Malcolm Turnbull (Wentworth, Liberal Party, Leader of the Opposition) Share this | Hansard source

This government is failing the Australian people in one of the most fundamental responsibilities of any sovereign government: to secure and protect our borders. It is failing because of the changes to our immigration laws, which have had the effect of increasingly outsourcing Australia’s generous humanitarian immigration program to the predations of people-smugglers; it is failing because it is exposing the vulnerable victims of this pernicious trade to the great danger of making perilous journeys across the ocean in unseaworthy vessels; it is failing because of the unnecessary stresses and dangers this places on our defence forces, our police and our Customs officers as they attempt to do their job and stop this illegal trade; and it is failing because an outcome of these policies is to relegate further back in the queue thousands of deserving people waiting to have their claims for asylum processed legally.

The government’s policies are not tough or hardline, as the Prime Minister states they are—nor are they fair or humane. This government’s border protection policies are none of these things because they are not working. They are not working because they have led to a perception that Australia has softened its stance. This vital issue of people-smuggling and the integrity of our borders and our immigration policy is one which deserves and demands calm and rational debate. The simple fact is that the object of government policy should be to eliminate people-smuggling so that, as far as practicable, there are no unauthorised maritime arrivals of people seeking asylum in Australia. To say that is not racist—nor is it heartless or lacking in compassion. People-smuggling is a vile trade. Millions of dollars are made by the people-smugglers as they put at risk not just the lives of their often desperate passengers but the lives of the Australian defence personnel who have to intercept them, or indeed rescue them, on the high seas.

This issue is not about refugees or whether Australia should accept refugees into our community. As honourable members know, Australia has a substantial and generous humanitarian program, where some of the most disadvantaged people in the world are sought out and brought to the safety and the opportunities of life in Australia. We accept around 13,000 refugees every year. This, relative to our population, is one of the largest humanitarian programs in the world. In 2008, based on the figures of the United Nations High Commission on Refugees, Australia alone accepted about 10 per cent of the 121,000 refugee claims submitted by the High Commission on Refugees for resettlement. We were exceeded only by the United States of America. So let us not have anyone pretend otherwise: Australians have always brought a generosity of spirit to the principle of providing refuge to those fleeing persecution around the world. We are a nation of open minds and open hearts.

But we must always be clear-eyed about the balance to be struck in this debate. There are two goals to be achieved here. One is to be compassionate and welcoming to refugees in generous acknowledgement of our international obligations under the United Nations Convention on Refugees. The other goal is to ensure the processing of the refugee intake is orderly, fair and just so that the integrity of the system is not able to be compromised or thwarted by those who seek to circumvent the rules. And, as we have learned over the decades, across governments of both parties, it is not always easy or straightforward to strike an effective balance between the two.

Let us just recall the heartbreaking example of nine-year-old Brindha, the Sri Lankan girl aboard the boat in Merak, Indonesia. She was apparently flown to Malaysia from her home in Jaffna, to spend a month in a jungle camp, only to be put aboard a crammed fishing vessel and then set sail across the waters of the Indonesian archipelago, destined for Australian territorial waters hundreds of kilometres away. Do any of us consider it compassionate to countenance the idea of a nine-year-old girl being subjected to that extremely hazardous journey? And, as we know only too well, many of these boats are unseaworthy—some of them capsize, some of them sink. The plain and simple truth of it is that the criminal syndicates who run this trafficking in human cargo are prepared to gamble with the lives of those on board, having made the cynical calculation that the Royal Australian Navy will come to the rescue. As we have seen with the case of SIEV 36, these pernicious practices not only can lead to serious loss of life but can endanger the lives of our service men and women who go there to save lives.

And what are the people-smugglers doing? They are busy counting their profits. Their normal practice is to depart from the people-smuggling vessel just before it reaches the Australian zone. Captain Bram, who is now in custody in Indonesia, apparently missed his rendezvous—but that was his plan. The Australian Navy will tell anyone who cares to inquire into this that they will come onto those boats and find all of the electronic navigation gear taken out. It is taken out by the people-smuggler, the captain, when he disembarks and leaves some junior people on the boat to be arrested. This is a pernicious trade. Yesterday we heard the Australian Workers Union national secretary, Paul Howes, offer this view:

One man’s people-smuggler is another man’s liberation hero.

I find it hard to imagine a more reckless statement than that. With the best will in the world towards the vulnerable, we should not, as Mr Howes was doing, ever seek to justify the people-smugglers’ vile and pernicious trade. Australians expect their governments to protect their borders against this trade. In doing so we protect the interests of the passengers and we protect the interests of the thousands, indeed millions, of people who are in refugee camps around the world and who would love to be able to come to be resettled in Australia.

It should not ever be controversial to state, as a matter of policy and principle, that Australians have the right to decide who comes to this country, our country, and the manner in which they come. The previous Prime Minister, Mr Howard, was criticised for saying that, but the fact is that that is what every Australian expects of their government. Under the Howard government it took a range of strong measures and years of vigilance to halt people-smuggling. The Rudd government, on the other hand, has quite deliberately, and with dangerous naivety, unpicked the fabric of that suite of policies, sending an unmistakeable message to people-smugglers that our borders are open for business. In short, Labor has lost control of our borders.

We heard a lot of numbers today from the Acting Prime Minister. So let us have a look at the numbers and at some facts. When the Howard government was faced with a growing tide of asylum seekers arriving by boat, it took hard decisions to stop the flow. In 2001-02 there were 19 boats, with 3,039 people on board. The following year no boats arrived. Over the next five years there were a total of 18 boats, carrying 301 people. On average 60 asylum seekers arrived by boat each year. In just over a year, since the Rudd government began dismantling the immigration policies of the Howard government, we have, as I remind the House, had 41 boats arrive, carrying nearly 2,000 people. If the object of policy is to prevent and discourage these unauthorised maritime arrivals, this enormous upsurge in arrivals must be a failure of policy. Of that there can be no question.

The government’s response, the Acting Prime Minister’s response today in particular, is that this has nothing to do with the government’s changes to policy, the so-called pull factors; it has nothing to do with the fact that people-smugglers—and we can rely on the media, the Federal Police report or any range of sources—are out there marketing Australia as a more certain target. Because they are selling a service. Their service, after all, is to say, ‘Pay us your $10,000’—or your $15,000—‘and we will guarantee that we will get you to Australia and that you will get permanent residence.’ So the more certain that outcome, the better a proposition they have to sell. The government says: ‘It’s got nothing to do with that. It’s all push factors.’ Mr Speaker, the push factors have always been there. There are millions of refugees in the world. The tragedy of the case of refugees around the world is such that it is almost demeaning to talk about it in terms of statistics—this enormous total of millions of people, in positions of terrible suffering around the world. This is a gigantic push factor. There are millions of people who are refugees who would dearly love to come to Australia. So the push factor has always been there.

Without wanting to diminish the scale of this human tragedy of refugees around the world, I want to address the misrepresentations and inaccuracies that the Acting Prime Minister recited in the course of question time today. Here are a few facts and I will draw all of these from the UNHCR publication 2008 global trends: refugees, asylum-seekers, returnees, internally displaced and stateless persons, dated 16 June this year. Firstly, page 7 states:

In 2008, the refugee population under UNHCR’s mandate dropped for the first time since 2006.

According to the UNHCR, at the start of 2008 the total number of refugees was 11.4 million people. What a toll of misery that is. At the end of the year, the figure had decreased by eight per cent, which is still an incredible number, but the fact is it had not increased.

The Acting Prime Minister spoke about pressure from Afghanistan. To again quote the UNHCR:

Afghanistan has been the leading country of origin of refugees for the past three decades with up to 6.4 million of its citizens having sought international protection during peak years. As of the end of 2008, there were still more than 2.8 million Afghan refugees.

The figure is significantly below the number it had been previously.

The Acting Prime Minister also should have drawn attention to this very important point: less than one per cent of the world’s refugees benefit from resettlement—coming to a country like Australia. Over 10 years 807,000 have been resettled versus 11 million refugees who were repatriated. So, the goal of policy—our own and global policy and the UN’s policy—should always be focused on repatriation, because that is frankly where the greatest difference can be made.

The Acting Prime Minister drew attention to the fact that in 2008 there had been a 28 per cent increase of the individual applications for asylum or refugee status. What she did not tell the House was that this was almost entirely the consequence of the dramatic number of asylum applications in South Africa, because of the tragedies in southern Africa. The UNHCR notes that if South Africa alone is excluded—this does not include the other big increases in applications for protection in the rest of Africa—‘the global increase in 2008 would have been only four per cent’. It is still an extraordinary toll of misery, but the proposition that she was putting to the House that there had been a sudden increase in the push factors since the election of the Rudd government, or since August last year, is just untrue and it is proved to be untrue from the very document that she was misrepresenting.

This Prime Minister, Mr Rudd, unpicked the fabric of the policy measures that had been carefully developed and refined and changed over many years. The policies were controversial and much criticised. Many of the aspects of them that were the subject of the greatest criticism had been changed under the Howard government. But they worked. At the same time, the Prime Minister, in choosing to meddle with this policy mix, claimed that there was no change that he had made that would have any impact on arrivals. He cannot credibly maintain that position. He has to first acknowledge that his policy has failed and then tell the Australian people how he will address his own failure. (Time expired)

See this speech in context