On 16 May the Australian Senate passed a controversial Bill which excises mainland Australia from its migration zone. The effect of the legislation is that people arriving by boat will be processed at offshore facilities in Nauru and Manus Island (part of Papua New Guinea). The legislation is designed to deter asylum seekers from attempting to reach mainland Australia by boat.
The Green party Senator Sarah Hanson-Young proposed three amendments to the Bill – to allow access to detention centres for the media and for the Human Rights Commissioner and to remove all children from the detention centres on Nauru and Manus Island. All three amendments were defeated.
Senator Hanson-Young stated that the Bill violated Australia’s obligations under the UN Refugee Convention and dubbed the presence of children in offshore detention centres “child abuse by policy.”
Professor Gillian Triggs, the Australian Human Rights Commission President, expressed disappointment in the Bill stating, “In the Commission’s view, all asylum seekers who arrive in Australia should have their claims for protection processed under Australian law in a timely and efficient manner...They should be transferred into the Australian community unless they have been individually assessed as posing an unacceptable risk that justifies their detention.”
Click here to read a press release from the Australian Human Rights Commission.
The Australian Refugee Council called the move a “new low in refugee protection.” Amnesty International said that the law change “sends a clear signal to the region that it is perfectly acceptable to ‘chop and change’ legislation purely to serve political interests, at the expense of some of the world’s most vulnerable people.”
Click here to read an article in The Australian about the developments.