Senator BARTLETT (4:58 PM) —Just for the record: the Democrats are happy to support this amendment. I think there will be a few amendments coming forward over the course of this debate that are derived from what are being called the Georgiou bills. The Democrats’ view—as it has been on a whole range of legislation and amendments across a range of areas over many years—is that, if an amendment moves something in a better direction and gets it closer to what we believe is a desirable outcome, then we are likely to support it. Therefore we support this.

Without pre-empting debate on the Labor Party’s amendments relating to children, I think both of them are slightly problematic in a best case scenario in that the Democrats’ view is that the principles surrounding detention should be ones that move away from mandatory detention, ones that move away from the inherent problems of indefinite detention, tacking on special arrangements to soften the position for children and families. Aligning it to an existing regime that is fundamentally flawed is understandable and we support that, but I think the core point needs to be made—whether in this amendment or in future ones—that the Georgiou bills themselves were a compromise, in my view. It may even be the case—I cannot speak for Mr Georgiou—that he assessed them as not necessarily going as far as what he thought was ideal, but as far as what he thought would be reasonable for the government to accept. That is a bit of speculation on my part but, certainly from the Democrats’ point of view, the bills themselves were compromises. Obviously, the agreement that Mr Georgiou and his supporters chose to make with the Prime Minister was, again, a compromise on that compromise. It is still a step forward and therefore worthy of some plaudit, but it is still short of what needs to happen.

To avoid repeating myself throughout this debate, the Democrats will support amendments linked to the Georgiou bills, despite the fact that we believe the Georgiou bills themselves fell short of what is needed. Anything that moves us forward is desirable and this amendment does that. The real problem of setting up special arrangements probably goes more to Labor’s amendments regarding just children and families which, to some extent, is inherent in the subtext of the bill before us as well. It potentially creates a perception that detention is okay for adults but not for children. I know that is not what this amendment suggests. I do not seek to portray it that way, but prolonged detention is damaging to everybody and we need to re-emphasise that. The Democrats do not oppose immigration detention per se, as long as it is properly defined, has the rule of law surrounding it, is not long term and is not indefinite—unless there are clear health or security risks to the community. In relation to all such amendments that will come forward throughout the day, the Democrats are willing to support them.

I should emphasise, as I suspect is the position of some others in this chamber, that we are not wanting to put ourselves or the chamber in a position where we are being accused of stopping legislation passing and keeping people behind the razor wire. If the government refuses to accept these amendments in the other place then that would certainly inform our position, were the bill to come back here. But, as it is appropriate for the Senate to put forward improvements to legislation and ask the other chamber to consider them, in that context we would support this amendment.