Jon Sullivan (Longman, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I am not sure that I can appropriately respond to such unctuousness, but let me say this at the outset to the member for Cook: he only indicated one thing that they would do and one thing that they would not do—two things in total. The changes that the Labor government has made to the processing arrangements for illegal arrivals are those two things—plus we no longer keep children behind razor wire. The reality is that those three things alone have not opened up some dangerous maritime highway to people who are escaping from circumstances that are intolerable and see Australia as providing them with an opportunity.

If the member for Cook is going to seriously follow his portfolio responsibilities in this area, he needs to be aware of a couple of things. The first is that the rate of illegal arrivals has been increasing since the early 2000s. In 2007 there were more illegal arrivals than in 2006; in 2006 there were more than in 2005; in 2005 there were more than in 2004; in 2004 there were more than in 2003; and so it goes on. If that is the case, by his own arguments, the Howard government’s border protection policies attracted people to this country. The reality is something different completely. The reality is that just now we are experiencing a rather large increase in the number of asylum seekers as a consequence of what happened in Sri Lanka.

The reality of the situation is that every year Australia receives applications for asylum from about one per cent of asylum seekers throughout the world. A lousy one per cent of the people in this world who seek asylum want that asylum to be in Australia. I think that number is rather small, and we could somehow be inclined to take offence that so few people looking for a better life think they are going to find it in Australia.

The member for Cook indicated two actions that they would take. One is to reinstate a safe haven visa so we would tell people: ‘We are not going to keep you in detention. You can start to build a life in Australia, but some day there is a chance that a man in a suit with a hat and polished shoes is going to knock on your door, march you to the airport and put you on a plane out of here’. What we do with people who seek asylum in this country is to let them know, ‘Yes, you’re in,’ or, ‘No, I’m sorry; you don’t meet the criteria, and here’s a flight back to where you came from.’

I had not intended to speak on matters relating to border protection and the refugee and asylum seeker issue, so I would now like to talk to matters relating to the Appropriation Bill (No. 3) 2009-2010 and the Appropriation Bill (No. 4) 2009-2010 as I had planned. In particular I want to mention some issues relating to my own electorate of Longman on the northern outskirts of the greater metropolitan area now known as Brisbane.

See this speech in context