Michael Danby (Melbourne Ports, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I support the view of the shadow minister for immigration, my good friend the honourable member for Watson, that this is a bad and unnecessary piece of legislation. I agree with you absolutely, member for Watson. The Migration Amendment (Designated Unauthorised Arrivals) Bill 2006 is also a piece of legislation that contradicts the government’s own statements last year after the debacle of the Cornelia Rau and the Vivian Solon affairs and after the Palmer inquiry into the administration of the immigration program that it was going to turn over a new leaf in policy and practice on the treatment of asylum seekers. It violates the agreement that the government came to with its own members, led by the honourable member for Kooyong. As the honourable member for Watson has said, we will be opposing this bill at every stage. I am pleased to see that some of the members opposite—the members for Kooyong, McMillan, Pearce and Cook—agree with us. I commend their adherence to principle on this matter and hope other coalition members and senators will also agree with us.

Before examining the specific provisions of this bill, I would like to reflect on some of the events that brought it about. This bill is a reaction to the Indonesian government’s anger at the decision by the Department of Immigration and Multicultural Affairs to recommend the granting of protection visas to 43 people from the Indonesian province of Papua, who arrived in Australia by boat in March. The arrival of these people created a difficult situation for Australia. Indonesia is one of our most important regional neighbours and a vital partner in the war against terrorism in our region. Indonesia’s national sentiment is strongly opposed to separatism in Papua, and some Indonesians suspect that Australia is conniving to detach Papua from Indonesia.

Australia is clear that we respect the territorial integrity of Indonesia and that we do not support Papuan separatism. Now that Indonesia is a democracy, in which the rule of law and respect for human rights are being established—I am not saying that they are fully established, but great progress has been made—I do not believe that there is a case for separatism in Papua. In fact, the evidence of last year’s free election in Indonesia is that the majority of people in Papua do not support separatism. It is true that violations of human rights are still taking place in Papua, but I do not believe that the solution to this problem lies in support for an independent Papuan state.

As the recent peace agreement in Aceh shows, the Indonesian government is willing to come to agreements with separatist forces in the outlying regions of Indonesia, and I commend both sides in Aceh on that settlement. I think Australia’s policy should be what it has been for a long time, particularly set out by the member for Griffith: to encourage a similar agreement on a ‘special autonomy’ status for Papua within Indonesia.

Nevertheless, so long as there is separatist agitation and repression in Papua, Australia will have to deal with the problem of small numbers of Papuans seeking to come to this country. The 43 people who came to Australia earlier this year were judged by the Department of Immigration and Multicultural Affairs to be people genuinely in need of protection, and they were duly granted visas. As the honourable member for Watson has pointed out, Labor did not take a position on whether or not these people were genuine refugees. That was a matter to be determined by the department in following the correct procedures, and that is what happened. If the decision was made by two junior officers, that is a reflection on the competence of ministerial arrangements.

The displeasure of the Indonesian government should have been anticipated. Now that Indonesia is a democracy, Indonesia’s governments have to respond to domestic political pressure just as we do—just as all democratic governments do. President Yudhoyono responded to nationalist anger in Indonesia by withdrawing his ambassador to Canberra. This was unfortunate, but I think the correct response for the Australian government was to continue with patient explanation of Australia’s position—that Australia does not support Papuan separatism, that Australia supports the strengthening of human rights in Indonesia, including Papua, and that Australia supports a negotiated autonomy agreement in Papua along the lines of the one in Aceh.

The government should also have defended its own immigration policies and the integrity of its own immigration department. It should have said that the 43 Papuans were not judged by politicians but by an independent process based on objective criteria. That would not have satisfied the more outspoken anti-Australian elements in Indonesia, some of whom have a broader anti-Western agenda, but it would have eventually satisfied the Indonesian government, which is an essentially moderate government trying to carry through extensive reform programs in its own country and which has no desire to have pointless disputes with its neighbours, particularly neighbours such as Australia, which is so well disposed towards Indonesia.

But what did this government do instead? It reacted in a blind panic, determined to ensure that no further asylum seekers from Papua would be allowed into Australia under any circumstances. In reacting in this way, the government has trashed its own procedures, repudiated its own public servants, undermined the process of reform in the immigration department and broken the undertakings it gave last year to implement the recommendations of the Palmer inquiry, in both letter and spirit. No wonder the government’s own backbenchers, who thought they had the Prime Minister’s word on this, are so angry.

It is notable that this bill did not have its origin in the immigration department. It emerged from a meeting of the cabinet National Security Committee. In other words, it is a bill designed to fix a foreign policy problem, rather than a bill designed to improve our immigration system. Once again, as it did in 2001 at the time of the Tampa episode, this government has dealt with an immigration issue with a quick political fix rather than with a coherent policy. At the time of the Palmer inquiry, after the shameful treatment of Cornelia Rau and Vivian Solon were revealed, we were promised that immigration decisions would no longer be made on the basis of crude politics. Now we can see how long that promise has lasted—less than a year.

It is hard to see how this legislation has any rationale other than as a quick fix for a political problem. The Papuans who came to Australia in March were not brought here by people smugglers. There is no evidence of an organised attempt to gatecrash our immigration system as there was in the 1990s. In recent years the situation in Afghanistan has become more settled and, as a result of improved cooperation between Australia and Indonesia in cracking down on people-smuggling operations, there have been many fewer attempts to bring people to Australia illegally by boat.

The most deplorable aspect of this bill is that it revives the discredited Pacific solution. All unauthorised arrivals by sea will now be dispatched automatically to Nauru, where they will have to stay while their claims are assessed. Even if they are found to be genuine refugees they will have to stay in Nauru until a third country is found that will accept them. Maybe a third country will be found but no other country is obliged to accept asylum seekers that Australia has refused to accept. The government says that such people will only be dispatched to places were their safety and wellbeing can be protected, but Australian law does not apply in foreign countries. We cannot really guarantee that asylum seekers sent to Nauru or any other place outside Australia will be properly treated.

I am sure those managing the detention centre in Nauru will do their best—although events in the past give us cause to doubt even that—but Nauru is a very small island with a small population and many problems of its own. It has a tropical climate, an acute shortage of water and very limited amenities. With all the goodwill in the world, prolonged detention there cannot be but psychologically harmful, especially for families with children but also for single people separated from families.

Last year the honourable member for Kooyong and his colleagues ended their rebellion on the basis of four promises from the Prime Minister. These were: an end to indefinite detention; an end to detention of children, except as a last resort; more attention to the mental health of detainees; independent oversight of detention arrangements by the Commonwealth Ombudsman. Now we discover that these concessions were phoney concessions because they only applied in Australia, not to the offshore detention centres, which the government is now reviving as receptacles for all the unauthorised arrivals by sea.

Under this bill we once again have de facto indefinite detention, because even genuine refugees will be stuck on Nauru until third countries agree to take them on. Under this bill children can once again be detained. They can be detained on Nauru indefinitely. Under this bill detained people will once again be denied adequate mental health care, which is impossible to provide on Nauru, an environment almost guaranteed to cause mental health problems. Under this bill detainees will be 5,000 kilometres from the Commonwealth Ombudsman, who will need a Nauruan visa even to visit the people he is supposed to be protecting, and who will be operating in a country where Australian law does not apply. This bill is a disgrace to Australia and a disgrace to this government. It is an attempt to fix a foreign policy problem at the expense of vulnerable and friendless people.

I think anyone who knows my record knows that I am in favour of good relations with Indonesia. Indeed, I have written many articles in the Jakarta Post arguing for good relations between our two countries. I am in favour of any reasonable steps to reassure Indonesia that Australia respects Indonesia’s territorial integrity and does not support separatism. But this bill is wrong, unprincipled and unnecessary. The spectacle of this government reneging on its promises and undertakings from last year and returning to the failed policies of the past—and all because of 43 Papuans in a canoe—is a truly shameful one. I hope there are enough coalition senators with a conscience who will share the scruples of the honourable member for Kooyong and his colleagues, and who will defeat this bill in the Senate. They will have the thanks of the Australian people if they do so.

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