NSWCCL has written to a number of Senators, members of the Legal and Constitutional Legislation Committee, regarding the inquiry into the Migration Amendment (Prohibiting Items in Detention Facilities) Bill 2020.
The Refugee Action Collective of Victoria (RACV) has proposed that the Legal and Constitutional Committee ask the Department of Home Affairs a large number of questions about matters of fact before they meet on July 3.
Although the New South Wales Council for Civil Liberties believes that there are strong grounds for rejecting the Bill outright that are for the most part independent of the matters that the RACV raises, we nevertheless urge you to do as the RACV requests.
Failure to present relevant facts until parliamentary committee hearings are underway, or by taking questions on notice, till after those hearings are complete, prevents transparency, and betrays a lack of commitment to democracy.
In addition to the question the RACV ask, NSWCCL requested the Senators to also ask:
How many landline telephones are available in each compound or separate section of each detention facility? For what hours are they available? And how many detainees are there in each of those facilities?
