Nauru observer mission gets more flak

Transcript

The Commonwealth Secretariat's fact-finding mission to Nauru has been slammed as offensive by an opposition MP.

Mathew Batsiua is a former Minister of Justice and says he is ashamed that the Government continues to abuse the rule of law.

He is one of four MPs charged for his role in a protest outside parliament in June.

He told Alex Perrottet the two observers who recently visited the island never sought out the charged MPs, which was disgraceful.

Nauru opposition MP Mathew Batsiua. Photo: Supplied

MATHEW BATSIUA: I'm bitterly disappointed because it was supposed to be a fact finding mission, on the claims that there were breaches of rule of law in Nauru.  And you would think that the commonsense thing to do would be to go straight to the source who are making these claims.  But the so-called fact finding mission from the Commsec didn't even bother to reach us, they didn't even bother to include us in the programme.  Maybe they were discouraged by the government not to meet with us, I'm not sure.  But the fact is they never met with any of us, they gave Roland Kun I think only an hour of time, in my opinion just to tick the box.  So it was never really a genuine fact finding mission, because they can't convince me that they've seen all the relevant stakeholders so they can reach a conclusion in their report regarding breaches of law in Nauru.  They didn't meet any of the opposition members who were arrested, like myself, Mr Jeremiah and Mr Dabwido, and none of us were called, none of us were emailed or contacted to make time to meet with the Commsec people and if we were we'd be more than happy.

ALEX PERROTTET: I put it to Mr Tozaka that it was willfully blind that they hadn't spotted those issues, he said well the rule of law is intact because there's a Chief Justice and there's matters that are on-going in the courts.  I mean what do you say to the Official Observer from the Commonwealth Secretariat?

MB: Absolute rubbish and it does, it does disappoint me a lot because we have great respect for the Commonwealth Secretariat as an organisation.  But if they were serious in trying to get to the bottom of finding out whether rule of law issues are prevalent in Nauru then they should speak to all the stakeholders including, and especially to those who have been making the claims for all this time.  I mean you'd recall that the first time we spoke to the foreign media about the breach of the rule of law was when our former Chief Justice was not given a visa and the Resident Magistrate was being deported unlawfully.  We went to the airport, we tried to stop the deportation, we then spoke to the media about our concerns and then we got suspended so, you know, for all organisations like the Commonwealth Secretariat to say the rule of law is intact in Nauru because of the Chief Justice they really have not given us credit.  I find their approach and their comments very offensive because our struggles are very real and they have not even bothered to come and sit with us so we can explain to them just how impacted we are, why we went to protest outside the Parliament because we've been frustrated at every corner.  We've tried to do things legally and properly under democratic systems, we've been frustrated at every turn and it lead to a protest.  And as a result we were arrested and we continue to be frustrated to this day.  And for them just to give a report that the rule of law of Nauru is intact, you know, that's very offensive, I find it very offensive.