention is not good for children. The government's own advisers make it very clear that detention harms children.</p><p>In 2015 alone there were over 100 reported cases of self-harm on Nauru, including, sadly, children. Dozens of allegations were made in relation to sexual assault and abuse, including, sadly, towards children. And while we have these statistics—and these are of course the ones that have been reported—not one conviction has been made by the Nauruan police. So not only is it unsafe for these children, mothers and families to be in detention on Nauru but also there is no justice for them when something goes wrong. Of the children on Nauru, 50 per cent do not attend school. That is the evidence put forward by the department's own contractors at various Senate estimates and other inquiries.</p><p>It was interesting to read earlier this week some polling that was done in relation to Australians' attitudes to who they trust on this issue. Politicians and government officials are, not surprisingly, considered to be the least trustworthy when it comes to the issues facing children in detention. However, the people the public trust more than any others on this issue are the doctors—the medical experts. Overwhelmingly, the Australian public is starting to see that, if a doctor is saying that a child should not be sent to Nauru, it is about time the federal government listened.</p><p>Over the weekend, of course, we saw the President of the Australian Medical Association, Professor Brian Owler, be very clear in the AMA's condemnation of children being in detention and children being sent to detention on Nauru. The AMA has stated again that the detention of children is akin to state sanctioned child abuse. Those are incredibly strong words from that medical organisation.</p><p>Why do we have this situation where even Malcolm Turnbull, as the Prime Minister of this country, who said that no-one wants to see children in detention, is now turning a blind eye to the deportation of children back to Nauru and where children remain—a four-week-old baby girl remains—in detention? The reason is that those who support the detention of Baby Asha, little Mia and the 37 other babies born here in Australia, given Australian birth certificates but given no rights or compassion—the reason for their detention, for those who support it—is that we must do this in order to stop the boats. How absurd for a government to argue that, in order to stop the boats, we need to keep children locked in detention, in harm, in an abusive environment.</p><p>I do not believe at all that that is the only option available for saving lives at sea. If Malcolm Turnbull or anybody else in this government thinks that the Australian public and doctors are going to continue to buy the idea that we must harm these children and that their harm is simply collateral damage for a broader government policy, they are really misreading not just the complexities of this policy, not just the complexities of this issue, but the desire for compassion and care in the Australian people. It is not the only option. It is not the only way you protect people. And it is morally bankrupt to argue that a child deserves to be abused in order to protect other children. It is illogical; it is morally bankrupt; and the Australian public are waking up. They are absolutely waking up to this farce of an argument.</p><p>We do have the ability. This bill refers only to those babies born here in Australia. We have the ability to protect these children. If the argument is that giving four-week-old Baby Mia the opportunity to live a childhood free of detention, free of harm and free of abuse will open the floodgates to boats, if that is seriously the argument that this government wants to mount, it just proves how insincere, how blinded and how irresponsible this government really is. No-one can seriously argue about giving Baby Mia the opportunity of a childhood free of harm and free of abuse—that this child, who is already here in Australia, born in an Australian hospital, delivered by Australian doctors, should be classified as an arrival by sea. It is absurd. It is absolutely absurd.</p><p>There is a larger debate, of course, about what we do to ensure that the people who are detained on Nauru and Manus Island are looked after and that they are given the opportunity to have their claims assessed effectively, efficiently and with fairness and, if they are found to be refugees, given the opportunity of a future. That is a broader discussion and a broader debate, one that we must have in this place, but that is not what this bill today does.</p><p>This bill simply says that a child who is born in Australia in an Australian hospital is considered to be just like every other child delivered in the normal way and has the opportunity to have their claim assessed here in Australia. People may argue, and the government will—we will hear Senator Macdonald stand up shortly and say—that, if we give Baby Asha or Baby Mia the opportunity of a childhood, that will send a signal to people smugglers. That is what the government will say.</p><p>If you as a government cannot find a better way of managing people smugglers than abusing children, get out of the way and let some other people get on with doing it properly. It is absolutely unconscionable that we abuse children in order to allow the government to stand in front of a sign that says they stop the boats.</p> <p class='motion-notice motion-notice-truncated'>Long debate text truncated.</p>
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