Warren Truss (Wide Bay, National Party, Leader of the Nationals) Share this | Hansard source

Australia’s border protection policy is in ruins. Before the last election, the woman who is now Deputy Prime Minister said that when one refugee boat arrived in Australia it was a demonstration of policy failure on the part of the previous government. Now, when she is Deputy Prime Minister of the nation—52 boats and 2,300 people later—we are seeing monumental policy failure. This government’s soft touch on asylum seekers has been signalled around the world. The floodgates have opened and the armadas are at the gates as news comes of more vessels arriving in Australia day after day. This is policy failure on a gigantic scale and the implications for our country are clearly enormous.

Today there is also the message that the policy is to get even softer—special deals for people who are rescued at sea. The Prime Minister has been asking us to believe that the asylum seekers on the Oceanic Viking have just chosen to leave. Some have already left and I understand, from news breaking at the present time, that the rest will be leaving in a few hours. These people are not leaving because they were offered any kind of special deal; they have just voluntarily chosen to get off the boat. They have decided to take a break from the air conditioning and good food on the Oceanic Viking and enjoy some life in an Indonesian detention centre instead. They have decided they can do without the safety and care that they are getting on the Oceanic Viking and they will just take a little bit of a break in a detention centre in Indonesia. Who can believe that story? No special deal, in spite of the fact that a letter was written to all of these people giving them a host of guarantees—a letter, approved by a special committee of cabinet, that the Prime Minister has apparently not seen or could not care less about; a special letter giving these people an assurance that they will be processed and will basically be in Australia within four to six weeks; indeed, a special deal to encourage them to come to Australia and let them break through all of the processes that other people have to go through to come into this country. They are going to have rolled gold entry.

If there was any doubt that there was some sort of special deal, the cat was let out of the bag, firstly, this morning by the Minister for Foreign Affairs, Mr Stephen Smith, on ABC radio and television when he acknowledged that there were special arrangements but these were special circumstances and, secondly, at the beginning of question time today when the Leader of the House, with his very recognisable foghorn, yelled out that these people were getting this special deal only because they had been rescued at sea. He tried to change the words later to say, ‘These people were rescued at sea.’ It does not make any difference. It was not just the people in the House who heard that there is a new criterion for dealing with refugees. It was not only the people in this House who heard the Leader of the House’s message. It will have already been relayed to the people smugglers around the world. There is a new modus operandi to get this special priority entry into Australia: just pick up your luggage off the carousel and the Rudd carpet will be there to give you a special entrance into the country; you just get rescued at sea. So now, instead of bringing the vessel into Australian waters, before you get to Australian waters you pull the plug, get rescued at sea and then you will be in Australia within four to six weeks.

This is a classic example of further weakening and softening of this government’s approach to border control. Its policy is completely out of control. These special deals were not offered to other refugees awaiting processing in Indonesia and not even to those who have already been processed by the United Nations and approved for entry. They are not getting any of these special deals. This is an arrangement that has been made with the Oceanic Viking and the people on board in mind. The reality is that this government is either completely lost or being dishonest with the parliament in the answers that have been given in relation to these issues.

The fact is that Australia has always had a generous and compassionate approach towards people from troubled nations, from trouble spots around the world, who seek to come to Australia as refugees. Many Australian families, including my own, can trace their heritage to forebears who came to Australia to escape persecution in other parts of the world.

However, the coalition believes that Australia has a right to decide who enters our country and our decisions should not be compromised by those who seek to enter Australia through unauthorised channels. In government we introduced tough border protection policies to deter the flow of people arriving unlawfully. We continued to bring properly assessed refugees to Australia, but we succeeded in getting the message through to the people smugglers that those who sought to jump the queue would not be welcome. Those policies did have a significant impact and the number of unauthorised boat arrivals was dramatically reduced. However, they have increased significantly since Labor came to government. By abandoning the coalition’s policies, Labor has sent a message that Australia will be a soft touch—and the people smugglers were very quick to reopen their businesses.

How has the Prime Minister responded? He said he was going to be tough and his tough approach was to call people smugglers bad names. He called them ‘vile species’. That was supposed to frighten them. He uses stronger language than that on his caucus colleagues and his own staff, yet the people smugglers were supposed to be scared away by being called a ‘vile species’. This is what the Prime Minister said last month:

The key thing is to have a tough, hard-nosed approach to border security, dealing with the vile species who are represented by smugglers on the one hand, and a humane approach to our international obligations on the other.

Sadly, the Prime Minister is failing on both counts. The people smugglers have been given the green light, and a few insults from the Prime Minister are not likely to deter them. There is nothing tough or humane about Labor’s approach. It is weak and pathetic, full of mixed messages but no deterrents. I understand that people are desperate to leave their embattled homelands. I understand there are economic reasons why people choose to come to Australia and I also understand that, without a sense of order in the process, those waiting patiently to be granted refugee status in Australia in the proper way are being shunted further and further back down the line.

Labor has lost control of immigration policy. Its softness on border protection, however, is not just in dealing with asylum seekers. It has wound back Australia’s border protection. Customs has been hit with a $70 million cut in its funding and 220 staff have been sacked. The Australian Quarantine and Inspection Service has lost $35.8 million with another 150 staff sacked. There will be 4.7 million fewer cargo consignments inspected this year as a result of Labor’s cutbacks to Quarantine and Customs. There will be 2,150 fewer vessels boarded. Labor has indeed softened our approach to the security and protection of our nation. The decisions of the government to wind back quarantine, allow banana imports from the Philippines and allow live FMD virus and meat from countries with BSE are all examples of a government that does not really care about border protection issues.

Let us look at the Oceanic Viking. What is the Oceanic Viking doing up in Indonesian waters in the first place? This is a vessel that was chartered to patrol in the Southern Ocean. It is supposed to be down protecting Australia’s fisheries from the plundering of the patagonian toothfish. It is supposed to be there to watch for illegal whaling. It has been chartered from P&O to spend between 200 and 300 days in the Southern Ocean. Why has it been diverted up into the waters of Indonesia? The reality is that this government again lost its priorities and is desperate to get some resources. Having wound back the border protection services of our nation, it now needs to commandeer a vessel that is supposed to be protecting our fisheries, to act as a hotel for asylum seekers in Indonesia.

The fact is that this government has no plans to deal with this issue. It is not tough and it is not humane. Lives are being lost as a result of people being encouraged to take journeys on leaky boats and dangerous vessels because of the government’s soft approach to immigration and asylum seeker issues. The reality is that this response is not only weak but also cruel and heartless. The government needs to think properly about how it can deal with these issues to protect our borders and to keep them secure and to make sure that those people who have been assessed as refugees and have a right to come to this country do not have to wait even longer in the queue. (Time expired)

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