August 7, 2023
Anthony Albanese will face pressure at Labor’s national conference in Brisbane to establish a royal commission into the cost of Australia’s mandatory detention system focused on a “culture of truth telling and reconciliation”.
Labor for Refugees – made up of ALP members and unionists – will move a motion for the new platform to bind a newly elected Labor government to establish a royal commission within six months of winning a second term.
The royal commission would have the scope to look into the former Coalition government’s track record in onshore and offshore detention, according to the group’s submission obtained by The Australian.
In a separate private briefing note sent to members, Labor for Refugees lashed out at changes to the draft national platform, setting up a showdown over a contentious boats policy at this month’s national conference.
The group criticised the draft platform’s mention of temporary protection visas – which Labor abolished in February – and the continuing use of hotels as a place of detention.
Labor for Refugees has been calling on the Prime Minister to close all Australian facilities on Nauru and resettle any asylum-seekers remaining there or in Papua New Guinea.
The group has also urged Mr Albanese to commit to never re-establishing, expanding or promoting offshore detention.
It has also agitated for Labor to release all asylum-seekers now in detention into a community-based processing system, and commit to resettle all newly arrived refugees in “urban-based reception centres”.
Home Affairs Minister Clare O’Neil said the Labor Party was “a democratic party which holds open and transparent debates about policies and issues affecting Australians” but cabinet would ultimately set the policies.
With Labor’s Left faction poised to take control of the national executive, the party’s membership is likely to push the government to adopt a more left-wing agenda.
Labor for Refugee’s private briefing is critical of the draft national platform’s mention of the use of hotel detention for asylum-seekers. This is despite revisions to earlier drafts in a bid to limit the use of hotels as “alternative places of detention” and a reinsertion of a clause from the party’s 2021 platform endorsing community-based assessment as “the most reasonable, humane and cost-effective approach”.
In the briefing note, the group references a note from the Labor for Refugees Victorian branch that describes use of hotel accommodation for Covid quarantine as a “massive public policy failure”.
“L4R (Vic) members from direct experience are painfully aware of the shocking conditions and situation for the refugees … detained for prolonged periods at the Park Hotel in Melbourne,” it reads. “On these grounds we are thus concerned to see a new clause appearing in the draft 2023 platform endorsing the use of ‘hotel-like accommodation’ as an alternative place of detention”.
Opposition home affairs spokesman James Paterson said Ms O’Neil was under “massive pressure from the Left of her party to water down Australia’s successful border protection policies”.
He urged her to stand up to the Left faction or risk restarting the “misery” of the human trafficking industry that surged when Labor was last in power.
“Already the Albanese government is abandoning temporary protection visas, one of the three key pillars of the Operation Sovereign Borders policies introduced by the previous government,” he said.
“The minister has also publicly trashed regional processing, another pillar. Only boat turnbacks remains without tampering but who knows for how long.
“The minister must stand up to the Left of the party otherwise we will be back to the human tragedy and misery of a revived human trafficking industry we saw when Labor was last in power.”
