Don Randall (Canning, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

I am pleased to speak on the Migration Amendment (Designated Unauthorised Arrivals) Bill 2006. This bill today is a significant bill because unless this legislation is passed through both houses of parliament the status quo will remain. There are a number of things which the member for Watson opposite said that I will deal with in the time I have allotted. One of them is the fact that his rather impassioned rhetoric fails to be honest in addressing the fact that this bill with its amendments will give to offshore settlement exactly the same conditions that were negotiated 12 months ago for authorised arrivals on excised territory. That is the whole nub of this. He has been dishonest when he has said that this bill does not do that. The amendments to this bill offer offshore arrivals the same terms and conditions as have been offered to those coming to Australia from excised offshore places already, negotiated last year, as the member said—and, as he said, it was a bipartisan approach.

This bill actually does make the distinction between the offshore excised places and those who reach the mainland and that is the effect of the bill. Why do we have to have this bill? We have to have this bill because Australia’s legal system cannot deal with unauthorised arrivals on the mainland. I will explain that in detail later but at the moment let us just be clear about it. There are people in Australia who have been here for 17 years through a succession of appeals where they can go to every court in this land. They have access to every advocacy group to make sure that they get access to the highest courts in this land and eventually, through the use of Australian taxpayers’ moneys, they can be here for up to 17 years. What is the problem with that? The problem with that is that after 10 years a child born to those people in this country automatically becomes an Australian citizen. If that child becomes an Australian citizen, we then have a problem of whether we send the parents offshore, if they are deemed not to be legitimate arrivals, leaving only the child here. This is the conundrum we are faced with in this parliament today: do we address this legislation because of the failure of the Australian legal system? We know that our Attorney-General, Philip Ruddock, has endeavoured to negotiate, through the legal system, opportunities to deal more expeditiously with appeals as is done in many other countries, such as the US, where there are two appeals and that is it. But he cannot negotiate it through, even with his endeavour to use the privative clause, because we do not have the support, firstly, from the opposition and, secondly, through the courts of Australia. There is the separation of powers and we cannot impose ourselves on that. So this is the alternative arrangement that has been made.

Just as a short reflection, let us remember who initiated mandatory detention in this country. It was under the Keating-Hawke Labor government; it was Gerry Hand. I have mentioned in this place before—even though I have a growing fondness for the member for Fremantle—that, when I was in Western Australia, before becoming a member of this place, the member for Fremantle, then the state Premier, was the Premier when the Port Hedland detention centre was opened with glee to detain unauthorised arrivals in Western Australia. So let us not have this cant and hypocrisy about how, on the one hand, we support you and how, on the other hand now, shock horror, this is terrible. Essentially that is it. We have to assign Australia as a designated unauthorised arrival zone because if people arrive on the Australian mainland then they are treated differently than the legislation provides for now.

I will go to the amendments demonstrating that we are going to give people the same terms and conditions. Not only members of the Labor Party but also some members of the Liberal Party have told us they dissent from this legislation sought last year. I say to those people in my party who call themselves dissidents et cetera that your electorates do not support you on this. I know this because people come and tell me by the droves. In fact, the vast majority of Australians support what the government is doing in toughening up the legislation in this area. They come to me and say things like, ‘Mr Randall, how come these people have unfettered access to the courts when we as parents going through the Family Court, for example, can’t get legal aid? We have problems getting support on unfair dismissal et cetera; we can’t get legal aid in those areas. Yet these people have unbridled access to legal representation and are not even Australian citizens.’ These same people are housed in centres where, compared to some of my constituents in Western Australia, they have first-class accommodation, ensuites, halal food, education and health care, all at no cost. The people in my electorate say to me, ‘Why does this happen to people who aren’t deemed to be lawful Australian citizens and yet I, as an Australian, can’t get this?’ Politicians, particularly in my party, want to think about this because their electorates are asking them the same question. That is something they might want to ponder rather seriously.

We do know that we had to excise territories previously because Ashmore Reef, as the member opposite said, became almost a stop-off point for anyone who could reach it. If they made the Cocos Islands, for example—and we know many Sri Lankans made the Cocos Islands—they saw that as Australian territory and they were then able to seek all the terms and conditions that refugee status gave them in Australia. It was the same if you made Christmas Island. So those islands and territories were excised, as they should have been, and that stopped much of the flow. What we do know is that before the infamous Tampa incident, from 1997 to 2001, something like 10,893 people arrived here unlawfully. Since then, post-Tampa, there have only been 114. What does that tell you? That the legislation and our strong border protection measures are working and that is the message that we have to send to the rest of the world. The rest of the world would love to have our strong border protection measures. I recommend to those here in the parliament an article in the West Australian by Ben Harvey, on 30 May last year, which says ‘UK groans under its soft refugee system’. It says:

When The West Australian told a Home Office official that some Australian politicians were lobbying to abandon the policy of detaining asylum seekers, she was stunned.

“The Government should hold its nerve on that one,” she said.

“In a few years time we will have the courage to introduce a policy of detention.

Don’t let them weaken. Britain is seen as an absolute soft touch.

Italy is the same. It has a porous border. When I visited a detention centre in Italy last year, they pointed out clearly to me that one of their prime objectives was to put people in detention centres briefly and then send them on through to Germany, because Germany is such a soft touch. They actually help finance their transport and rehabilitation to head towards Germany. One of the reasons why Germany is running into such problems is that it has this huge out-of-control itinerant illegal migration into its country. That is affecting its economy.

The offshore processing centres on Nauru that are being designated have previously been highly successful in determining the status of people seeking asylum, determining whether they are refugees or not, and I will go into figures shortly. It has been made quite clear that those going to Nauru will have special purpose visas which give them status. They are not actually detained as such but they do have a visa to be on Nauru. The status of this visa has been determined by both the court of Nauru and the High Court of Australia, so I would think that that makes it quite legitimate. The accommodation on Nauru will be first class, because we are currently in negotiations, if this legislation goes through, to get probably the best accommodation on Nauru, in a former weightlifting village, and to make sure that it is built to such a level that it will accommodate families with children in particular in air-conditioned accommodation with all the mod cons that many Nauruans would seek for themselves.

One of my colleagues, the member for Cook, said yesterday that when he went to New Zealand last year the Tampa distribution of refugees was only 35, and I said I would correct the record. I would like to put on the record that this is how the 433 asylum seekers aboard the Tampa were distributed: 131 were sent straight to New Zealand without any assessment and the remaining 302 were placed in offshore processing centres in Nauru. There were 301 assessed by the UNHCR and one by DIMIA. Of those who were taken to Nauru, 101 were found to be refugees and resolved as follows: 28 have been resettled in Australia, 63 in New Zealand, seven in Sweden, two in Norway and one in Canada.

Of those taken to Nauru after New Zealand had taken its 131, 201 were found not to be refugees. Of those 201 who were found not to be refugees, 186 were voluntarily repatriated. In other words, they got their $2,000 and went home. The families got $10,000 per family and went home. But 186 of them were voluntarily repatriated. They did not have to go by boat. They went home via plane in all the conditions that brings. Fourteen were resettled in New Zealand, one died of natural causes and we know that there are two who are still on Nauru because there are security concerns about these people, who have been assessed as security risks to come to Australia. So I might say to the member for Cook: what have we got? New Zealand took 131 and then another 63. There are almost 200 of them that New Zealand took.

This is one of the things that our colleagues are saying that they are not happy with: if people wish to come to Australia as refugees by choice, and if they are found to be refugees, can they stay in Australia? The answer is no, because under the UN protocols Australia is not obliged to do that. The 1951 United Nations Convention relating to the Status of Refugees and the protocols quite clearly state that the refugee convention does not set down any particular process and it does not create a right for people to select a preferred country for processing their claims or the country in which the protection will be provided if they are found to be refugees. That is the UN protocol. So the fact that they might want to come here does not mean to say that they can come here if they are deemed to be refugees. As we know, many of them are not, particularly from the figures I have just given you in relation to the Tampa.

Can I say that Australia’s generosity towards refugees is outstanding. We are the third most generous country in the world in terms of taking refugees and humanitarian entrants. In fact, in the last few years we have consistently taken close to 14,000 people on the humanitarian and refugee register. Compare that to the figure for New Zealand, which champions itself as being this great country of humanitarianism and taking so many refugees. It takes somewhere between 700 and 800 a year. If you put that into proportion with New Zealand’s population, it is nowhere near the generosity of Australia. If New Zealand had anywhere near the generous disposition that Australia has towards humanitarian refugees, it would be taking 2½ thousand refugees or humanitarian entrants a year. So do not tell us that you have a mortgage on compassion, New Zealand, because we outdo you almost four to one. As a result, our compassion stacks up against that of anybody else in the world.

Our orderly migration system is something that we should be very proud of and, as I said previously, is the envy of the world. We can actually track who comes into this country. We know who comes to Australia, whether they come in the skilled migrants stream or otherwise. There are thousands coming to Australia in the orderly skilled migration stream, there are thousands coming in under the family reunion system and there are thousands coming in under other visa subclasses, such as those visiting as tourists and students.

So Australia is a great destination for many people wanting to visit or migrate, but people do it in an orderly fashion, and that is one of the outstanding things that Australia can do. We can track the people who come here, we do know where they are and we do know when they are coming and going, which makes Australia unlike Britain and many other countries of Europe and the rest of the world, as we have seen just recently in the US. Unlawful arrivals crossing their borders have become a huge issue. We do not have a porous border, and this is one of the reasons why the mainland has been designated in this legislation as an area for unlawful arrivals. The reason for that is that one of the great pull factors is that now, if you can bypass all the islands and run up onto a beach somewhere in Australia, you get treated quite differently.

The amendments to this legislation are quite extensive and have been negotiated with a range of people, but particularly with those in our party and in the government who want to see the same conditions, as the member for Watson said, that were negotiated last year. The conditions we are offering are the same and in many respects better—that no children will be detained in detention. He says, ‘But how can you guarantee this in Nauru?’ We organise memorandums of understanding, whether it be through free trade agreements or any other international agreements, with countries all over the world. Why can’t we do it in this case? For some reason he thinks that immigration cannot be negotiated. Nauru has made it quite clear that it is willing to negotiate on the terms and conditions.

One of the sticking points was about children in detention. They will not be detained. They will be given residential housing, as they are in Port Augusta now. I visited the Port Augusta residential housing facility and all I heard was laughter from children. They were happy. They had people coming in after school to do a huge number of activities with them. They go out into the community, to the beach and to the schools there. They were very happy and they were very pleased to be in Australia. What is the matter with the residential housing in Nauru that is on offer, with a 90-day turnaround for those seeking to be assessed? We know that is even better than in Australia now. At the moment, there is no-one in detention in Australia who has not had a primary assessment and yet we are saying, ‘We are going to make it even faster on Nauru and have a 90-day turnaround and, if you are not happy with the decision, we are going to give you a 90-day turnaround on your review,’ suspected to be carried out by former officers of the Refugee Review Tribunal.

Those detained offshore will receive legal representation. The minister has put that offer in her amendments. The Commonwealth Ombudsman will have an overarching ability to examine the whole process. It is happening in Australia. People were happy with the amendments made for those under Australian terms and conditions. Why would they not be happy if the Australian Ombudsman was given permission to do the review on detention in Nauru? This is a fatuous argument coming from the opposition.

There will be an independent review of the whole process after two years. I thought that was very reasonable. There will be a sunset provision after five years. After five years, we will look at this and ask, ‘Is this working or not and what can we do to improve it?’ You cannot offer more than that. That is better than what was being offered in last year’s arrangement. Again, for those offering criticism, you are being disingenuous and you are being hypocritical in your attack on this because it is politically expedient to do so. You are doing it not because it is right but because of political opportunism. This is particularly so of those opposite but also of some of those in our own party who either do not understand this or see it as an opportunity to take a different stance, for whatever reason. I am sure they will tell you those reasons during their contributions to the debate today.

As I said, Australia is incredibly overgenerous. On the business about Australia bringing this legislation in just because of the Papuans, this is legislation that we should have had for some time. There was an argument that the Papuans could only come to Australia. They could have gone straight across the border into New Guinea, yet they did not. They chose to come to Australia because they were being organised by refugee advocacy groups who we know met them and accommodated them as soon as they got here. It was staged well in advance. What is the matter with having a good relationship with Indonesia? That is one of the reasons why Indonesia is no longer a staging point for all those illegal immigration people smugglers, as it was previously.

If this legislation is not passed, we will have what we have now. It is not as if this legislation is going to wipe out anything that we have now. If it is not passed, it is inferior legislation that will be in place. We are offering people who come unlawfully to Australia superior legislation for offshore detention. It is a bill that should pass both houses of parliament because it is good legislation and it is about time that we showed the courage, as we have done so before, to protect Australia’s borders to make sure there is orderly migration to this country. I support this bill. (Time expired)

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