Stephen Smith (Perth, Australian Labor Party, Minister for Foreign Affairs) Share this | Hansard source

I have had a number of interjections from the other side which I will deal with in conclusion. I just want to make a number of points. I think there are three very important factors that we should focus on when dealing with these complex and difficult matters. The first is to appreciate the push factors which see somewhere between 40 million and 42 million people displaced throughout the world, about a third of which are estimated to be in or around our region. So this is not a difficulty or a problem which is exclusively aimed at Australia or Indonesia or Sri Lanka or Thailand. This is a global problem. It has very serious regional implications. We see the push factors from Afghanistan, from the Afghanistan-Pakistan border area and also from Sri Lanka. As a consequence there is only one effective address to that, and that is to work very closely with our neighbours, to work very closely with source countries like Sri Lanka and transit countries like Malaysia and Indonesia and also to draw the attention very clearly of people who in many respects are the most disadvantaged in our region to the risks and the dangers of putting their lives in the hands of criminals.

I have had interjections from the other side which have essentially been: ‘What about the pull factors as a result of the changes that you have made?’ I just say to the opposition, to the Leader of the Opposition and his colleagues who sit there: you say that as a consequence of us making changes there has been the introduction of pull factors, so just tell us which of those changes you would reverse? Would you see kids behind barbed wire again? Would you put children behind barbed wire again? Would you reintroduce the Pacific solution, where processing is done on Manus Island and Nauru? Would you say it is appropriate that we discharge our international and humanitarian and legal obligations in accordance with the refugee convention by processing people on Manus Island and Nauru? Or would you reintroduce temporary protection visas, after the introduction of which we saw 10,000 people come to Australia as asylum seekers? If you stand there and say that the sum total of your argument is to identify and look at changes the government has made in processing people who come to this country, just tell us which ones you would reintroduce. Putting the kids back behind the barbed wire? Introducing temporary protection visas? Or seeking to somehow discharge our humanitarian and legal obligations by processing people in Manus Island or Nauru?

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