Senator REYNOLDS (Western Australia) (12:16): I too rise to speak on the censure motion today. I also would like to address the issues that Senator Collins raises in what she calls the erroneous and misleading testimony. I will go through this in detail. As a member of the Senate legal and constitutional affairs committees I very carefully went through the testimony from last week. There were no less than seven separate reasons given by the Human Rights Commission president on why the inquiry was called and four different answers about when it was called. That included five new reasons why Operation Sovereign Borders was, was not, was, was not and then was the reason and also about the supposed lack of information coming from the department of immigration. I will be going through all of those very carefully in terms of the facts, but I want to pick up a point from Senator Moore. I totally agree with what Senator Moore said at the end of her speech—that no-one still knows exactly why this inquiry was called. I think inadvertently she has absolutely hit the nail on the head in this debate.

I would like to share with my colleagues here in the Senate my thoughts on this issue. First of all, as a member of the legal and constitutional affairs committees I was not here for the November hearings because I was in the Solomon Islands observing the election. I came back and reviewed why the government had lost faith in the Human Rights Commission president and started to look at the contradictory testimony. Through the course of that I read the report when it was released. I also had a very close look at the president’s involvement in the protest group on this very issue. Right from the beginning I was a little perplexed at how an independent commissioner could also be a member of a very prominent protest group and saying things, ‘Prison wire and terrified kids, where better than this?’

Senator Singh: Mr Acting Deputy President, I rise on a point of order. I would like to know if the senator is actually going to address the censure motion and, if so, defend the Attorney-General or is she going to give some other kind of commentary that is completely superfluous to what we are debating here in the censure motion.

The ACTING DEPUTY PRESIDENT ( Senator Seselja ): Thank you, Senator Singh. There is no point of order. Censure motions are wide-ranging debates. Senator Reynolds is completely in order.

Senator REYNOLDS: So in preparation for estimates last week I also addressed the issue that is at the very heart of this issue, Senator Singh, with the secretary of the department of immigration. He provided some very pertinent information on this, which I will also come to. My comments today here in defence of the Attorney- General and the government have absolutely nothing to do with gender, as has already been alleged by those on the other side—that our position has been misogynistic and gender-based. I absolutely refute that.

My questions then and today went to the heart of two things: why this inquiry was called and when it was called. To me they are the two most salient questions in relation to the government questioning on this issue and why the Attorney-General lost confidence in the President of the Human Rights Commission. When I looked into this— before the hearing last week, during the hearing and afterwards—I found it was a complete Gordian knot. It was almost impossible to determine what the answers to those two questions were. As I said—and I will go through them in a minute—there were seven separate distinct and contradictory answers as to why it was called and there were four distinct and contradictory answers as to when it was called. Then thrown in, as a bit of an additional bonus, for the first time in the evidence last week we had that Operation Sovereign Borders was actually a factor in it being called. Again I will come back to the detail on that shortly. That was me going into the inquiry and the hearing last week trying to make sense of two very basic questions.

As has been asserted on the other side, getting frustrated at not getting a consistent answer from someone giving evidence is very different from playing the person and from personal attacks. I witnessed no personal attacks from those on my side inquiring, but they were getting frustrated with the ever-changing answers and testimony of the Human Rights Commission.

Let us have a look at a couple of these questions. The first one I had a look at is: when did the HRC decide to launch an inquiry into the welfare of children in migration detention? You would think, given the importance of this issue, it would be a simple response. But I had four answers: the first answer was in February-March 2013; then, in response to a second question, they decided on an inquiry in June-July 2013; then the answer changed to November-December 2012; and the fourth answer, which I had to split into two, was in her letter of clarification on 10 December. The first answer was, ‘We decided to conduct a review on 26 June 2013’, which presumably was just a review or an examination under their act, and then almost in the next paragraph of the same letter she said that they had decided to conduct an inquiry in December 2013. By the end of the hearing, last week, I had four different answers to a very simple question.

If that was not confusing enough to those of us listening to this evidence, we then endeavoured to work out the reasons behind the decision to conduct the inquiry into the welfare of children in immigration detention. Again, something that should have been quite simple was clearly not answered correctly or clearly in November, which caused the government to lose confidence in the president. The first answer was, ‘The increasing number of children being held in detention in 2012 and 2013 and the policies of the new government not having an effect on the numbers prompted the inquiry.’ I had to read that about three times. Here she was saying that the policies of the government were not impacting—

Senator O’Sullivan interjecting—

The ACTING DEPUTY PRESIDENT: Order! Stop the clock. A point of order, Senator McEwen.

Senator McEwen: Mr Acting Deputy President, I raise a point of order. I know Senator O’Sullivan has expressed in the past his preference to hear male voices only, but I would ask him to cease interjecting Senator Reynolds.

The ACTING DEPUTY PRESIDENT: There is no point of order. Senator Reynolds.

Senator REYNOLDS: This might be uncomfortable reading for those on the other side, particularly for Senator Collins who said that she wanted the facts. Well, these are all facts as recorded in Hansard.

Senator O’Sullivan: Inconvenient facts. An honourable senator interjecting—

Senator REYNOLDS: Absolutely. First of all, in November, the president said there were an increasing number of children in detention; then, the second reason was that the policies of the new government were not having an effect on the numbers. That one really floored me, because clearly Operation Sovereign Borders was a change of policy, and it was having an impact. That is only the first answer.

The second answer, on 24 February this year, said ‘The high numbers of children in detention, the increasing amount of time of children in detention and the 10-year review of the 2004 report.’ I thought that was in the president’s opening statement. A high number children: yes, although they were decreasing. The increasing time in detention: as the president and all of those opposite would know, it is axiomatic. The fewer children in detention, the longer the average time they will be in detention. I thought, ‘Has she called an inquiry?’, because we are actually reducing the numbers of children, and the secretary of the department of immigration confirmed that that was the case.

Then there was the snapshot report, which is very important because that features again later. That was the second point. There are three points. You will note that not in one of those three reasons provided in the opening statement was there Operation Sovereign Borders or a drying up of information—that was on page 7 of Hansard. Then we get to page 20 of Hansard and the answer changes again. The president said, ‘Once Operation Sovereign Borders got underway, it was clear that information from the department of immigration was not as readily accessible.’ Therefore, yes, Operation Sovereign Borders was a factor because of the drying up of information.

There is a fourth answer. On page 20, as well, in Hansard—so it was not even another page of Hansard—the answer was, ‘No, it was not Operation Sovereign Borders’. A bit further down, on the same page of Hansard, guess what? It was Operation Sovereign Borders that was an impact. We have not even got to the end of that first page. She then said, ‘No, it was not Sovereign Borders,’ and, just to finish it off, on the same page of Hansard, she said, ‘Yes, it was Operation Sovereign Borders.’

Honourable senators interjecting—

The ACTING DEPUTY PRESIDENT: Order! Senators to my left and to my right.

Senator REYNOLDS: While that may have made a lot of sense to those opposite, it was impossible to determine a new cause, Operation Sovereign Borders. Yes, it was; no, it was not, yes, it was; no, it was not; yes it was in one page of Hansard. Do not forget, it was not just whether Operation Sovereign Borders was a new reason that had never come up before. It was also Operation Sovereign Borders, because they were not getting the information and the information was drying up from the department of immigration.

We had seven different answers in terms of the drying up of this information—an issue that had never come up before and had never been raised with us to the best of my knowledge. We ask again: when did this occur? When did this drying up of information occur? Answer 1: it was after the implementation of Operation Sovereign Borders, which—as everybody here knows—was late September 2013, after the federal election. Answer 2: in December 2013 the information started to dry up. Answer 3—

The ACTING DEPUTY PRESIDENT ( Senator Gallacher ): Senator Reynolds, please resume your seat.

Senator Singh: Mr Acting Deputy President, I raise a point of order. We are debating a censure motion. It is a motion that has clearly pointed out five points, none of which Senator Reynolds is currently addressing. I ask you to please ask Senator Reynolds to address the censure motion that we are currently addressing, if she is going to speak in this chamber on this motion.

Senator Cormann: On the point of order, Mr Acting Deputy President: Senator Reynolds is entirely relevant to the motion before the chair. The motion before the chair goes directly to the lack of confidence that the Attorney- General has expressed in the chair of the Human Rights Commission. And what Senator Reynolds is doing very eloquently, I might say, is to provide the context in which the Attorney-General has come to the view, which the Labor motion seeks to criticise.

The ACTING DEPUTY PRESIDENT: There is no point of order. Senator Reynolds.

Senator REYNOLDS: I know those opposite really do not like to hear the facts, but these are the facts—and I am very happy to defend the Attorney-General.

Senator Wong: Ah, you mentioned him finally!

Senator REYNOLDS: Given it took Senator Wong, who was there on the day, till four o’clock in the afternoon to ask the Attorney a question, that is a bit rich.

Senator Cormann: Mr Acting Deputy President, I rise on a point of order. Interjections are disorderly, and the Leader of the Opposition in the Senate continues to interject in relation to a debate about a motion which is the most serious motion that can ever be considered by this chamber, so I ask you to call Senator Wong to order so that Senator Reynolds can provide her remarks to the chamber in silence.

The ACTING DEPUTY PRESIDENT: I remind all senators that interjections are disorderly. Senators are entitled to be heard in silence.

Senator REYNOLDS: Thank you, and through you, Mr Acting Deputy President, I would like to thank Senator Wong for extending me different courtesies than I extended to her when she spoke on this same issue.

But, coming back to the very inconvenient truth and some of the facts: we have here a new issue arising altogether, that of the drying-up of information from the department of immigration pre and post the election. There were seven flip-flops on this in the one day. First of all it was post 18 September that the drying-up started. Then it was in December 2013. Then we had this extraordinary flip back to before 17 September, during the caretaker period. Then, even more extraordinarily, the president said: ‘Actually the information started drying up before the caretaker period, and we’d been noticing a drying-up of information from the department before caretaker’— that is, under the previous government. Then, in answer to more questions, the president said that she had in fact written to the secretary of the department of immigration on 17 September 2013 about this drying-up of this information. We then said, ‘Was that in relation to Sovereign Borders?’ ‘No. It wasn’t in relation to Sovereign Borders or to this current inquiry. It was relating to the snapshot report.’ The next flip-flop on this was that the drying-up of information happened on 5 August. Then it went back—answer No. 5—to after 7 September. Then it flipped back to after 18 September. Then, extraordinarily—and I have to read this one out because it left me completely confused—it was presumably during the caretaker period but it was actually after that as well. That is somewhat confusing. So here we have seven different answers on when the information dried up.

The letter that went to the secretary of immigration was not in this time line. The president had provided a comprehensive report on the time line of all of the correspondence that had gone from the HRC to government and to the department of immigration. Over the course of the testimony, we found that there were at least two pieces of critical correspondence that were not listed in here, including the one to the secretary of the department of immigration. Interestingly, remember it was 17 September when the president wrote to Mr Bowles about this drying-up of information for the snapshot report. But, in the snapshot report itself, it says that the information in fact was received from the department of immigration on 16 September, a day before she wrote to the secretary of immigration. So what remains completely unaddressed yet is this. She said that, once Operation Sovereign Borders got underway, it was clear that information was not as readily available. Well, that has been comprehensively refuted in her own testimony that day, and it is still not clear why it was called and when it was called, as Senator Moore so rightly said.

I am also very supportive of the Attorney-General and his actions and those of the Secretary of the Attorney- General’s Department. One of the things that became very clear in the estimates for Immigration the day before, and then in this inquiry, was that the Human Rights Commission had a range of issues that were not addressed that should have been addressed in the report, on basic, fundamental natural justice and procedural rights. The Secretary of the Department of Immigration and Border Protection confirmed this last week. I would like to read out now his response in the report. He says, on 10 November:

… the Department has already identified a wide range of concerns regarding the manner in which evidence and information provided to the Inquiry has been evaluated and utilised …

Whilst the Department acknowledges that the Commission has made some substantial changes to the findings and has also made some changes to the final report, I note that these changes appear to only partially address the specific examples raised …

What were those specific examples he raised in the Human Rights Commission report on such an important issue? Claims not affording procedural fairness or right of reply; untested claims and subjective observations; overreliance on the commission’s own experts; little or no weight afforded to policy and procedure of the department and its contracted service providers; and dismissal of evidence provided to the commission. For those who have not yet read the Department of Immigration and Border Protection’s submission, it absolutely brings into question this whole report, in my mind, due to lack of procedural fairness and equity.

Let’s face it; the other issue is: why did we need this report? You could ask any Australian: ‘Is detention a good thing for children?’ Of course it is not. We had a report 10 years ago. We all agreed then that detention was no place for children or for adults. We stopped the boats, we closed the detention centres and there were no children left in detention. I think the biggest shame in all of this is that those opposite have been playing the man—that is, the Attorney-General and the Secretary of the Attorney-General’s Department—when the facts are very clear. We need to get back to—and I would ask all senators in this place to get back and have a look at—the facts of this case.

The facts are that we currently have seven different reasons from the president and her office about why it was called. We have four separate and distinct reasons for when it was called. Last week—and this has remained untested in all of the other colour and movement on this—Sovereign Borders was, was not, was, was not and then was a factor, and there were seven different answers about when this supposed information dried up. These are the things that I think the Senate should now be pursuing to get clarity on this issue. I also believe that these absolutely demonstrate why those on our side were frustrated with the evidence that was provided in November, which caused the Attorney-General and the government to lose confidence in the president. Again, nothing that I heard in that hearing on examination of the testimony provided any clarity on those two key questions. In fact, what I heard further complicated them. So I very much support the Attorney-General and the position he has taken on this issue, and I would ask all of us to look at the facts and the issues.

I am a very strong supporter of the Human Rights Commission and of having a Human Rights Commission, but it must be politically impartial. We have a right to expect that it will on occasions be critical of the government in discharge of its statutory function. However, the commission must maintain the confidence of both sides of politics, and it must not be politically partisan. I believe from my review of the evidence that the only possible conclusion from Professor Triggs’s inconsistent evidence last week is that the decision to hold the inquiry into children in detention was politically partisan. It saddens me to say that, but the evidence on the key questions that count, I think, clearly demonstrates that it was a partisan report on a critical issue for this country.

I support the Attorney-General and the actions he has taken, and I strongly support and endorse the actions of the Abbott government to stop the boats, to stop people drowning and to get kids out of detention.