Cameron Thompson (Blair, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

I want to go back to the hundreds of people who died at sea—the member opposite who is interjecting should think about this. They were not people who were perhaps upset by their experience of a detention centre but people, including children, who died at sea. An article from the Sunday Age of 23 July 2000 reads:

Hundreds of terrified refugee men, women and children on three Indonesian fishing boats that disappeared in storms off Western Australia may have been tethered to railings or locked away below decks when the vessels sank.

…            …            …

The biggest of the three boats presumed to have sunk turned back for repairs after hitting a reef on the west coast of Java about March 24.

This was in 2000. The article continues:

It was carrying about 200 people, and witnesses said it was still in very poor condition when it sailed again for Christmas Island in rough weather on March 25.

The boat vanished, and there has been no word of survivors.

Here is another article: ‘Shipwrecked in Indonesia’. It quotes one of the survivors:

‘The smugglers fulfilled every promise until the time we stepped onto the boat,’ Matin says.

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But they were to find out later the boat’s hull was rotting, there were no working pumps or lifejackets as promised, and it would have been overcrowded with only a dozen aboard—let alone 138.

Later it says:

When water started to fill the hull, the asylum seekers tried to bail with their hands. Said Sakhi, 20, fell into the sea as waves washed over them. ‘For God’s sake, help me,’ he screamed before slipping away and drowning.

Fatima, 20, clutched her baby ... who had been born in Indonesia two-and-a-half months earlier. But as the boat split into pieces she lost her grip and the baby fell into the water. ‘We could see him. But nobody could reach him’ ...

That is the reality of policies that give priority to ships on the high seas. There are many other stories.

I want to talk now about the reality for people who are denied access to our system to make way for people who are being urged into the system in this way. And remember that those people are not departing from a war zone; they are departing from Indonesia. For the Papuans who I spoke about before, there is the opportunity to move into Papua New Guinea and make an application from there. It is not necessary to take a canoe on the high seas, but if you want to follow the lure unfortunately that is what happens.

The member for Cowper provided me with the account of Abraham Telar Nickanora from the Sudan. He says that when he was an infant his father was away fighting as a soldier and his mother had gone to another town. He said:

The enemy forces attacked the town I was in before dawn, killing thousands of people. My aunt grabbed me and ran off into the bush where we hid for many days ... The bush was a dangerous place, with lions roaming about and little water or food available to eat ... I got sick with malaria and so did my aunt, so she was unable to carry me.

After some time in the bush we decided to head for Ethiopia. But before we could reach the country we had to cross rivers with crocodiles and go through a desert. There was even less food or water to be found in the desert. Some people survived by drinking urine ... After three weeks in the desert we entered a rain forest ... Just before we entered Ethiopia a local tribe attacked our party and killed many of us ... Finally after four months we reached a refugee camp in Ethiopia.

After being in the refugee camp for four years, the Ethiopian government told all refugees that they had 14 days to leave the country. When the time was up the army arrived with tanks, jeeps and helicopters, shooting at the people. I lost my aunt but was able to escape. I joined up with many other boys who had no parents with them.

There were 17,000 boys in the group. He continued:

We were able to cross back into Sudan, this time a journey of two months.

When the Sudanese government discovered that many refugees had come back and were settled in their country, they sent in jets with bombs. The next week the village I was in was attacked ... From there we journeyed to Kenya, to a refugee camp there.

Of the 17,000 boys who began there were only 7,000 left. Abraham writes:

I was one of the lucky ones and I was six at the time.

I thought life would be safe in the refugee camp, but the local people were not happy that we were there. Killings and women being raped were common.

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However at the camp I was able to go to school. I worked as hard as I could and was a good student.

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I applied for a visa and was accepted to come to Australia, but still there was little hope this would happen because I had no way of paying for air fares and the other costs. But God was answering my prayers. One day while I was walking on the main road in the refugee camp I found a paper belonging to someone else, blown by the wind. On it was the address of a group of Australians who sponsored refugees and helped them with their expenses. I contacted them right away. After much correspondence, I was accepted and found myself on a plane heading for Australia in July 2003.

That is what I call an incredible tale. It is just atrocious that we provide encouragement to people who are otherwise safe in Indonesia to come to Australia in rickety boats, risking their lives and the lives of their children, while people like Abraham Telar Nickanora are left living in those appalling conditions, their lives under immediate threat in places like Sudan.

Debate interrupted.

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