Senator MILNE (Tasmania—Leader of the Australian Greens) (16:33): I support the contention in this matter of public importance that the Abbott government failed to adequately respond to the tragic incident on Manus Island that led to the death of Reza Barati and the serious injury of many other asylum seekers. It is about time that the hypocrisy we have heard in this place is brought to the fore. What we need is a royal commission into what has occurred. We need an inquiry that has judicial powers and can bring in the documents and the evidence and give witnesses the protection they need. But there is not the will in this place to have the truth told in its entirety. That is because the Labor Party in government re-opened Manus Island and made all kinds of claims in this place. Go back to the debate, which I was reading through. I wonder how Senator Lundy feels now when you look at the claims she made defending the Gillard government at the time, saying that all of the conditions would be met and it would meet our human rights obligations. She listed all the things that would occur and she gave endless undertakings—all wrong. Then we had the next Prime Minister, Mr Rudd, engaged in a memorandum of understanding, and now we have disgraceful behaviour from the current minister and the government, and the cruelty goes on to the point where Reza Barati is dead. I have used the word 'murder' in his case, because what else do you call a situation when a person is in the direct care of the government of Australia and they are dead inside the compound and there are reports of people stomping on people's heads. That is not an accident. What do you call it if there is intent? Now I get to the reports that Senator Carr mentioned this morning on the question of whether G4S staff are to blame for the Manus Island violence—the reports that the G4S guards allegedly opened the doors of the camp to a local dog squad and PNG police and so on and so forth. They are the reports, but I want to go to a more fundamental question, because I am sick of hearing this in this place. We are supposedly breaking people and destroying their mental health. We end up with Reza Barati dead, 70 people in hospital, bashings and cruelty. Why? Because we are stopping people from drowning. That is why. That is rubbish. This is not about stopping people drowning, and it is about time that truth was told to power. That is outrageous. I want to go to that point right now. What has this government or the last government done to help people not get on boats? Number one: have they put more money into the UNHCR in Indonesia to assist? No, they have cut the funding. What about the humanitarian intake? Under the last government there was a promise to increase it, and what has this government done? They have decreased the humanitarian intake from 20,000 to 13,750. They have decreased the humanitarian intake and decreased the money in Indonesia. There is all the talk about people worrying about people drowning. That is not the case. You have never supported upholding the Safety of Life at Sea convention. When we questioned— Senator Seselja interjecting— The DEPUTY PRESIDENT: Order! Senator Seselja, I have noted your name is on the list. You will have an opportunity later. Senator Milne, you have the call. Senator MILNE: Thank you. I appreciate that, Mr Deputy President. When the SIEVX sank, 353 people died. Why? Because the Howard government had stopped a program of allowing family reunion. Women and children were on that boat because they had no other way of joining the rest of their family in Australia. That was a policy decision designed to stop families being together and people had no hope except to be on that boat. To this day, we do not know whether they were allowed to drown. That is a question I have asked for very many years. I am making this very clear. Senator Bernardi: That is shameful. Senator MILNE: It is not shameful; it is truthful. Senator Bernardi: You are a disgrace. The DEPUTY PRESIDENT: Order! Senator Bernardi, you are also on the list, I have noticed, so you will have an opportunity to comment. Senator MILNE: To this day, the survivors of the SIEVX say that a ship came and put lights on the water. They started shouting and swimming towards the lights. The lights went off and the ship went away. That is what the survivors say. What did Australia know about where they were? Why were the ships not dispatched to rescue them? To this day every inquiry we have tried to get up into the SIEVX has been blocked, and so it goes on. We are involved in a cover-up over what has gone on on Manus Island. I say that because you have Prime Minister O'Neill in PNG saying: Under agreement, all media queries relating to this deceased transferee are being handled by the Australian government. You have to direct your queries to Canberra … Then we have an Australian government statement saying: This is actually a police matter in PNG, so our role has been to support the PNG police in the investigation of a crime, and any matters that follow in relation to an autopsy or a coronial inquest are matters for the PNG government, and we have provided all the support that has been required for that. It is not a matter that is within our control. So the Australian government puts in a detention centre, does its memorandum of understanding, says it is going to be in control, says it can guarantee safety, and then disaster occurs and it immediately says, 'It's actually up to the PNG government.' The PNG government brings out a statement saying, 'It wasn't our police. No—everything on our end was fine.' This is a cover-up and that is why we need a royal commission to get to the bottom of it, but we need to close that centre right now. If you had any sense of decency and humanity, that is what you would do. I want to congratulate the 500 academics who signed an open letter to Prime Minister Tony Abbott. It says: We believe that the current approach to dealing with asylum seekers arriving by boat, especially offshore detention and claims determination, is seriously flawed and unsustainable. It breaches Australia's international legal obligations, including its obligations as a party to the Refugee Convention. It demonstrably harms the physical and psychological health of detainees. Furthermore, it seriously undermines the status and good name of Australia as an international citizen. We call on the Australian government to close the detention centres on Manus Island and in Nauru immediately. Yours sincerely— and it is signed by 500 academics in all kinds of academic pursuit around the country. I congratulate them and urge every Australian to stand up to this. It is a cover-up. We need it to be opened right up, but we need Manus Island and Nauru to be closed immediately. This is a disgrace to the nation. In future, people are going to look back and say, 'How did this parliament allow this to continue?' Frankly, Liberal and Labor are complicit in keeping Manus open and in keeping this an internal inquiry when it needs to be a royal commission.