Gary Hardgrave (Moreton, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

I am impatient only to offer admiration for the honesty of the ambition of the learned gentleman from Denison! I would remind the House and the three or four people suffering over dinner, listening to the parliament tonight, that the awkwardness of reality defeats the ambition. I take up some parts of the theme of the closing comments of the learned gentleman and put the case that my grave concern is that too much executive power is in fact developed away from those accountable to this place. This parliament is the place where all authority of government conduct should be afforded. My grave concern is that over the last 20 or perhaps 30 years we have seen too much yielding—although to many fine people within the professional Public Service—to people from whom we then try to gain the information, as the member for Denison has rightly pointed out.

So I thank the honourable gentleman for reminding us of the ambition of proper accountability and, I dare say, consistency in our conduct in the development of public policy. But staying one step ahead of those who seem determined always to thwart all of our attempts to administer well for the law-abiding—the role of criminals and others who seek to pervert every ambition we have for good conduct in society—is a very real challenge in the world today. We are tonight again dealing with further amendments to our Migration Act and with the integrity of that act. We are tonight again further underscoring the importance of all of those passing through our migration system, even those on a temporary visit to Australia, doing so in such a way that all of us who live in this country are confident they are here for the right reasons, that they are good people and that they are indeed who they say they are.

I suspect that the two matters contained within the Migration Amendment (Border Integrity) Bill 2006, which seeks to strengthen Australia’s border integrity, could be summarised in a way that says they are about common sense—that is, to deal with the special purpose visa. Currently, when a decision is made regarding the revoking of the special purpose visa, it is current until midnight on the day on which that decision has taken effect. In other words, you end up with a circumstance where someone whose visa we may seek to revoke still has that visa under the law until some hours after that revocation takes place. That is a nonsense in itself, and this bill seeks to ensure that a timely circumstance is attached to any decision to revoke that visa. That is very important for those who may be in receipt of the special purpose visa.

The member for Denison outlined who some of those people might be. That circumstance might apply to crew members of non-military ships, aircraft crew, guests of the government and people who come here for participation in events such as the Commonwealth Games or other great international events, such as the swimming titles taking place in Melbourne at the moment. As it stands currently, anybody who may have been afforded a special purpose visa would, if it were to be taken from them, still have that visa until midnight on the day of that decision. In this timely and very exacting world in which we live, that is a nonsense that we are, through these measures, dealing with.

This bill will also amend the Migration Act to allow for choice. So we will have common sense and choice. We will be allowing for an automated border processing system, which people can opt to use, known as SmartGate. Citizens holding an e-passport or selected noncitizens arriving and departing from Australia will be able to clear migration processes by having their identity and their visa or Australian citizenship status verified by an automated computer system, the SmartGate system. They can, of course, still opt to front the Customs officials who do all the front-line processing for the Department of Immigration and Citizenship at airports and seaports all around this country. But they also—and this is particularly good for Australian citizens, I suspect—have the option of going down the SmartGate path. In that regard, the items before us are very important, as indeed are all of the matters this government brings to this place for discussion and for disclosure to the people of Australia.

As a representative of one of the most culturally diverse electorates in Australia—there are probably 20 or 30 that are more culturally diverse than mine but in the state of Queensland I am No. 1 in that distinction—I think this integrity aspect of our migration process is absolutely vital. There is no doubt about it in my mind. It is important to look back on some of the other measures that we have taken when it comes to establishing the integrity of those who have migrated to this country. This side has been involved in a nation-building exercise when it comes to migration, and those opposite have been very soft on these integrity issues. I will give some examples of that claim.

Back in the early nineties there was a genuine failure by the Labor Party in government to deal with these sorts of issues. At a time when law enforcement and border protection should have been boosted, the Hawke and Keating governments cut staff numbers in Customs by more than 1,000 between 1990-91 and 1994-95. This seriously undermined the ability of Customs officers, who are the people who do the processing on behalf of Immigration, to ensure the integrity of our borders. The Labor government’s bad economic management—the recession we had to have—saw the needs of our law enforcement agencies being unfulfilled, leaving Australia a soft target for transnational crime syndicates, organised crime and people smugglers. This has been a blight on Australia’s borders in years past, but because of the decisive approach that this government has taken to the nation-building exercise of migration and to the protection of the integrity of every person who passes through this country, people-smuggling operations have been thwarted by our very coordinated, forward-looking and flexible approach to border security.

Those opposite have had several dollars each way—I will update the two bob each way analogy. It has taken me a few years to come back and talk about this, because I have been a member of the dreaded executive, around on the blue carpet, for the last five or six years. I will never forget being confronted, at the time of the border protection bill’s introduction in August 2001, with Nazi slogans being uttered by people like the member for Grayndler, who said, ‘Sieg Heil’—and it is in the Hansard, and I invite people to see it. It is offensive terminology; he should have been thrown out that day. The Speaker of the day, Mr Andrews, apologised to me afterwards.

At the time I was in favour of that border protection integrity measure for one reason: because of the cultural diversity in my electorate I did not want any one of those faces from other places—the people new to Australia in particular, people who had come out of Africa, the Middle East and countries which could be typecast by others in society—to be under any doubt that their status was being enhanced by everything this government was doing. That is what our border integrity measures have always been about.

On one occasion, the then Leader of the Opposition, the member for Brand, said in the Hansard, on 29 August:

... this country and this parliament do not need a carping opposition; what they actually need is an opposition that understands the difficult circumstance in which the government finds itself ...

That referred to the arrival of the Tampa on the national agenda. But within the space of a few hours, the Left had locked him into a completely different position and Mr Beazley made a spectacular backflip and said that the opposition would not support the Border Protection Bill 2001. He completely confirmed in the minds of Australians that, with the flip-flop and uncertainty in the face of crisis, there could not be a consistent decision and it would be the sort of style he would bring if he were elected at the 2001 federal election. It was proof positive to the people of Australia that the government’s claims about his ability to make a tough decision when it had to be made were true.

I simply remind the House of these things because the Australian Labor Party, if given a chance at administering Australia, would not be able to make the decisions that need to be made. Their concept of a coastguard or ‘coastguide’, as I know the foreign minister always refers to it, would be a disaster. It would see Australian taxpayer resources meeting unauthorised arrivals in Australian waters and showing them the way to port, the way in. It would see an end to the very real and successful process of the so-called Pacific solution, which has been a demonstrable deterrent to people smugglers. This would be a green light for people smugglers to bring people to this country.

The measures we are dealing with tonight are very much about nailing down in an incremental sense another set of steps to enhance the standing of people who pass through our borders. It is about knowing that technology is not necessarily the friend of the law abiding—although it should be—but often the friend of the law breaker. It is about the need for government to keep one step ahead of people such as those organising people-smuggling. I know that the member for Kalgoorlie would be very aware of the monstrous north-west coastline of fantastic, productive lands with a great tidal power of possibilities that is also so open a flank for those who want to prey on our good nature and good fortune as a country, drive people ashore in unseaworthy boats and risk the lives of women and children on some promise of better times in this great land of milk and honey.

Tonight we are further enforcing and taking the opportunity to protect our borders, our national security. We are about building on our already strong record of border security. Major expansions in new technology used by Customs, the front line of the immigration process into Australia, and of course the Australian Federal Police, have meant that we are able to more efficiently process passengers. We are able to assist in the detection and prevention of terrorism and serious crime. We are able to map all of those who are coming into this country—and all of those who are going out—with the certainty that I think everyday Australians would demand of us.

We are able to take action to shield the people of this country from developing trends in criminal activity in areas such as identity fraud. When my electorate office at Moorooka was broken into a few years ago, one of the greatest concerns I had was that my old passports had been taken. Heaven knows if anybody would ever want to claim to be me—I wish they would pay a few of my bills—but I make the point that identity fraud is now so easy for those in the criminal world to prosecute against any one of us who are law-abiding citizens. If we are not careful, we may be innocent lambs taken to this identity fraud slaughter. SmartGate processing, involving further biometrics and allowing people to have a passport with those biometrics, ensures that we are able to guarantee the integrity of the system.

As much as I agree with the ambition of the member for Denison that we stop legislating and we say, ‘Enough is enough; what is true today will be true for the next five years,’ there can be absolutely no guarantee that we will not have to be back here again in six months time legislating in a way that further enhances integrity measures and that further underscores our ambition to provide certainty, security and dignity in the migration process. There can be absolutely no guarantees about that because the criminals are not cooperating. They are not ringing us up and saying, ‘Look, there’s a moratorium; we’ll be right for the next year or two.’ It does not work like that. As I said, I admire the ambition of the member for Denison, but the shock of reality must have surely set in by now.

We are also taking action to shield the people of Australia from developing criminal trends such as the manufacture of synthetic illicit drugs and money laundering. I was with the member for Denison on committee work six or seven years ago when I saw the superb work that is being done by Australian authorities regarding money laundering. The process of ensuring that people passing through our borders meet our expectations is absolutely important in that particular part of international criminal detection. If we are able to map the movements of people with the certainty that we want—and we will be able to enhance that through this legislation—then we are able to take away the proceeds of crime and map the movement of criminal activity by identifying those who are coming into and going out of this country.

We have now developed one of the toughest aviation security systems in the world to protect Australians and overseas travellers. I recently returned from a constituent visit to Taiwan—I have the largest constituency of Taiwanese-born people of anyone in this parliament—where I was talking with constituents. I found it interesting that, hopping on the China Airlines flight, they were talking about the security at Taipei airport but they said, ‘When you get to Australia, it is going to be even tighter again.’ Everything that is brought into this country is further screened and mapped so we know what materials are being brought into Australia.

This bill adds to that combined interdiction effort by the AFP, Customs and the Department of Immigration and Citizenship to ensure that Australians of all background and beliefs and of all experiences and lengths of time in this country—whether they have been here for a year or 10 generations—can be confident that everybody new who comes to this country is coming on the terms and conditions we outline. I am very pleased to see the government maintaining its determination to enhance our border integrity, because when it comes to migration we are involved in a nation-building exercise.

I note that the Minister for Small Business and Tourism is in the chamber. She is a great minister and is doing a great job. She would be very pleased to know that the number of arrivals and departures at Australian international airports is forecast to increase by up to 23 per cent by 2009. The measures in this bill we are debating tonight will ensure that people have a choice to either front the Customs officer working for Immigration or make use of the SmartGate e-passport concept. Either way, I am sure that the minister for tourism would want to make sure that not only everyone visiting Australia is doing so on the proper visa and that they leave before that visa is up but also their first experience in Australia—customs halls all around this country—is such a positive one that their reaction stays with them for their entire trip and that they tell all their friends. A lot more than the tens of millions of dollars already generated by international tourism to this country is coming our way.

I congratulate the Minister for Immigration and Citizenship. I understand that the frustration of getting these things drafted in the time that suits the member for Denison is now a matter of public record. I hope that the member for Warringah, the Leader of the House, was listening to the debate and that he will ensure that further resources are given to the parliamentary draftspeople. They do a great job. As long as people in the executive can feed them the right information the first time, they will get it drafted and drafted well. I commend this bill to the House.

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