Coroner & Legal
Labor, Greens to hold Senate inquiry into Manus Island violence
Labor and the Greens will team up to establish a Senate inquiry into recent deadly violence at the Manus Island immigration detention centre.
Iranian man Reza Berati, 23, died and dozens were injured during unrest at the centre last month.
Police in Papua New Guinea have launched an investigation, while Australia’s Immigration Department is holding a separate inquiry.
However, Greens Senator Sarah Hanson-Young has dismissed those investigations as a “co-ordinated whitewash”.
She says the Senate inquiry will be independent and rigorous, and will seek to hear from detention centre staff and asylum seekers involved in the violence.
Senator Hanson Young says it would be ideal if the investigating committee could travel to Manus Island.
“I think it’s really important that we try and get as much information out of the camp as possible,” she said.
“If we’re not able to go there then we can have telephone calls, we can do teleconferencing, we can ask for written and oral submissions, anything we can do to try to shed light and shine light on the dark corners of what happened that night.”
Labor is backing the motion for the inquiry and says it is vital to get to the bottom of what went wrong.