2018 has been a year of fighting for human rights, refugees, and Tasmania’s precious forests, mountains and coastline.
By Senator Nick McKim
2018 has been a year of fighting for human rights, refugees, and Tasmania’s precious forests, mountains and coastline.
We’ve held the line against an increasingly right-wing government, and the corrupting influence that corporate power is having on our democracy. We’ve had a few good wins to celebrate, with hopefully more to come in the future!
Immigration
The tragedy and the humanitarian calamity of offshore detention has worsened in the last twelve months.
Late last year I was on Manus Island when the Australian government ordered the withdrawal of food, drinking water, electricity and medication from over 600 people in the Lombrum detention centre. I was proud to represent Green members and millions of Australians by joining with the guys in their daily protest action, and helping to spread news of the crisis around Australia and the world.
The peaceful resistance to being moved to other (incomplete) accommodation was driven by five years of the deliberate dehumanisation and degradation that is a hallmark of Australia’s offshore prisons. By resisting, the guys were reclaiming their agency, and showing our country how violence can be met with peaceful dignity.
To bear witness to their bravery against overwhelming odds is something I will never forget.
The situation is just as bad on Nauru, where men, women and particularly children continue to suffer at this government’s hands. There are children who are in a catatonic state and desperately need medical treatment that is not available on Nauru, but the Liberals are fighting in the courts to prevent them from getting that support. It’s nothing short of child abuse and I have been calling it out as such.
We will continue to fight until every single child, woman and man is brought out of offshore detention and given the freedom and safety they need and so desperately deserve.
On a more positive note, the Greens led the charge in Parliament to defeat Peter Dutton’s hateful and divisive changes to citizenship laws. These changes would have imposed a university level English language test on potential citizens, made people wait much longer before they could apply to become a citizen, and given the Immigration Minister unprecedented powers to deport people. It was an attempt to reintroduce the White Australia Policy by stealth.
The Greens’ motion resulted in the Bill being struck from the Senate Notice Paper, which was the first time the government had lost control of the Notice Paper this century!
The added bonus was that it was Cory Bernardi who found himself sitting in the president’s chair and having to announce that the Bill was being struck off. I have rarely seen teeth clenched so tightly closed!
Justice
The removal of rights in the name of ‘national security’ continues apace, without any evidence that we are being made safer. The numerous Bills waved through parliament by the LNP and ALP in the last twelve months join over two hundred in the last twenty years that have passed through state, territory and federal parliament which erode fundamental freedoms and liberties.
Australia is the only liberal democracy in the world that does not have a Charter or Bill of Rights, and we will continue our campaign to enshrine and protect our fundamental rights and freedoms.
Small business
This year the Greens drafted prompt payments legislation to mandate timely payments from big business and governments to freelancers, contractors and small businesses. Small businesses should not be used as piggy banks by the big end of town, and we intend to introduce and debate the legislation before the end of the year.
Tasmania
We had a difficult state election, up against millions of dollars in dirty pokies money that flooded the state. This was nothing less than the outright purchase of an election outcome, and therefore a government, by predatory corporate interests.
Tasmania has no state-based donations disclosure laws, so we may never know how much was donated, or by whom.
Peter Whish-Wilson and I will continue to fight against corruption in our state, particularly those who are trying to privatise Tasmania’s precious wilderness, mountains and coastline to developers who will lock up public access and destroy our unique environment and way of life.