Philip Ruddock (Berowra, Liberal Party, Attorney-General) Share this | Hansard source

It is with some pleasure that I take this opportunity to respond to a very inadequate presentation by the member for Watson and I hope that he will remain in the chamber. He has demonstrated today that he has little understanding of the concept of sovereignty and little understanding of the nature of the parliament and parliamentary debate. There will not be any gagging of members. There will be an opportunity for people to speak in debate when legislation is considered. It will be under the rules of the parliament, which have been applied in a consistent way over the decades that I have been here. I have experienced programs that have required debates to be conducted within particular time frames. That does not curtail the debate; it simply ensures that the debate occurs in a managed way.

In dealing with the issue of immigration, first let me repeat what I said at question time today. Good immigration policy is what the Australian people aspire to have put in place by governments. If they do not, people become very resentful of those who fail to implement good immigration policy and take it out very often on other people in the Australian community. We have seen immigration, I think, restored to a level where people are prepared to sustain increased levels of migration. We have had a good selection process of people with high levels of skill; we have had a response to genuine and close family reunion, without the manipulation that used to occur; and we have had generous refugee and humanitarian programs that focus on the most vulnerable of people. The fact is that you can only administer programs in that way if you have in place effective border protection.

It is a question of sovereignty to determine who comes and settles in Australia and it is for the government of Australia to determine those matters—and that is exactly what we are doing. The fact that we change the definition of what might constitute the migration zone does not mean that we are abandoning our border. The migration zone merely determines the rules that will apply if you happen to be within it—and that is a matter of sovereignty. It is the sovereign government that determines those rules. We have never abandoned sovereignty. But what we are now seeing is that a Labor Party in office would take the view that, if other people determine that they will simply turn up without a valid visa, they will be able to dictate the circumstances in which any claims are dealt with and the way in which issues are resolved.

It seems to me that this is an issue in which the Labor Party is about playing politics. This is particularly disappointing, because I think once the Leader of the Opposition used to take a more considered approach on these matters. Before reinventing himself as a populist in August 2001 in this place, he said:

... we believe more generally that policies in the area of immigration, which are quite fraught in debate in this country, are best settled on a bipartisan basis ...

On that basis, I would suggest to the shadow minister that he should listen more attentively in these areas and should work cooperatively with the minister in dealing with issues that support our sovereignty and in determining these matters.

Mr Beazley also supported a more considered response in relation to our dealings with Indonesia. Indonesia does not determine what our policies are. Let me make that very clear. We made it clear to the Australian people that when we processed asylum claims within the migration zone we were not going to alter those decisions. We made it clear that they had to be determined properly in accordance with our law. They were. We indicated that decisions would not be changed. They have not been and they will not be.

Our response was a positive one in asserting Australia’s sovereignty to be able to deal with those issues. But, in establishing a framework of law,  it is not a dereliction of our sovereignty to determine that some people may seek to manipulate our entry arrangements. And I think there was a degree of manipulation in this instance. It is quite clear that there was contact between people in West Papua and Australia that determined that, rather than going to Papua New Guinea, as they had in the past, they would make the journey to Australia with the deliberate intention of exacerbating tensions between Australia and Indonesia. That is the fundamental reason why we have come to the view that their claims, such as they are, should be processed offshore rather than that we should give them the opportunity to come to Australia to make a political point in the context of events that are occurring in West Papua. That is the reason that we took this approach.

I am very interested that the opposition indicated today that they supported excisions, for reasons that I think were quite bona fide. I was very concerned at the loss of life of people trying to enter Australia without lawful authority. SIEVX was not something that we sought or wanted, and so far as I was concerned every effort had to be put into ensuring that, if refugees had claims, they were properly processed in Indonesia as part of the total set of arrangements that were put in place; that people were discouraged from getting into boats; and that we would be able to work cooperatively with Indonesia in dealing with those issues and in establishing a relationship with Indonesia like the one that existed back in the 1970s, when they were prepared to hold and see processed Indonesian asylum seekers. But, because they were left holding the baby, they did not want to be in that situation again.

One of the points that I would make about the excision is that the excision measures, along with the others that were implemented by the government, worked and have been very effective. It is of course the case that, each time those measures appear to work, those who are often engaged in helping so-called asylum seekers will find a way of extending the boundary.

See this speech in context