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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2003 Week 7 Hansard (25 June) . . Page.. 2487 ..

MR BERRY (continuing):

From information that I have gleaned from the Internet I understand that about 25 councils across Australia have already declared their towns as refugee welcome zones, which is the honourable thing to do. The principles that underpin these sorts of statements include: welcoming refugees into our community, upholding human rights

for refugees, demonstrating compassion for refugees and enhancing cultural and religious diversity in our community. Those are all things that we in the ACT say we do.

This motion, which is a strong statement from the Assembly, will back up those principles. After having had some discussions with the Chief Minister, I assure members that I do not believe that the government is backward on this issue. This government does quite a lot for refugees. I was requested to move this motion at a rally that was held on Sunday.

Since that time I have not been able to go through all the services that are provided for refugees but I have had a discussion with the Chief Minister who indicated a willingness to review the services that are available to refugees and to determine whether they reflect the sentiment of my motion. I trust that that will occur in due course and that we will hear more about it in the future. That is extremely important.

The rally on Sunday to which I referred earlier was attended by a number of brave souls-it was pretty miserable from time to time-and stirring speeches were made by some people experienced in the problems and the plight of refugees. Ms Tucker, who has a long association with the defence of refugees, spoke at that rally, as did Ms Dundas and others. So people are aware of the need to be more compassionate to refugees.

The Queensland government conducted a large inquiry into the refugee issue, in particular in relation to temporary protection visa holders. I do not know of the existence of similar documents in the ACT government service area. A number of issues were raised in that document, which is available on the website, but I refer only to the executive summary, which states:

The temporary protection visa was introduced to discourage unauthorised arrivals in Australia. TPV, temporary protection visa, entrants have been assessed as genuine refugees but they are provided protection in Australia for only three years. After 30 months TPV entrants have the option to apply for a permanent residency prior to the introduction of the TPV on all genuine refugees who are granted permanent residence.

The introduction of these temporary protection visas created problems for refugees who found their way to our shores. I refer also to some of the key findings of the research that is mentioned in the executive summary as I think it is extremely important in the context of this debate. Key findings of the research include:

The detention experience for most TPV entrants has left them feeling exposed, vulnerable, and disillusioned. Time spent in detention was marred by negligent treatment by staff, lack of information pertaining to release and lack of information about what is going on in the outside world. All interviewees had experienced or witnessed mistreatment of detainees by detention centre staff.

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