Mark Dreyfus (Isaacs, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I rise to speak on the first report of the inquiry into immigration detention in Australia by the Joint Standing Committee on Migration. First, I would like to commend this report and the committee’s chair, the member for Melbourne Ports. It is a thorough, well-researched report that attracted support from both sides of politics and whose recommendations set the tone for a strong but fair approach to dealing with border protection and those who seek to come to Australia. The report draws attention to the Commonwealth Ombudsman’s investigations into the problems of past detention policies and makes a series of suggestions as to appropriate future policy.

It is interesting to see that the joint standing committee, which includes the opposition spokesperson for immigration and citizenship, the member for Murray, supported in this report the government announcement in July which outlined seven values that would form the new immigration policy. That included the determination that three groups will be held in mandatory detention: unauthorised arrivals to be checked for identity and health, those who pose an unacceptable risk to the community and those who have repeatedly broken visa or immigration conditions. Those outside these three groups will reside in the community until their case is resolved.

We heard the member for Murray just this morning on Sky News warmly endorsing the joint standing committee’s report. In light of the support that has been expressed by the member for Murray as the opposition spokesperson, it is interesting to see the coalition’s rhetoric on this important issue return to that of the Howard years—the time of ‘mean and tricky’. Yesterday in question time, the member for Murray accused the Rudd government of ‘giving the green light to people smugglers’. It has to be said that the member for Murray and her sidekick, Senator Fierravanti-Wells, simply cannot get their story straight—whether it is about detention centres, budgets, boat people or the intervention by the Minister for Immigration and Citizenship in individual cases.

The member for Murray has no credibility when it comes to her own policy let alone the government’s. In September, she said:

I am pleased to see the new Labor government choosing to continue the Howard policies …

Then in November the member for Murray said that the Minister for Immigration and Citizenship had to:

… loudly and clearly articulate what Labor’s border security policy is.

Then yesterday the member for Murray said that Australia is ‘still very strict and strong’ in regards to border protection.

As if that level of inconsistency from the opposition was not enough, Senator Fierravanti-Wells, who acts as the coalition’s shadow parliamentary secretary for immigration and citizenship, is saying something different again. When talking in the Senate about Labor’s immigration policy yesterday she said, ‘There’s been a decisive shift in the way you guys are doing business.’ So which is it?

The same question could and really should be asked in regards to the member for Murray’s thoughts on detention and processing centres. After the Rudd government closed down the Nauru and Manus Island detention centres, the member for Murray criticised us in October for having only one facility at Christmas Island. Yet yesterday—which was a very busy day of totally flipping on anything she had previously said about the Rudd government’s immigration and detention policy—the member for Murray said, ‘I don’t think we need to again have Nauru or Manus Island operating, because, of course, we’ve got Christmas Island.’

The member for Murray is not just lacking credibility when it comes to policy; she also seems to lack the ability to count. How many boats have illegally arrived in Australia this year? Good question. The member for Murray claimed at a doorstop interview yesterday that it was seven. Then in question time she claimed it was eight. In fact, the number is four boats, carrying 48 passengers. For the record, five boats arrived last year and six in 2006.

While the success of the government’s border security policy cannot be judged purely on the number of boats that arrive on our shores, the least the member for Murray could do is get her facts right and not—as she did in question time yesterday—incorrectly claim there has been a ‘surge’ in attempted boat arrivals. We have seen this tendency towards inconsistency and being misleading in this policy area from the Liberal Party before not just on how many boats have arrived on our shores but also earlier this year. The member for Murray has also claimed that there has been $67.4 million cut—

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