Warren Entsch (Leichhardt, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

I rise to speak on the Migration Amendment (Designated Unauthorised Arrivals) Bill 2006, coming, if you like, from the perspective of a member who represents a constituency in which all too often constituents find people basically knocking on their back doors. Those people have arrived in this country, unauthorised, through various means, walked up to constituents’ family homes and knocked on their doors in some of the most remote areas of Australia. By that I am talking about the western Cape York communities and in the Torres Strait. We had no idea who they were. They had no background checks and no health checks. It was not so many years ago that we actually had a vessel land at Holloways Beach in Cairns with quite a number of very well-dressed gentlemen from China, I think. They dispersed very quickly—some of them catching cabs and others racing to the railway station to buy tickets to disappear because they had bought a ticket over.

What the member for Lyons said in the introduction to his contribution is actually quite correct. This debate is about 43 people in a leaky boat. The problem we have is that those 43 can very quickly become 430 or 4,300 because, even in this case, there were many lined up to come after if they had seen that these people had got a successful outcome. You can see no better example of that than what happened prior to the Tampa, where we started to see twos, threes, fours and fives turning up in places like the Torres Strait, in the member for Solomon’s electorate in the Northern Territory and those areas. Because of the system that we had, which was far more generous than anything that they could expect through any of the United Nations conventions, those couple of handfuls of people became literally thousands. Thousands arrived here but we have no idea of the number that did not—because, like those 43 I talked about and that the member for Lyons talked about earlier on, many of them were in leaky boats. Many of them were in boats that were totally unseaworthy. I can remember going to Christmas Island about the time when large numbers were arriving, and people in the Christmas Island community were complaining about the numbers of unidentified bodies that were being washed up because their vessels had sunk.

It is very easy to sit back and attack the government and say that we are not compassionate, but I would challenge anybody that has that argument. By creating opportunities and expectations that people are going to get an outcome that they are not entitled to under normal circumstances, it encourages people to get into these leaky boats. Of course, we see many women and children perish as a result of it. I think that any action that we can take that will prevent people from making that decision and trying to bypass the system is something that we need to consider.

I am elected to represent my constituency of Leichhardt, and the Leichhardt constituency extends to within three kilometres of the mainland of Papua New Guinea. My constituents on Saibai Island, Boigu Island, Dauan Island, Badu Island or in Aurukun in the Western Cape communities are no less important and no less significant to me as an elected representative, nor should they be any less important to the Australian government and the Australian people. They are Australian citizens and they have every right to be afforded the protection that we can give them and their families to ensure that they are not exposed to unnecessary risk.

I wonder how many on the other side, who argue that we should be allowing these illegal migrants to come through these channels at will, would change their position if suddenly, in the middle of the night, they woke up, walked out and opened their front door and found a total stranger standing there, knowing that they had no health checks, no migration checks and no background checks. We have had them come through the Torres Strait, where we discovered that they were special security guards for Saddam Hussein. These are the sorts of people who have come through. They have bought their way through and have been knocking on the door of my constituents. We have had people up there with tuberculosis and Japanese encephalitis. There is no screening and it puts a lot of Australians at risk. I believe we have a strong obligation to ensure that we protect, in the first instance, the rights of our Australian citizens. That is why we are elected to this place and I think that has to come first.

For that reason, I am strongly supportive of any sort of measure that is likely to act as a serious deterrent to people coming through in this way. We have many people languishing in refugee camps around the world. We are a very generous taker of refugees—about 14,000, as I recall—including people from Sudan and places such as that. There are horrific stories. I am very proud to have Sudanese men in my community in Cairns. When you talk to them about their difficulties, it brings a tear to your eye. They could never have come and had the opportunities if we as Australians did not have the generosity of spirit that we have.

I do believe we have to discourage people from taking risks by buying an outcome, particularly those coming from Papua New Guinea, through Irian Jaya, given that over the border they could have got asylum in Papua New Guinea. We have to take into consideration those Australians whose lives are impacted by this situation. So I strongly support this legislation. In closing, I would like to say that I respect the opinion of my colleagues the members for Pearce, Kooyong, McMillan and Cook. As a member of the Liberal Party, I think one of the great things is that we are able to have a different opinion and, while I totally disagree with their views, I respect their right to have that opinion and I admire their courage in standing up for their convictions. I support this bill.

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