Davis Kelvin: General DebateText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeDavis Kelvin: General Debate[Sitting date: 04 November 2015. Volume:709;Page:7700. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]KELVIN DAVIS (Labour—Te Tai Tokerau): In 2009 New Zealand recommended as a high priority that Australia sign up to the Optional Protocol to the Convention Against Torture. Despite agreeing to the recommendation Australia has yet to sign the agreement and New Zealand needs to ask why. On 9 November the Australian human rights record comes under scrutiny as part of the Universal Periodic Review. New Zealand needs to call out Australia on the indefinite detention of New Zealand citizens in conditions that are tantamount to torture. When I was over on Christmas Island checking out the human rights abuses being perpetrated on New Zealand citizens by the Australian Government and the Australian system where was John Key? Where was the Prime Minister? He was on Radio Hauraki talking about playing with himself and peeing in the shower.I was absolutely disgusted to hear that while I am over there checking out abuses on New Zealand citizens here he is being a clown and pulling his own political stunt. If he wants to talk about that sort of stuff when New Zealanders are suffering in detention—indefinite detention—then he needs to have a good look at what sort of a Prime Minister he is. We do not need a clown who is just going to manage our economy. What we need is a leader to start standing up for New Zealanders. It does not matter whether the New Zealanders are here in New Zealand or whether they happen to choose to live in Australia. If they are being abused—if their rights are being abused—then we need a Prime Minister who is going to stand up and look after their rights and their interests.Those men in the detention centres—they are scared they are hungry and they are traumatised. They are full of despair. They are empty of hope. There is no light at the end of the tunnel for them simply because there is no light and there is no tunnel. All they can see are walls and wires and electric fences. I know—they went to prison because they committed a crime. But in New Zealand we have the right not to be punished for double jeopardy. These guys are being punished for the crimes they have committed and they are at the lower end of the scale. They are not as Peter Dutton the Australian Minister for Immigration and Border Protection says all rapists and murderers. The guys whom I met have offended at the lower end of the scale. They do not deserve then as they walk out of the prison and walk into the prison car-park to be picked up and detained indefinitely. Some of them have been detained in the detention centres for longer than they were in prison. Not only that if at the end of the detention they are actually deported then that is triple jeopardy. We have got New Zealand citizens who are being punished three times for one crime. If they do need to be deported I have got no problems with that. But if you happen to detain somebody detain them in conditions that are humane and at least have a bit of compassion. But these people are being locked up they are being beaten up they are being starved—the conditions are tantamount to torture.This is happening in Australia a country that we say is—and it is—our closest ally; our trading partner. And yet here it is abusing not just New Zealanders but all manner of people such as asylum seekers. There are any number of accounts of asylum seekers who are so at their wit’s end that they are self-mutilating. In fact today I received a 134-page document describing when the Australian forces staff have used force on detainees. One of the main reasons that they use force in these centres is to stop people from self-harming. We have to ask ourselves why they are self-harming in the first place. Why is it that they have no hope in their hearts and the best way out for them is to actually kill themselves? Let me talk briefly about a New Zealander Czarian Strang. The riot squad charged into his cell. He was in segregation which basically means isolation. The riot squad put the shield on him and whacked him about with the black pill as they call it. The black pill is the baton because I bet the baton actually cures a whole heap of ailments. They whacked him they tried to immobilise him by twisting his limbs they ended up popping ligaments. He was denied medical treatment. He was hosed down in his cell. He was made to sleep in wet clothes for two nights. The only way he kept warm was by turning on the hot shower during the night until the water ran out. New Zealand needs to do something to help these New Zealand citizens.