Kylea shares her week on the campaign trail

I’ve had several conversations recently in our community about the latest Human Rights Watch Annual World Report. The report highlights “serious human rights issues” that tarnish Australia’s global standing, including our climate policy and treatment of asylum seekers and refugees.

I found the spotlight on asylum seekers particularly confronting, particularly at a time when Australia was making international headlines for the “Djokovic saga”. Djokovic’s case was fought loudly and publicly. There was court intervention, and eventually Ministerial intervention, before the tennis star was deported. In total, he spent 11 days in Australia, including five nights in immigration detention. People were equally outraged and dismayed.

Sadly, many of the people who arrive in Australia seeking asylum face far worse. Forty people are currently held indefinitely by our government in hotels, without recourse to a just process of review, at a cost of $450,000 per detainee per year. Then there is community detention – where the Biloela family is still facing an uncertain future – and various immigration detention centres in Australia and offshore.

In total, our approach to asylum seekers is estimated to cost taxpayers over $1 billion a year currently, and around $5 billion a year before Manus and Nauru stopped imprisoning detainees. To spend so much just to “punish” so few simply seems completely fiscally irresponsible and without any human capacity for compassion.

Australia needs to reform its immigration laws and what we do know is that this type of reform has only happened in the past when there has been a strong independent cross bench in place to pull the major parties to the table. Let’s be the change we want to see, North Sydney, and bring true leadership back to Canberra.