Labor’s day of ‘exquisite ironies’, hypocrisy and disappointment

For a government that has to all appearances fashioned itself as the direct antithesis of the politics of division and hate, critics say the return to full parliamentary business on Tuesday was an unedifying day laden with dashed hopes, disappointment and hypocrisy.

The Albanese government was scarcely halfway through the second parliamentary sitting day of the year when it suppressed debate over offshore detention, pitching itself as one with the former government’s hardline immigration policies and, in the process, raising the ire of the crossbench.

Rising to oppose the gag motion, independent MP Andrew Wilkie told the House the move was a lost opportunity to reckon with several years of failed, inhumane refugee policies under governments of all persuasions.

“This was an opportunity to think afresh,” he said. “This was an opportunity to end offshore processing, to invent a humane and legal response — one that would just as effectively destroy the business model of the people smugglers [and would be] consistent with international law.”

While he had the floor, the member for Clark lamented the fact he’d twice introduced a bill to end indefinite detention, most recently six months ago, and both times had been thwarted by the united opposition of both major parties.

His dismay was reflected in the remarks of several other crossbench MPs, including Indi MP Helen Haines, who focused attention on the “excruciating and exquisite irony” in seeking to gag debate on offshore detention on the very day celebrated writer and refugee advocate Behrouz Boochani was speaking at Parliament House.

“Limiting debate on such important issues — particularly on sensitive an issues as offshore detention — is absolutely unacceptable,” she said, pointing out that while in opposition Labor had made “considerable noise” over the previous government’s cynical use of gag motions to shut down debate.

“There’s no way that issues of this gravity can be debated in such a short period of time,” she said. “I’m very disappointed, to be truthful, that [Parliament is] in this position again today.”

The motion rushed through both houses yesterday concerned the (formal) reauthorisation of offshore processing in Nauru for a further decade, after the relevant enabling legislation lapsed in October seemingly without notice or consequence.

Feeding the perceptions of the crossbench was the reality the motion was raised against the backdrop of a move by Greens Senator Nick McKim on Monday to bring the roughly 160 people who remain in offshore detention to Australia.

Speaking to Crikey, McKim said the combined force of Labor’s conduct in Parliament on Tuesday — with respect to offshore detention but also a separate move to widen the scope of its powers to deport non-citizens on character grounds — was “beyond embarrassing”.

“They had to defend offshore detention in front of Behrouz Boochani, who knows more about its horrors than most, then introduce legislation to give the immigration minister more powers to deport New Zealanders in front of the New Zealand prime minister [Chris Hipkins],” he said.

“People voted for change in May, but unfortunately they are getting more of the same. The government needs to stop using immigration detention and deportation as [a form of] secondary punishment.”

As reported by Crikey last week, the s501 deportation policy has, since its inception, disproportionately impacted New Zealand citizens, and has long placed Australia’s relationship with New Zealand under strain.

Noting this, refugee advocate Kon Karapanagiotidis said the government’s stance on immigration, including its s501 policy, would in time conspire to undermine the goodwill it had created with the release of a number of people from onshore detention in recent months, as well as the decision to abolish the Administrative Appeals Tribunal.

“Tuesday was a chance for [Labor] to show everyone that the days of being paralysed by the divisive, racist politics of fear around refugees and immigrants had long passed,” the Asylum Seeker Resource Centre chief executive told Crikey.

“This is a government that in opposition defeated the Coalition’s stricter character test bill and accepted it was unwarranted and unjustified. Now it’s doing the same.

“It’s true Labor has inherited 10 years of toxic dysfunction,” he added, “but there’s nothing but their own fear stopping them from showing some leadership [now].”

Independent Senator David Pocock, who attended Boochani’s historic speech on Tuesday, was of a similar view, telling Crikey that although Labor’s decision to shut down debate on offshore detention was to some extent predictable, it nevertheless sheeted home the failure of status quo immigration politics.

“Nauru was intended to be used as a regional processing facility, not somewhere that people seeking safety languish for years on end,” he said. “We can do better as a country and, clearly, we need a more humane and efficient way of dealing with refugees in our region.

“The last thing I want to see is a return to failed border policies of the past that cost hundreds of lives. However, at the same time it also makes no sense to be paying $420 million of taxpayer money over three years to detain a small group of people [in Nauru].”

Notwithstanding suggestions to the contrary, the Albanese government is yet to formally announce any move to grant the over 30,000 refugees subsisting on temporary visas permanent protection.