The big political discussion over the past few weeks has centred around The Guardian‘s drop of the Nauru Files – over 2000 incident reports from the island detention centre which detail reports of abuse and violence against asylum seekers. The Government has opted for a brick wall approach to these concerns, with Peter Dutton outright denying the validity of the reports and the credibility of refugee claims.
The latest cab off the rank is Communications Minister Mitch Fifield who, as the only Coalition minister on Q&A last night, had to be the defender of government policy. He answered a question from Tracey Donehue – a teacher who worked on Nauru until November last year – who described incidences of violence that she herself had witnessed. “The government has again tried to absolve itself of responsibility,” she said.
Well, Fifield reckons there’s nothing “systemically wrong” in our offshore detention system, which the audience didn’t take well, with one person yelling “shame!”
Fifield tripped up here – he initially said that these issues are something for the Nauruan government to deal with, as the detention centres are on their sovereign soil. The implication was that while Australia is happy to investigate claims of abuse, ultimately it’s up to the local government to action it.
He then clarified that it was a “shared responsibility”, which drew jeers from the crowd when Tony Jones called him out.
Labor’s Catherine King swooped in to say that while Australia supports mandatory offshore detention, they want to maintain a modicum of decency in how refugees are treated. All well and good, but it’s worth remembering that Labor supports the majority of the incarceration regime here, and who knows what path they’d actually take on this were they in government.
Corinne Grant pointed out the very true point that the initial questioner had exposed herself to prosecution under our very restrictive whistleblower regime merely for asking the question and detailing the abuse she herself had witnessed.
“They don’t want you to know what’s happening in these centres, because if you did – if you genuinely knew what was happening to these people – no one in Australia would allow it to continue to happen,” Grant said.
“Every one of those 1313 people would be brought to this country immediately if we really knew what was happening to them.”
Source: Q&A.
Photo: Q&A.
