I think the sadness for me is that the conservative countries seem to have come to the view that countries are foolish if they are humanitarian. It seems to me that Canada wants to divest itself of the mantle of leader in the humanitarian sense. Perhaps the idea is that Canada is becoming a magnet because of its humanitarianism, and therefore it needs to fall into line with more punitive countries.
I think that is a great pity. We've seen it happen with our political parties. When I said before that the introduction of laws like this represents the top of the slippery slope, the problem is that if you have one party that says we are foolish to be fair, to be humanitarian, it becomes very difficult for opposition parties to then say, no, we're not. We should be leading the world in this area.
The popular view is always going to be to punish the outsider, punish the person who is different. That's why I think what you have achieved in Canada is a really precious and fragile thing that is very easily dismantled, and I think you will find a lot of people around the world looking at what you're doing now, not only in this area but also in your proposed laws in areas like cluster munitions. It's very sad to see Canada going down that road.
Could I make the point of the social impact of detention? You ought to be looking—there has been so much written about detention in Australia and the impact it has. The personal impact that detention has on detainees, where detention gets protracted.... Believe me, although your laws say one year, you will end up having people in detention for very much longer. Once you start that, it's very hard to undo it.
We are still suffering a pandemic of mental health issues, of self-harm, of death in detention, even under—