Senator STOTT DESPOJA (Leader of the Australian Democrats) (4:08 PM) —I rise on behalf of the Australian Democrats to support the matter of public importance put forward today by Senator Faulkner on behalf of the Australian Labor Party. Indeed, we are talking about an event that has involved duplicity and deceit. While I acknowledge the contribution of Senator Abetz to this debate, and his cautioning against hysterical terminology, I think this motion encapsulates what has indeed happened, and that is that the Australian public has been deceived in relation to this particular incident. This has been a broad campaign designed to demonise some of the most victimised and vulnerable people within our borders, and it was done for base political motives.

Throughout the recent federal election campaign, the Prime Minister and his senior ministers repeatedly claimed that children were thrown overboard from a suspected illegal entry vessel—that is, SIEV4. Time and time again ministers and the Prime Minister disparaged the character of these asylum seekers on board the SIEV4, feigning disgust that asylum seekers would endanger the lives of their own children by throwing them overboard. Senator Abetz refers to terminology; let us check the terminology. I am happy to move on to look at the report shortly, but I have been going through the transcripts and the newspaper articles from the time and they make it very clear that the terminology used was incredibly harsh, incredibly disparaging and, indeed, quite defamatory. I have a transcript from the Clark program on 2GB. The Prime Minister said:

He goes on:

He claims:

Mr Ruddock said, and I refer to reports on 8 October:

How was this evident? How was this clear to him on this particular date? I regard these statements as some of the most disturbing I have come across in the time I have been involved in public life. They go on. I can quote from Deputy Prime Minister John Anderson, who said on 12 October:

That is, the notion that boat people had, from time to time, thrown their children into the water. Quoting from the Verbatim column of the Australian on 11 October, our Prime Minister was asked about this particular incident:

He says:

I take on board Senator Abetz's point that just because you receive information you should not jump to a conclusion. Yet this government chose to jump to a damning conclusion that resulted in the waning of public sympathy for these refugees.

It appears from the report of the Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet that they had early doubts about the accuracy of the claims ministers had been making about the incident. The Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet contacted the Defence Strategic Command seeking confirmation— they wanted to know for sure—that children had been thrown overboard. On 10 October, the Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet was advised:

On that same day, the commanding officer of HMAS Adelaide reported to both Commander Northern Command and the Maritime Commander that it was apparent to him that no children had been thrown in the water. The Maritime Commander notified the Commander Australian Theatre of this advice. It beggars belief that the Prime Minister and the Minister for Defence, not to mention others, could continue to make outrageously false claims about children being thrown overboard—not just for a day, not just for a week, but for several weeks and throughout the duration of that campaign. It beggars belief that they could continue to do this without even being privately corrected by their departments.

The Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet knew, one month before the election result, that there was no evidence whatsoever to support the claims of children being thrown overboard, but we are asked to believe that at no time during that month was the Prime Minister advised that his repeated claims about this incident were false. It is very hard to believe that. This reeks of an exercise in utmost dishonesty.

Throughout the campaign the Australian Democrats were highly critical of the government's shameful exploitation of the asylum seeker issue. Not only that, our comments are on record at the exact time of this particular incident. When I was asked I said:

I know that the Democrats and I were ridiculed and condemned as a consequence. Some radio commentators, specifically John Laws, offered me and my party an apology on his program because he acknowledged that we got it right in the first place, and that is that you do not jump to conclusions unless you have the evidence, especially when that evidence was available, as it seems, all along. Yet the government, the Prime Minister and other ministers, continued and went along with the shameful exploitation and disparaging of asylum seekers and refugees. What is more, it seems to have been for a basic political motive.

Not only were the child overboard claims false but in current days it has emerged that the government's allegations that adult asylum seekers were forcibly sewing together the lips of children were also false; there was no evidence to substantiate those claims. That did not stop ministers not only of this government but of the South Australian government at the time making those claims. In addition, it appears that the Defence Signals Directorate, a clandestine intelligence agency, was used by our government to eavesdrop on communications to and from the Tampa during the asylum seeker crisis. This sort of activity is suspicious in the extreme. We are left with no other choice but to question why this action was taken and whether or not it was taken at the request of a government for party political purposes.

The government can choose to resolve these questions at any time by holding an independent public inquiry—that is, a publicly reporting inquiry. The public has to know the truth on this one. It has to have proper terms of reference. The government has not done so yet and certainly the Australian Democrats were quick, along with a number of concerned citizens, to ensure that Mr Blick, the Inspector-General, was advised of our request to investigate this matter. I am glad that that is happening, but it must be publicly available. This has to be resolved because it goes to the very heart of the issue of people's trust and people's faith in government. The government cannot simply expect that we as Democrats, the chamber, the Senate or, indeed, the public, can simply trust it, given its history of dishonesty, particularly in relation to these issues revolving around refugees and asylum seekers. I believe that public confidence in the government has been severely tarnished as a consequence of recent revelations.

We cannot afford to forget that most asylum seekers are genuine refugees fleeing persecution on the basis of their race, religion or political beliefs. The government seems to want the community to believe that asylum seekers are somehow barbaric individuals, that they are all criminals, that they would needlessly harm or endanger the lives of their children. I have to say on a personal note, having actually gone into a detention centre like Woomera and having seen and met with people who have had their lips stitched, that the last thing these people, particularly the women, want is to harm their children. A woman who spoke to me with her lips stitched at the time was saying, `I wouldn't do this to my children.' I saw the distress of the parents, men and women, about their children who were hunger striking. They said, `We're trying to force our children to eat. We don't want them to hunger strike.' We must be very wary of the motives we attribute to these people, or else we can just ask why they are doing these desperate acts of self-harm in this particular case. It is not simply the notion that they are attention seeking: it is because they are desperate—and for obvious reasons.

This government is locking up children for extended periods of time in inhumane conditions. It shows a disregard for the truth, a disregard for compassion, a contempt for the right of the community to honestly be informed by this government and a disturbing willingness to abuse power for partisan gain—I refer to those events that have been revealed over the last couple of days. The Democrats support this motion because we believe that deceit and duplicity have been shown in one of the worst political incidents in contemporary political history.