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Labor conference: Ged Kearney says refugee platform will prevent torture and cruelty – live
Labor conference: Ged Kearney says refugee platform will prevent torture and cruelty – live
(35 minutes later)
The anti-discrimination platform looks like this:
So the vote is lost, but only just
*Labor believes no faith, no religion, no set of beliefs should ever be used as an instrument of division or exclusion, and condemning anyone, discriminating against anyone, vilifying anyone is a violation of the values we all share, a violation which can never be justified by anyone’s faith or belief. Accordingly, Labor will review national anti-discrimination laws to ensure exemptions do not place Australians in a position where they cannot access essential social services. review anti-discrimination laws to ensure that exemptions do not apply to employment in, access to and the delivery of essential social services.
192 in favour
*After paragraph 32, add the following 3 paragraphs and renumber accordingly:
195 against
33. Labor is committed to a social security system which keeps people out of poverty, whether they are unemployed or in retirement, that is why the previous Labor government undertook a review of the age pension and increased the rate of the pension so that Australians could have a decent life in retirement.
The vote count is still going on:
34. Labor notes that after a quarter of a century with no increase to the rate of Newstart payments, the level of income for unemployed Australians is shamefully low by international standards.
First actual count ... should Labor commit to a human rights charter? #labconf18 pic.twitter.com/dTKAhPt4k8
35. Labor will urgently complete a review into the inadequacy of Newstart payments and make recommendations within the first 18 months of government, on how best to address this. The review should include broad consultation and surveying of unemployed Australians about how the low rate of Newstart impacts on their health, ability to re-enter employment and to afford basic necessities, with the responses to be publicly reported.
The Australian federal police have released this on the Andrew Broad referral:
*Amend paragraph 229 to read:
The AFP can confirm it received a referral from Andrew Broad MP on 8 November 2018, and assessed the information provided.
Labor will ensure all couples whether married or de facto do not suffer discrimination. Labor is proud to have led the fight for marriage equality through collective action, quality campaigning and a commitment to equality for all. Without Labor, and without the trade union movement, marriage equality would not have become a reality for LGBTIQ Australians on 9 December 2017. Labor welcomes and celebrates the achievement.
· No applicable offences under Australian law have been identified.
*Amend paragraph 158 as follows:
· No further comment will be made at this time.
There is a significant connection between homelessness and people being subjected to discrimination and harassment for being same-sex attracted or transgender and, specifically understands the discrimination and exclusion affecting transgender people seeking to access support. Accordingly, Labor will work with affected communities to enhance housing support for LGBTIQ Australians.
Did you note the date? Michael McCormack said he found out “a couple of weeks ago”
*Amend dot point 6 in paragraph 180:
Meanwhile, Peter Dutton has responded to Labor’s announcements from this morning. He is not happy:
The impact of gender inequality is compounded for women experiencing intersecting disadvantage and discrimination, including First Australians, culturally and linguistically diverse women, women with a disability, rural and regional women, lesbians, bisexual women and transgender and gender-diverse or intersex people.
Labor’s announcements today on its proposed actions to protect Australia’s borders are nothing but subterfuge.
*Amend paragraph 207 by adding Q after LGBTI
Bill Shorten is promising to do this and he’s promising to do that, but what he won’t promise to do is maintain the Coalition’s strong border polices that have stopped the boats.
Where adoption arrangements already exist between Australia and other countries, Labor will seek to ensure these arrangements are expanded to allow for inter-country adoption by LGBTIQ parents on an equal basis to cisgender heterosexual people. Where Australia seeks to enter into new inter-country adoption arrangements, Labor will seek to ensure all new agreements treat LGBTIQ parents equally.
In fact what he has committed to is unravelling Operation Sovereign Borders – the Coalition’s successful policy – that stopped the boats after Labor’s last disastrous term in government.
*Amend paragraph 225:
There are three crucial pillars to Operation Sovereign Borders (OSB) – boat turnbacks, regional processing and temporary protection visas (TPVs) – Labor opposes two of them.
Labor will continue to prohibit discrimination on the basis of a person’s sexual orientation, gender identity or intersex status, and the removal of will remove such discrimination from Commonwealth legislation.
It has previously announced it will remove TPVs.
And all have been carried (although there were also some passionate speeches to raise the Newstart rate)
Today its national conference will confirm the end to offshore processing via its support for legislation that contracts out Australia’s border protection to activist doctors, who via Skype, will decide that illegal arrivals in Manus and Nauru must come to Australia.
The Labor conference will have a special guest tomorrow.
Who would believe Bill Shorten’s assertion that Labor will continue to turn back boats. That was Kevin Rudd’s lie in 2007 – just as it is Bill Shorten’s lie in 2018.
Kevin Rudd will arrive in Adelaide tomorrow to accept his life membership to the Labor party.
Who can forget the almost daily arrival of a people-smuggler’s boat – 800 of them under the last Labor government – bringing 50,000 illegal arrivals or the 1,200 dying at sea as their flimsy boats were smashed to pieces.
Julia Gillard will also receive life membership, but will not be here to accept it. We are told she is “thrilled”.
It has taken five years and over $16bn so far to clean up that mess from the Labor years.
The motion which will accompany the life membership reads as:
Australians continue to pay for it today.
“The party recognises the extraordinary contribution that the Labor prime ministers make to Australia and the Labor Party by bestowing lifetime membership of the ALP on former Labor prime ministers.
Labor’s announcements are an implicit recognition that their policy changes will put people smugglers back into business – OSB is a Joint Agency Task Force drawing upon 16 agencies including a network of 38 AFP officers across Asia. Labor says they’ll spend more on the Australian federal police, yet when last in government they cut its budget by $128m.
Bill Shorten wrote to the former prime ministers:
Worse, they slashed $735m and 700 staff from the then Customs – now Border Force.
“It’s my view, that, as a party, we have not always done enough in the past to recognise and pay proper respect to Labor leaders who have led our party and our nation as prime ministers.
Labor today talks about increasing Australia’s humanitarian program – yet in the Rudd-Gillard years it got pushed aside as Australia was swamped with illegal arrivals.
“I hope this can be an opportunity for all proud Labor members to acknowledge your service in a spirit of unity and solidarity.”
The special humanitarian program fell from 4,700 in 2007 to just 500 in 2012-13 while the number of illegal arrivals taking their places rose from 200 to almost 5,000.
That is the first motion which has been lost this conference.
By stopping the boats the Coalition government restored integrity to our migration programs and increased the refugee intake by more than 35%, making Australia one of the most generous resettlement nations in the world.
It is lost on the voices. There is no vote.
That again is at risk if Labor does not commit to all three pillars of OSB.
This is the final one:
Bill Shorten could just state that he is committed to the policies of Operation Sovereign Borders that have stopped the flow of boats and illegal arrivals.
Labor will abolish the fast-track assessment process. Those who have had their claims rejected under the unfair fast-track assessment process will be provided with access to an independent merits review.
His failure to do so is acknowledgement that Labor does not have the mettle to maintain the tough policies needed to protect our nation’s borders.
Shayne Neumann asks delegates to vote no, saying it would put undue burdens and stress on the legal system.
Australians learned the hard way under Kevin Rudd that Labor cannot be trusted to keep the boats stopped.
A very rousing “aye” greeted the previous refugee amendments and they are carried.
The right have the numbers, so it should be lost. Unless, some cross the floor.
The next motion to be discussed is this one:
It is the first vote of the conference.
* Labor will abolish the fast-track assessment process. Those who have had their claims rejected under the unfair fast-track assessment process will be provided with access to an independent merits review.
There is a show of hands. Wayne Swan calls it for it to be lost.
And then that is it – the conference will move on to the NDIS.
He tries to move on but is overruled.
Ged Kearney introduces the motions with this speech. As she got to the end, her voice broke with emotion:
They go to a vote.
I want to thank you, all of you.
The motion is lost on the voices ... but they want a show of hands.
We can be proud of one of the most progressive Labor policies on refugees and asylum seekers we have seen for a long time.
Delegate Verity Firth is telling the room Labor has waited “long enough” and it is time to “take the next step in our national legacy”.
It has accompanied a big shift in community sentiment amongst the Australian people.
Mark Dreyfus is asking for delegates to reject the amend, and not pre-empt the outcome of the review he has proposed.
I want to acknowledge the Kids Off Nauru campaign, Grandmothers Against Kids in Detention, Mums 4 Refugees and so many activists, young and older, who have worked hard to have that conversation with the Australian people. And I want to especially thank Labor for Refugees.
This one should be interesting:
And I want to thank my colleagues in the Labor party who have also worked hard, who have listened and acted.
Labor will:
To Shayne Neumann I’d like to say we have come on a long journey to this point today and I thank you for what you done to help get us here. If I reflect on where we started even less than a year ago, I can see mountains have moved.
Consolidate federal anti-discrimination laws into a single act to remove unnecessary regulatory overlap and make the system more user-friendly;
We have heard throughout this session the advancements this policy makes and that under a Labor government the lives of refugees and asylum seekers will be better, so much better than it is now.
Review legislation, policies and practices for compliance with the seven core UN Human Rights treaties to which Australia is a party (which are listed in the framework); and
But we cannot let this conference pass without talking about Manus and Nauru.
Review the Human Rights Framework and consider whether it could be enhanced through a introduce a federal statutory charter of human rights or other similar instrument.
They will not languish indefinitely not knowing their fate.
It’s always a debate between the left and the right. Watch for it to maybe go to a vote.
That is what Labor is about. We must strive for that light on the hill, to make people’s lives better. As I have said before, we don’t always get all the way to that light, but we strive every day to get closer and closer.
Emily’s List has moved this motion, which has been passed without a vote
Whilst I know this motion is not perfect, and many may argue that, including me, it does get us closer and it is an important statement because we need this on the record from this conference.
After existing paragraph 188, add:
We cannot continue to sit by while this government tortures people on Manus and Nauru with indefinite detention and it must be condemned.
Labor recognises that the annual rate of violent death and injury of women is an unacceptable national crisis. Labor will work with OurWatch, ANROWS and Crime Statistics Australia to collect, publish, promote and monitor data on violence against women. It will also work with states and territories to ensure funding to collect data and prevent violence is sustained and enduring.
Enough is enough.
(submitted on behalf of Emily’s List Australia)
The cruelty of Dutton and Morrison is intolerable.
The exhibition All We Can’t See was a culmination of all we know of the pain and suffering of people on Manus and Nauru.
We have heard from MSF, from the AMA, from children’s advocates and NGOs.
I called an emergency meeting with three days’ notice in my electorate and 80 people showed up ... This government can and must act immediately to take up the offers from New Zealand.
They can and must hasten resettlement to US.
They can and must prioritise other resettlement options in conjunction with this.
They can and must support the medical evacuation of all refugees who need treatment to Australia with their families.
And they can and must support people seeking asylum and refugees when they are here in our community, amongst us.
They can and must restore hope.
Because it is absolute loss of hope that destroys people, that breaks them.
Labor, if elected, will do this. We understand this is a crisis.
We will make it an absolute priority to settle refugees on Manus and Nauru to safe and permanent homes.
We will ensure all refugees and asylum seekers are treated with respect, their dignity is maintained and they are kept safe. That is their human right. It is not too much to ask. This is our commitment to them.
I am so proud to stand here today and say that.
I recommend this resolution to you.
Those motions are also carried without debate and we move on to this motion from Ged Kearney:
Labor recognises that successive Coalition governments have failed to negotiate viable, timely and durable third-country resettlement arrangements. This has left refugees and asylum seekers including children languishing in indefinite detention.
This conference condemns the failure of the Abbott-Turnbull-Morrison government to properly manage off-shore processing and regional resettlement adequately and for playing with the lives of vulnerable people.
This conference calls on the Abbott-Turnbull-Morrison government to immediately accept New Zealand’s generous offer to resettle refugees by negotiating an agreement on similar terms and conditions as the United States arrangement.
If elected, Labor will prioritise the resettlement of all eligible refugees currently on Manus and Nauru to the United States, New Zealand and other third countries.
The conference stays on refugee issues, with these motions up next:
* Labor will appoint a special envoy for refugee and asylum seeker issues with responsibilities for advancing Australia’s interests and ensuring Australia plays a global role in the resettlement of displaced people.
*As the government should have done, Labor will refer the United Nations Global Compact on Migration for consideration through the proper parliamentary committee process. (which was changed from this: Labor will continue Australia’s contribution to international aid efforts to reduce the risk of displacement and to alleviate the pressing humanitarian needs of displaced persons).
There are cheers as the below refugee motions are passed:
* Labor recognises that successive Coalition governments have failed to negotiate viable and timely regional resettlement arrangements, which has left refugees and asylum seekers including children languishing in indefinite detention. Labor believes that whilst these arrangements are negotiated, the Australian government is not absolved of its obligation to provide appropriate health, security and welfare services to asylum seekers. Labor will:
work to negotiate on, and agree to, regional resettlement arrangements and resettle eligible refugees as a priority;
continue to support the United States Refugee Resettlement Agreement and accept New Zealand’s generous offer to resettle refugees by negotiating an agreement on similar terms as the United States Agreement; and
ensure appropriate health, security, and welfare services for asylum seekers; and including access to medical transfers when treatment is recommended by appropriate medical practitioners whilst resettlement arrangements are negotiated.
improve the medical transfer process, establish an Independent Health Advice Panel to provide medical advice and maintain ministerial discretion in all decision making.
*Labor aspires to progressively increase the community sponsored refugee program intake to 5,000 places per year. (previously was this: Labor aspires to progressively increase Australia’s government funded humanitarian intake to 27,000 places per year)
*As soon as the reasons for mandatory detention have ceased every effort must be made to remove asylum seekers from immigration detention centres through community detention or the granting of bridging visas with work rights. Means-tested access to migration assistance, along with access to appropriate social services, will be provided while the merits of an asylum seeker’s application are assessed. People seeking asylum will have means-tested access to funded migration assistance, and to appropriate social services, including income, crisis housing, healthcare, mental health, community, education and English as a second language support during the assessment of the claim for protection.
Dipping back to Myefo for one moment – remember those tax cuts we were speculating about?
MYEFO shows income tax receipts $3.6b lower over coming 3 years than was forecast in May. Suggests further or faster income tax cuts on the way. https://t.co/nzYpGvPVsf
Ged Kearney is moving this motion:
As soon as the reasons for mandatory detention have ceased every effort must be made to remove asylum seekers from immigration detention centres through community detention or the granting of bridging visas with work rights. Means-tested access to migration assistance, along with access to appropriate social services, will be provided while the merits of an asylum seeker’s application are assessed.
People seeking asylum will have means-tested access to funded migration assistance, and to appropriate social services, including income, crisis housing, healthcare, mental health, community, education and English as a Second Language support during the assessment of the claim for protection.
She describes the government’s asylum policies as “cruel” and says she “wept” when she saw the Peter Dutton budget cuts for migrant services.
(Labor recently helped the government pass longer wait times for migrants to access Newstart. It says it was to stop a worse deal, but the crossbench claimed it had the numbers to stop it all)
The last motions before the refugee amendments are moved are up.
This one potentially has issues for ride-share companies:
Labor will act to eradicate the exploitation and wage theft experienced by temporary migrant workers – working closely with trade unions – by introducing a range of measures that deliver increased protections. Measures will:
manage information exchanges between the fair work ombudsman and the Department of Home Affairs to prevent exploited migrant workers from unwarranted deportation and protect migrant workers who can come forward without fear to ensure investigations and prosecutions of employers;
explore reforms to visa laws to allow migrant workers who have been exploited or underpaid to remain in Australia until the relevant legal processes for recovery of their lost wages and conditions to be finalised;
protect international students from exploitation and reduce the ability for businesses to use the cash economy to systematically ignore minimum award entitlements and exploit vulnerable workers;
deliver better protections to working holiday visa holders who are subject to exploitation and underpayment;
ensure employers – not workers – are the focus of exploitation investigations;
increase fines for employers who breach obligations and employ people without work visas; and
protect migrant workers from harassment, bullying, discrimination and unsafe practices.
manage information exchanges between the fair work ombudsman and the Department of Home Affairs to prevent exploited migrant workers from unwarranted deportation and protect migrant workers who can come forward without fear to ensure investigations and prosecutions of employers;
explore reforms to visa laws to allow migrant workers who have been exploited or underpaid to remain in Australia until the relevant legal processes for recovery of their lost wages and conditions to be finalised;
protect international students from exploitation and reduce the ability for businesses to use the cash economy to systematically ignore minimum award entitlements and exploit vulnerable workers;
deliver better protections to working holiday visa holders who are subject to exploitation and underpayment;
ensure employers – not workers – are the focus of exploitation investigations;
increase fines for employers who breach obligations and employ people without work visas; and
protect migrant workers from harassment, bullying, discrimination and unsafe practices.
Pat Dodson is introducing this motion:
Labor supports the recognition of First Nations peoples in the Australian constitution. This will be an important step towards a more reconciled nation based on strong relationships of mutual respect. Labor supports meaningful and substantive change to recognise the unique and special place of First Nations peoples and to reflect our nation’s fundamental belief in equality and non-discrimination.
Labor will develop a concrete proposition implement the Uluru Statement from the Heart’s sole proposal for constitutional recognition – including a First Nations Voice for First Nations Peoples to Parliament – in genuine partnership with First Nations peoples as well as building public support for change.
And the final draft on the fast track assessment process is:
Labor will abolish the fast-track assessment process. Those who have had their claims rejected under the unfair fast-track assessment process will be provided with access to an independent merits review.
Labor is committing to keep music venues open:
Australian stories being created and told by Australian performers and crew in Australian music, film and television production; and
Strong local markets supporting the Australian music sector.
A thriving grassroots music scene, keeping venues open and musicians in work, to allow our music sector to reach its full potential.
This chapter is what the Labor delegates have been referring to as the “heart and soul” of the party.
It’s Newstart and migration policy and human rights.
