 The immediate question is that the amendment be agreed to. I call the member for Melbourne. Thank you, Deputy Speaker. I won't be supporting this motion and I'll be moving an amendment. This is the Labor government taking us back to John Howard when they should be taking us back to Malcolm Fraser. Most galling about this motion to reopen Nauru is that there is a better alternative available right now that would save lives, comply with international law and domestic law, be humane and march in the great tradition of Australian multiculturalism. That alternative is available if Labor had chosen to work with the grains on a more compassionate solution. But instead, as we just been reminded by the previous Speaker, we were faced with an intransigent government and minister insistent on no deal unless it included expelling people offshore to other countries. That is not something that is consistent with the conventions we've signed up to and it's not something that we're prepared to support. Now, casting one's mind back, I don't think there was anyone in this country who wasn't distressed and anguished at the reports in the sight of hundreds of people losing their lives as they struggled when their boats capsized as has happened on more than one occasion. I think everyone in this place and around the country grappled with the question how do we best stop people risking their lives at sea? Well, we hear a lot about the People Smugglers business model. If there is such a thing, the People Smugglers business model is based on desperation. It's based on people waiting in camps in places like Indonesia or Malaysia having fled persecution, torture, situations that we think are so bad that we send our troops overseas to fight, trying to find a better life. They may well have found themselves in the camp in Indonesia where there's over 8,000 people to find themselves joining the other 1,000 of those 8,000 who've already been declared to be refugees by the United Nations but who wait there for years and years and years because there's no proper processing system in place because this government and other governments do not do enough. Of course, when you've been waiting, having perhaps fled the Taliban, having perhaps fled the threat of execution, when you've been waiting for years to be taken to a better life and yet you find your hope diminishing day by day because there is no waterly process in the camp, there is no light at the end of the tunnel, you are stuck there and you wonder, am I going to be here for the rest of my life? People get on both and I would too. I would too and I reckon most people around this country would as well. If they'd been waiting desperately for years in a camp and someone came to them and said, look for a bit of money, I'll get you on a boat and get you out of here, people would snap it up and if I felt that that was the best way for me or my family to go to safety, I would probably do the same and I think most other people would as well. So if we really want to stop people getting on those boats, there is a simple answer. That is, give the people in the camps some hope by putting in place an orderly processing system in Indonesia or in Malaysia so that they see this light at the end of the tunnel and so that they understand, if I wait here long enough, my turn will come and so I won't risk my life on a boat. What would that mean? Well, that would mean in Indonesia where there's 8,000 people waiting, let's take a thousand of them now and let's beef up the processing capacity of Australia, of the United Nations right there in Indonesia so that we can process more people right there and then bring them to Australia safely and that is what all the experts told us and have told us for many years will stop people risking their lives in these desperate journeys. Now, during the course of this debate over many months and indeed today, we've heard that well this is a naive solution being proposed by the Greens. Well, Mr Deputy Speaker, it's a solution based on what we did in this country in the decade after the Vietnam War and our country is better for it. Our country is better for the fact that we took in between 19,000-100,000 refugees and their families in an orderly manner at the end of the war and settled them here through a regional processing arrangement. Now it wasn't easy and at the start of that process there was a lot of consternation about whether people were being treated fairly but it stopped people risking their lives on the boats. That is the best way to stop loss of life is to reintroduce a proper regional processing system. Now, Greens have been consistently advocating that and if that is a naive solution then that is a very short-sighted reading of Australian history because the solution that we have been advancing and will continue to advance is one that is based on appealing to the best in us in Australia and talking about what has worked and what we can do again and instead we've had a government who is intent on trying to outtough the coalition. Well, let me tell you, piece of free advice, that's a battle you can't win and if the government thinks that ultimately they have made a smart political decision then they are going to have to explain to the Australian population in a very short period of time why we now have people in as good as indefinite detention on island prisons or prison islands. Because that is one of the most worrying aspects of this approach from the government that over time is going to be subject to the scrutiny that it deserves. Because what the government has said is that there's a so-called no-advantage principle underlying this bill. Well, if you're serious about that then that means saying how long does someone wait in Indonesia? How long does someone wait in Malaysia? And let's make them stay in a prison or on an island for that length of time. And the figures that we've heard from the people who are actually working there in those camps is that that could be a decade, it could be longer. And it is appalling that this parliament is being asked to right now vote on a measure to send people to another country, to be detained there, without knowing how long they'll be detained there. And this is going to be something that will come back and haunt this government. I accept that this is a tough issue. I think if you don't think this is a tough issue, you're not paying enough attention. And I accept that there's probably no easy answer. This is a problem that's a global problem and one that we as a country have to manage. It's not a problem that's ever going to be solved because unless we make our country as bad as Afghanistan and unless our government becomes as bad as the Taliban, we are always going to be a more attractive place for people to come to. So the question is how do we, not how do we stop it, the question is how do we manage it? Do we manage it fairly or do we pretend that we can say we will take a tough approach? And one of the things that we must never forget is that this approach of deterrence just does not work. 353 people lost their lives coming here on the Civ-X when the full gamut of offshore processing and mandatory detention arrangements were in place. 353 people lost their lives. Why? Because as I said before, Australia with its democracy and its good standard of living will always be a more attractive place for people who are fleeing persecution. And so we would want it to be. And so people will continue to take to boats and people will continue to die. And it may be that if, as a result, people stop coming here, I don't think they will, but let's say they do. Let's take that argument through. People are still going to get on boats. They'll just go elsewhere. And so it might be that they die on leaky boats on the way to New Zealand or to Canada. If we're really concerned about people dying, which I believe everyone in this house is, then we should adopt a solution that is going to minimise the chance of people getting on a boat. And that is a regional processing solution where we take more people directly from the camps, where we process them there and bring them here. Now the amendment that I want to move is premised on this motion succeeding in this house. It's clear that Labor, because it chooses to work with the Coalition rather than working with the Greens on these questions, wants a John Howard-style solution and is going to get it through this parliament. So if it's going to go through, then we should at least ensure a minimum standard of decency. And we know from all of the mental health experts that if you lock people up indefinitely, it destroys them. And what they tell us is that really at an absolute outer limit, you do not want to have someone locked up in detention for longer than 12 months. So if this motion is going to get through, then there should be a cap on how long someone can spend in detention. At the very least, the minister should be able to come in here and tell us how long someone's going to spend in detention on Nauru, and the fact that he can't is shameful. So let's try and give some parliamentary oversight to it. So I move that all words after and, first occurring in Mr Morrison's amendment, be omitted with a view to substituting the following words, calls on the government to put in place a 12-month time limit on immigration detention in Nauru. Now that should be something that the government is prepared to accept. It's premised on them getting their way and offshore processing beginning, but it puts in place an outer limit that will ensure that people's mental health is preserved. If the government is not prepared to support a 12-month time limit on detention, and if they're not prepared to come in here and tell us just what the maximum is, then we are seeing a green light for an assault on the mental health of some of the world's most vulnerable people. How can we leave this debate and this parliament not knowing how long one of these people is going to be locked up? Ask yourself this, if you or your family was in the situation where you feared for your life, perhaps because you were politically outspoken, perhaps just because you found yourself in the wrong religion, and you find yourself on a boat through no fault of your own, but simply because you've waited for years in a refugee camp and don't think you're getting anywhere, and someone has said, let me find you a way out of here. How long, if it was any one of us here in parliament or our families, how long would we say it was okay for us to be locked up? Challenge anyone to be prepared to fully apply the perils of this no advantage test, so-called, and say that that means we'll lock someone up for longer than a year. But that unfortunately is, I think, the way the government has chosen to go. Disappointing given that we've got alternatives that are rich in our history that we could be adopting. And instead of going back to Fraser, we're going back to Howard.