Backbencher says public opinion has shifted on mandatory detention of asylum seekers, that ‘the Australian people are standing up and saying nup, not on’
Russell Broadbent: unswayed by Nauru’s decision to allow asylum seekers free movement on the island. Photograph: Mike Bowers for the Guardian
Liberal backbencher Russell Broadbent has thrown down the gauntlet to his own side of politics by labelling the indefinite detention of asylum seeker children “unacceptable”.
Broadbent told ABC Radio on Monday morning that public opinion has shifted on the indefinite detention of asylum seekers, warning that politicians must keep up.
“Long-term indefinite detention is not good enough in this country. It always comes to this; I knew it would come to this. It’s come to this again. The Australian people standing up and saying nup, not on. Not in our country,” he said.
“Indefinite detention is not acceptable, we’ve been through this before,” the backbencher said. “Women and children in detention behind razor wire in this country or locked away on an island is unacceptable.”
He was not swayed by Nauru’s recent decision to allow asylum seekers free movement on the island at all times, saying that being detained on Nauru was itself a problem.
Broadbent was responding to a protest mounted by medical staff at the Royal Children’s Hospital in Melbourne over the weekend. Around 1,000 staff members protested against the return of minors to offshore detention facilities, saying they can not effectively be treated while locked up.
“These people are not leftie activists,” Broadbent said. “The Australian people, through the children’s hospital, have shifted. And they’ve said, our detention policies are not good enough.”
“When the people shift, the politicians will shift and they will understand they need to do something in regard to long-term detention. I know the government is going to enormous efforts to resolve this issue in this nation,” he said. “I know the prime minister himself would like to see children out of detention. I think the government are going to every length they possibly can to do this.”
Broadbent has spoken out against his own side’s asylum seeker policies.
In 2006, Broadbent crossed the floor and voted with Labor against the excision of Christmas Island for migration purposes. The legislation passed the House of Representatives, but was pulled when another Liberal backbencher, Judith Troeth, threatened to cross the floor of the Senate and vote it down.
Similar policy was then enacted when Labor was in office, in 2012.
The Greens have praised Broadbent’s intervention into the debate on immigration policy, with party leader Richard Di Natale echoing his sentiment that a shift has taken place in the public perception of asylum seekers.
“I think there’s a real shift going on in the Australian community, and Malcolm Turnbull better listen,” Di Natale warned.
The prime minister acknowledged that the government’s border protection measures were “tough”, but said that they worked in preventing asylum seekers from risking their lives on unsafe boats to get to Australia.
“Nobody wants to have children in detention: not me, not any member in this House, not any Australian. We have been working very hard to reduce those numbers,” Turnbull said during question time.
“We recognise that our border protection policy is tough. We recognise many would see it as harsh. But it has been proven to be the only way to stop those deaths at sea and to ensure that our sovereignty and our borders are safe.”
On Monday, Labor introduced a private members bill for the mandatory reporting of child abuse in onshore and offshore detention centres.
The bill will require detention centre staff to report suspected incidents of child abuse to the border force, who would then report it to local law enforcement authorities.
“The most important asset any nation has is its children,” the shadow immigration minister, Richard Marles, told the House of Representatives on Monday. “Immigration detention is absolutely no place for children.”
“Where children are in the care of our nation, we must take our obligations seriously and we must fulfil them very carefully,” he said, adding that the government must process claims quickly so that families do not “languish” in offshore detention centres.
Labor joined forces with the Coalition in June to vote down Green amendments on a bill on the funding of offshore processing that would have required the mandatory reporting of child abuse.
The Greens said that Labor was “playing catch-ups” on the policy, but questioned why they did not act when the amendment was before the Senate.
“They realise that we were right,” Greens senator Sarah Hanson-Young told reporters on Monday. “I’m thankful that the Labor party has seen sense.”
A spokeswoman for Marles said that the Greens amendment in the June bill was about the legality of offshore processing and “had nothing to do with mandatory reporting or conditions”.
“It was purely about closing a loophole,” the spokeswoman said of the bill. “We indicated at the time we would be happy to look at this issue as a stand-alone.”
The Greens will introduce legislation to the parliament to release all asylum seeker children from detention.
“Members of parliament often say they don’t want children behind bars, but talk is cheap. We need to change the law to ensure that children are protected and not detained,” Greens senator Sarah Hanson-Young said. “The detention of children is institutionalised abuse and every day that those kids are left in there is another day of harm.”