Michael Keenan (Stirling, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Justice and Customs) Share this | Hansard source

The first 2½ years of the Rudd Labor government have been littered with failures. The government has failed to deliver on its promises in health, in the environment and in the economy, and its promises that were made about reducing the costs of living. Many of the areas that the Rudd Labor government said it would address, the government has never lived up to. It has been a government of all talk and no action, whether it is about specific promises that have not been met, such as the timetable for a referendum on health, or whether it is general promises about the philosophy which Labor would use to govern, such as Kevin Rudd’s claim to be an economic conservative. Kevin Rudd’s Labor government is failing to deliver and the Australian people are starting to wake up to this.

But the specific failure I want to address tonight is the failure to protect our borders. This is one of the worst failures of the Rudd Labor government, because it was not just a matter of making promises that were not kept. When they came to government they inherited basically a solved problem. They took that solution and they managed to find themselves a problem by making changes that have led to an influx of illegal boat arrivals and have led to the people smugglers who had been put out of business going back into business. Almost at the rate of one a day now we see a constant influx of unlawful arrivals, and that reminds the whole country that the Rudd Labor government has got this policy area dreadfully wrong.

As the Leader of the Opposition has rightly pointed out, Kevin Rudd wanted to make himself a hero to the latte-drinking Left and he weakened Australia’s border protection policies. We see the consequences of that change in policy in the arrival of every illegal entry vessel that we constantly see reported in the media. We see Labor’s failure in the six boats that have arrived in the past nine days. Labor, when faced with this problem, try to spin their way out of it, as they always do. They put out media releases at odd times about new arrivals. They provide less and less information to the Australian public about illegal arrivals. They refuse to tell us who was on the boats. They refuse to tell us where they were intercepted. They refuse to tell us the circumstances in which the interceptions took place and they continually claim that this problem has nothing to do with them, that it is not a result of the pull factors that they created when they changed our policy. They continually claim that it is all the result of the push factors based on the international situation.

I want to examine this excuse for what it really is—just another in the long line of excuses that this government drums up to account for its continual policy failures. I want this House to be very clear: this government is failing to protect our borders because of the changes that it made to our immigration laws which have had the effect of outsourcing Australia’s generous humanitarian immigration program to predators within the people-smuggling industries. The government is exposing the vulnerable victims of this insidious trade to the great danger of making dangerous journeys across the ocean in unseaworthy boats. These policy failures have resulted in unnecessary stresses and hazards on the hardworking men and women of our defence forces. It results in stresses and strains on the Australian Federal Police and on our Customs officers as they do their job and try to stop this insidious illegal trade.

This government has ultimately failed, because the result of its policies is to relegate further back in the queue thousands of deserving people who are waiting to have their claims for asylum processed legally. These are the tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands of people who are in camps in parts of Africa and South-East Asia, people who might want to get into Australia but whose place is taken by people who have the capacity to pay people smugglers to smuggle them into Australia, taking the place of somebody who does not have the wherewithal to do that.

It is important that we look back at this issue and have a look at the coalition’s record on border protection, because it is only when we look through that historical comparison that we see how badly Labor has mismanaged this problem. In the lead-up to the years 2001 and 2002 there were a significant number of boat arrivals as part of an increasingly sophisticated people-smuggling trade that linked back to organised criminal syndicates. The Howard government were faced with this problem of the influx of illegal arrivals, of this increase in the people-smuggling trade, and showed resolve to solve the issue. They were prepared to take tough decisions and to actually take some responsibility for stopping these boats from coming. The Howard government took action in response and introduced a series of measures that collectively sent a strong message to people smugglers that Australia was closed for business and we refused to be a soft touch for their traffic in human misery. The former coalition government’s policies worked to actually deter illegal immigration by legislating for offshore processing, maintaining mandatory detention and excising from our migration zone those territories off our coast that had become magnets for those in the people-smuggling industry.

If you want to make a judgment about whether or not this policy worked, you only need to have a look at the comparative statistics of boat arrivals from that period up to the present day. People will recall that 2002 was a year of significant international turmoil. It was just after the attacks of 9-11 and just after the invasion of Afghanistan. In 2002-03 there was not one boat arrival to Australia—not one. In 2003-04 there were three boat arrivals. In 2004-05 there were again no boat arrivals. In 2005-06 there were eight boat arrivals. In 2006-07 there were four boat arrivals, and in 2007-08, up to the point when Kevin Rudd and Labor changed the coalition’s border protection policies, there were just three boats. So for the last six years of the Howard government there were only 18 boats in total, which is the equivalent of three a year. So there were three boats a year over the six years after the Howard government showed resolve and took the action that was required to address this problem of people smuggling. We saw more than that within the first two months of this year alone. This is Labor’s incredible failure to protect our borders in comparison to the record of the previous government.

Labor changed our laws in August 2008, but they did not understand that there would be consequences. It is a fact that since the Labor government weakened Australia’s robust border protection system we have had 92 illegal boats arrive, carrying over 4,100 people. So, if we look at the record of the previous six years of strong border protection under the coalition government, we see that 18 boats arrived—three a year. Since that system was weakened, 92 boats have arrived, carrying 4,100 people. This year alone—and we are only 10 weeks into this year—we have attracted 24 illegal boats, carrying over 1,100 arrivals. The worst thing about this problem is that it is increasing. It is snowballing. Last week we witnessed chaos with five boats arriving in just six days, which is almost an average of one boat per day. And, if I can just remind the House again, this contrasts with the final six years of the Howard government, when we had only 18 boats arrive.

It is worthwhile looking at the way the then shadow minister for immigration, who is now the Deputy Prime Minister, approached that problem during those times when we had an average of three boats arriving per year. If we go back and look at her policy responses to those boats, it really makes you wonder how she would judge Labor’s policy in comparison. In 2003, she issued a press release as shadow minister for immigration—this is from Julia Gillard—with the headline proclaiming, ‘Another boat on the way, another policy failure’. That was in 2003, when only three boats arrived in total. So, if another boat is a policy failure, as the then shadow minister would have had us believe, then what does she make of Labor’s 92 policy failures since they weakened our border protection laws in 2008? Let us look at some later press releases she put out, because it is instructive of how she saw the problem then. She put out a press release in 2003, saying, in response to a boat arrival, ‘this boat arrival proves that this government has no solution to the problem.’ Again, if one boat arrival—or an average of three boat arrivals per year—proves that the government has no response to the problem, what solutions does she propose to the 92 illegal arrivals that have occurred on the Rudd government’s watch?

We are very concerned that, as this problem snowballs, the government is actually denying resources to the agencies that are tasked with dealing with this problem. Labor broke an election commitment that they made prior to coming to office about the budget of the Australian Customs Service, and they ultimately cut over $58 million from the Australian Customs and Border Protection Service. I am not sure how they can expect Customs, which is one of the front-line agencies dealing with their influx of illegal arrivals, to absorb this budget cut and not have it affect their significant responsibilities for both border protection and for protecting our borders from other threats, such as illicit drugs.

Customs officers, along with the AFP and Defence Force officers, are on the front line in protecting us from these threats. The Rudd Labor government took this for granted when they recklessly slashed funds from our premier border protection agency. The Customs annual report has also indicated that staffing levels within Customs have dropped during the tenure of the Rudd Labor government. In 2009-2010, there were 5,500 employees, and this was a drop of 179 employees from the total in 2008-2009. I am not sure how the government expects the Customs and Border Protection Service to deal with the massive influx of new arrivals while absorbing this slashing of its budget and still expects it to fulfil the full gamut of its responsibilities.

The same goes for the bill we are discussing here today. The government is increasing the responsibilities of Australia’s domestic security agency to deal with border protection, but they are doing so without providing any extra resources to that agency. It makes you wonder if this is effectively a cut of the agency’s other responsibilities, because they would need to reallocate resources from what they do at the moment to deal with the new responsibilities that they have been given to address border protection.

So, whilst we support the measures contained in this bill, we are concerned about the resourcing of ASIO and we are also concerned that this bill is too little, too late. We are already dealing with a tsunami of new arrivals, and, quite frankly, the government should have done far more in the past to address these issues. We find that illegal boat arrivals are out of control and that the government refuses to address the primary issue, which is that their policies have increased the pull factors which have allowed the people smugglers to go back into business, selling Australia to their clients as a soft touch once again on border protection. The government needs to understand that they can change the responsibilities of ASIO, but the real problem, and the problem they are in denial about, is the magnetic impact of their own failed border protection policies. This is what they must address. These are the hard decisions that they are required to take, but we see them blaming everybody except themselves for this problem of their own making.

We saw a good example of this last week, during the visit of the Indonesian President to Australia. The visit was very well received by the government and the opposition. In true style there was a big announcement about Indonesia taking action to outlaw people smuggling. This announcement was characterised by Greg Sheridan in the Australian, in an article on 11 March 2010, titled, ‘Feel-good show lacked depth’. I will quote some of this, because it is a good example of how spin operates within this government:

Despite the announcement of a new agreed framework on people-smuggling, there is much less to this than meets the eye … Indonesian Foreign Minister Marty Natalegawa said turning back the boats as they came to Australia was not acceptable to Indonesia … It’s interesting, however, that it was Rudd himself who, at the last election, promised to turn back the boats. It’s also instructive that the Indonesians did allow the Howard government to turn back some boats, and this had a critical effect in ruining the credibility of the people-smugglers with their customers.

Mr Sheridan further pointed out:

When the Indonesians have talked about the new framework, they’ve emphasised reducing the time that people spend waiting in Indonesia. This can only mean quicker resettlement to countries such as Australia. And that means a certain increase in people travelling illegally to claim bogus asylum in Australia.

The illegal boat numbers will keep increasing while the Rudd government keeps its basic equation intact. The government in effect has decided that virtually everyone who gets to Christmas Island gets permanent residence in Australia. The boats won’t stop while that is the case.

This is an eloquent summary of Labor’s policy failure within this area. It follows on from what we saw earlier this year with the saga of the Oceanic Viking. It is worthwhile rehashing that in the parliament today while we are discussing the Anti-People Smuggling and Other Measures Bill. This incident was one of the most unbelievable stumbles in the history of protecting Australia’s borders. We had a federal government that actually breached Australia’s own national security by allowing a group of Sri Lankan asylum seekers onto Australian soil, despite them being deemed a risk by our domestic security agency before they were actually brought from Indonesia to Australia. These five Sri Lankans are currently being detained on Christmas Island as the Labor government deliberates over what to do with them. It is difficult to see why these people were actually brought from Indonesia to Australia to begin with. It is impossible to understand why the government would charter a plane and fly it to Indonesia to bring down people who our domestic security agency has deemed to be security risks. It flies in the face of the repeated assurances the Prime Minister gave in this place and outside that no special deal was done or was offered to the 78 Sri Lankans aboard the Oceanic Viking.

Questions still need to be asked about the government’s handling of the Oceanic Viking and also their handling of these people who have been deemed a security threat by ASIO. Why did they charter this plane to bring them to Australia, how do they plan to deal with them now they are in Australia, and how do they realistically expect that a third country will resettle people that Australia has deemed a security risk? The reality is that these people face a period of prolonged detention on Christmas Island, and it is impossible to understand why the Australian government made this our problem in the first place when these people were actually in Indonesia. You can only understand it within the context of the fact that the Australian government did a special deal to resettle the asylum seekers on the Oceanic Viking despite its persistent denial that this was done. Of course, along the way with this Oceanic Viking deal we strained what is a very significant relationship to Australia, and that is the relationship with the Indonesian government. Clearly, despite the announcements of last week, the Indonesian government is less enthusiastic about cooperating with the Australian government to solve this problem of people smuggling. They are certainly not cooperating to the same extent that they did under the previous Howard government.

The purpose of this bill is to amend Australia’s anti-people-smuggling legislative framework. I will briefly touch on the key issues that are contained within the bill. In relation to the Criminal Code, this bill creates a new offence of supporting the offence of people smuggling. It targets people who organise, finance and provide other material and support to people-smuggling ventures entering foreign countries, whether or not via Australia. The penalty for this offence is imprisonment for a maximum of 10 years, or a fine of $110,000, or both.

In relation to the Migration Act, this bill creates two new people-smuggling related offences within the Migration Act—firstly, supporting the offence of people smuggling and, secondly, the aggravated offence of people smuggling involving such things as exploitation or danger of death or serious harm. This will carry a penalty of imprisonment for a maximum of 20 years, or a fine of $220,000, or both.

In relation to the Surveillance Devices Act, this bill will extend emergency authorisation for the use of a surveillance device to investigations into the aggravated offence of people smuggling. Currently the ability to obtain emergency authorisation for a surveillance device does not extended to offences under the Migration Act.

In relation to the Telecommunications (Interception and Access) Act, this bill will simplify the criteria to be satisfied by agencies when applying for telecommunications interception warrants for offences which are contained within the people-smuggling offences of the Migration Act. Under these amendments, agencies will no longer have to establish that the offence involved two or more offenders and substantial planning and organisation, as well as the use of sophisticated methods and techniques and so on.

In relation to the ASIO Act, this bill will amend the definition of the term ‘security’ in the ASIO Act to officially give the agency statutory power to obtain and evaluate intelligence relevant to the protection of Australia’s territorial border integrity from serious threats. Such intelligence can then be communicated to agencies such as the Australian Customs and Border Protection Service or other law enforcement agencies.

Schedule 2 of this bill makes amendments to the ASIO Act. As I have touched on, schedule 2 amends the ASIO Act to enable ASIO to play a greater role in support of government efforts to address serious threats to Australia’s territorial and border protection such as people smuggling. The bill’s explanatory memorandum notes that ASIO’s functions are set out in section 17 of the ASIO Act. These functions include obtaining, correlating and evaluating intelligence relevant to security and communicating any such intelligence for purposes relevant to security.

The existing definition of ‘security’ in section 4 of the ASIO Act does not specifically encompass border security issues. This means that ASIO currently has limited capacity to carry out its intelligence functions under section 17 in relation to threats to Australia’s territorial and border integrity such as people smuggling. Schedule 2 of the bill will amend the definition of ‘security’ in section 4 to include ‘the protection of Australia’s territorial and border integrity from serious threats’.

As recently noted by ASIO’s Director-General of Security, despite not having an express power under the ASIO Act to collect intelligence on people smuggling, the agency does appear to have the ability to pass on information relating to people smuggling to other agencies. On 8 February this year, the Director-General said, in response to questioning at the additional estimates hearing of the Senate Legal and Constitutional Affairs Legislation Committee:

ASIO’s activities must be directed towards those items which are listed under section 4 of the act, which are called the heads of security. Border protection and people smuggling is not one of those, so we do not collect intelligence at home or overseas in operations specifically directed against people smuggling.

From time to time, and as a result of our other inquiries on matters under our heads of security, we come across information that may be relevant to people smuggling, and under the act we are able to provide that to the relevant authorities.

As I have outlined, the coalition support the measures contained in this bill, although they do not address the issues that are creating the problem in the first place. We also are concerned that ASIO, along with the other agencies that are tasked with protecting Australia’s borders—namely the Australian Customs and Border Protection Service, the Australian Federal Police and other key agencies such as Immigration—need to be adequately funded and resourced in order to perform their increasingly difficult task.

Because of the influx of illegal arrivals, both the Australian Customs and Border Protection Service and the Department of Immigration and Citizenship have needed to apply to the government for additional money. Regardless of the fact that this tsunami of new arrivals is resulting in strain to the resourcing of these departments, this bill contains no extra funding for ASIO and, indeed, the bill’s explanatory memorandum states that this bill has no financial impact on the government’s revenue. This really raises questions about how ASIO should be required to sustain its current responsibilities with the proposed additional responsibilities that are contained within this bill. Clearly ASIO are going to be required to divert resources from their existing responsibilities to deal with the extra intelligence functions that they have been asked to adopt within this bill. We are deeply concerned about the effect that it might have on Australia’s domestic security when we have the resources of our domestic security agencies stretched so thinly. The Rudd Labor government is asking these agencies to do more with less, and we have seen this trend repeated with border protection and also with the AFP. Clearly there is a limit to the amount of extra responsibilities that can be heaped on agencies without their existing functions suffering.

You can task ASIO with new powers to deal with people smuggling, and you can continue to deflect blame for the increased number of illegal arrivals that we are seeing in Australia, but clearly what has happened has been a result of the changes that Kevin Rudd and the Labor government made to Australia’s border protection regime in August 2008. That is at the heart of this problem. It does not matter what resourcing you give to agencies. It does not matter that you ask ASIO to increase its intelligence-gathering capabilities to deal with people smuggling; until you address the issue of the weakening of Australia’s border protection laws, until you stop Christmas Island being a magnet for people smugglers, until you send the message that Australia is no longer a soft target for people engaged in people smuggling, then we will continue to see illegal arrivals in Australia. We will continue to see, as we have seen this year, this problem starting to snowball out of control. We have people arriving at such a rate that the facilities at the Christmas Island detention centre are now at bursting point. People are being housed in tents. The facility was originally built, under the Howard government, to house 800 detainees. It is now bursting at the seams and the government has no answers to stop the flow of boats from arriving.

People smuggling is an organised criminal activity and it endangers people’s lives. The government needs to prevent it by taking a tough and hardline stand. This will not necessarily please everybody in the Australian community, but we have plenty of evidence to suggest that it is the approach that will actually work to stop this problem. The government’s border protection policies are neither tough nor hardline. They try to be all things to all people. Kevin Rudd tried to impress the Left of his own party and other parts of the Australian community by going weak on our borders, and he did not expect that there would be consequences for doing so. This led, rightly, to the perception that Australia has softened its stance, which has led to the people smugglers going back into business, and this has led to 92 unauthorised boat arrivals with over 4,100 people on them. You cannot be all things to all people when it comes to border protection. You need to send a clear signal and you need to show some resolve within this area that Australia is no longer open for business. The Labor Party will never do that. It does not matter what resourcing they give to our agencies to deal with these policies; unless they address their own failures we will continue to see this influx of illegal arrivals.

See this speech in context