Simon Crean (Hotham, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Regional Development) Share this | Hansard source

And Heard and McDonald Islands. The parliamentary secretary is joining in the joke. It would be a joke if it was not so serious.

Now, Labor is totally committed to strong and effective border protection, but you do not protect your borders by surrendering them—and that is what this legislation does. Surrendering the outlying islands in 2002 was a strategic mistake. The Labor Party said so at the time. We said it would encourage the people smugglers to aim for the mainland. It was an invitation to them to get to the mainland. Now that we have been proven correct in that analysis the government’s response is to excise the mainland. When the government’s response to xenophobia is to surrender it loses all credibility. And that is what has happened with this legislation.

At the time of our response to the 2002 excision we were very supportive of other measures to stop the people smugglers. We called for deterrence in the form of a coast guard—a cop on the beat to patrol those islands. We called for laws which, by developing international agreements on processing and location, dealt with asylum seekers in the country in which they first landed, not the last country that they headed to, so that they could not country hop. That is what we proposed then.

We also proposed solutions to stem the flow of people whose misery was being exploited by unscrupulous and illegal smugglers. We proposed urging the eight countries in the pipeline of the people smugglers to sign the protocol of the refugee convention, and we proposed that the Prime Minister use his good offices, through CHOGM and other international forums, to get those signatures. We urged the government to get Indonesia and other transit countries to make people-smuggling a crime under their domestic laws. We accepted, as part of the people smuggler deterrent, that it was appropriate to support the special treatment of Christmas and Cocos (Keeling) Islands because of their distance from Australia and their proximity to Indonesia.

This bill continues to ignore all of those constructive solutions. Instead, its solution is to excise Australia from Australia, pretending that none of Australia is Australia. It is absurd. This is a response to a circumstance in which we were not confronted by people smugglers but by genuine West Papuan refugees—genuine, as determined under Australian law. The government has resorted to a solution—a solution that the Prime Minister said was ludicrous—to deny the very operation of that same Australian law.

We believe that the government did the right thing in accepting the West Papuans. But the government could not stand the heat of the Indonesian response so it rolled over, and this is the solution. So we are having this debate today, until the government brings the gag in to stop the debate, on this bill to appease Indonesia. In it we are asked to accept that ‘designated unauthorised arrivals’ may be removed to a declared country outside Australia—namely, Manus Island or Nauru. They are to be removed there for the processing of any claims for refugee protection—not under our law, but under the refugee convention.

Just understand the hypocrisy of that dimension of this issue. Can you remember that the government in this place, time and time again, said they were never going to cede Australian law to international authorities and that we would determine the law that would apply here and we would not have it determined by international bodies such as the UN? They bagged the UN left, right and centre when it suited them over that misplaced, misguided involvement in the war in Iraq. They bagged the UN, but this proposal adopts the refugee convention as the alternative to Australian law for the processing of these refugees.

In this proposal the law is made more ridiculous because it only applies, as was mentioned earlier, to those people arriving by boat. What about those who arrive by air—those who can afford to pay the ticket? They will be processed here. Think of this: 43 West Papuan people arrive by boat and the law is changed to stop them coming in in the future. In the meantime, last year alone, over 1,600 people arrived illegally by air. And of those, 40 people applied for protection visas. So here we have the same order of magnitude, the same number of people. How is the government going to explain this dimension of inconsistency in its policy? It is worse than that; it is blatantly discriminatory, because if you can afford to fly to Australia you get Australian law but if you are too poor—if you are escaping repressive regimes where you have no means and you are so desperate to make the rush for asylum that you go in a leaky boat and take all those risks—then you do not get the protection of Australian law. What is fair about that? How does the government justify that? You could understand it if it had a consistent position. It does not. It is a reactive position. That is why we are in this mess today.

The effect of this legislation is to put the kids back behind razor wire. Australian law, which now prevents it, is inoperative. The laws of other countries will apply. All of those so-called ‘softenings’ of the legislation—the assurances from Minister Amanda Vanstone about this harsh legislation, assurances that they have had to give to try and placate those on the other side of this chamber to prevent them from crossing the floor—are no substitute for retaining control of the situation ourselves. How can they be? If you believe in humane treatment, then use your own laws to ensure it. Do not shift the responsibility and abrogate the control. This bill loses that control. In so doing, this country loses its compassion and its obligation to protect the rights of refugees. This is a bill which appeases Indonesia at the expense of people fleeing persecution. Australia should not change or, in this case, abrogate its laws just to please Indonesia or, for that matter, any other country.

Last year we saw some welcome changes to immigration policy by the government. Those changes brought the government’s policy closer to that which Labor had been advocating for many years beforehand. We wanted the government to go further last year but, as far as they went, we supported the changes. Last year, led by John Howard, they agreed that children would no longer be placed in detention, that indefinite detention would cease and case managed mental health care would be introduced, and that the Commonwealth Ombudsman would also become the Immigration Ombudsman and gain independent oversight of people in detention. They were important concessions. They dealt with concerns which were eventually—and I say ‘eventually’—raised by people in the Liberal Party.

This bill reverses all of those reforms. If asylum seekers are to be sent offshore to centres such as Nauru, this bill reverses all of those reforms. That is the broken word I talked of earlier. Asylum seekers will be out of the reach of Australian law if they arrive by boat. If the bill passes, once again children will be in detention; they will be behind razor wire. No wonder there is disquiet in the government ranks. No wonder they want to gag this bill. Razor wire and detention is no place for children, as Australian law now acknowledges. This bill denies that protection. Our fundamental position is that if asylum seekers land in Australia, they should be assessed under Australian law as it now stands and which we want to further amend. If they are found on the high seas escaping an alleged place of persecution, they should be taken to Christmas Island for assessment.

I want to take the opportunity to point out the efforts Labor has consistently made to get reforms in this very important area. On Australia Day 2002 in my first major speech as Leader of the Opposition, I spoke of the riches that migrants to this country had brought us: economic, social and cultural. I believe fundamentally in multiculturalism in this country. I believe it has made Australia a greater place. I said that Australia had successfully settled millions of people, rich and poor, and refugees, while becoming a diverse but united and peaceful people.

This immigration policy, I might add, has essentially always had bipartisan support. It needs it in a country such as ours. That bipartisanship gave us the confidence to build a diverse, tolerant and harmonious nation: a country that we could be proud of; a country that was looked to and held up as an example overseas. That bipartisanship was shattered under the leadership of John Howard. He trashed the bipartisanship in this country. Think about it: no other Liberal leader in this country has done that—not Menzies, not Fraser, not Peacock and not Hewson. And remember this: it was John Howard who lost the Liberal leadership in 1989 because of his anti-Asian remarks. That bipartisanship has essentially been trashed under his leadership, and this bill is in part a reflection of that fact.

Following the Australia Day call to get the kids out from behind the razor wire, in February of that same year I called for a number of measures, including bringing detention centres back under government control, not the privatised rabble that we have seen in existence under this government. I called for the closure of the Woomera detention centre and for media access to detention centres to be allowed. In April 2002, we opposed, as I have said before, the original excision bill which excised parts of Australia’s territory from the migration zone. That was when we heard the Prime Minister’s ‘ludicrous’ statement. In June of that year I reaffirmed Labor’s commitment to strong border protection but pointed out the futility of protecting our borders by handing them over or surrendering them. That is what we are doing further today.

In December 2002 we moved amendments to the Migration Legislation Amendment Bill to get the children out from behind the razor wire. Subsequently the member for Gellibrand moved a private member’s bill to get the children out before Christmas. All these attempts in parliament failed—all of the attempts that we proposed. Not one member from the government side supported any of those humane and sensible solutions. In policy development in a broader sense, Labor worked through 2002 to get the balance right—the balance between protecting our borders but responding in a human, compassionate way to genuine refugees.

In December 2002 the then shadow minister for immigration, Julia Gillard, and I, as leader, announced a series of measures to protect our borders while treating asylum seekers with decency, respect, compassion and in a timely way. We believed then and we believe now that treating them decently does not come at the expense of national security. We proposed abolishing the so-called Pacific solution—a costly and unsustainable failure. This bill is a complete antithesis of the positive, constructive and humane proposals that Labor has advanced over a number of years. It seeks to legislate away a problem by creating a legal fiction: excising Australia from Australia by pretending that for asylum seekers Australia does not exist—terra incognita indeed. This is a foolish nonsense. It is worse than that though. It is a vindictive and vicious measure to take against unfortunate and desperate people. It does nothing to secure our borders and returns to the government’s old policy of deterrence and punishment based on fear. It is a bill that should be opposed.

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