Scott Morrison (Cook, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Immigration and Citizenship) Share this | Hansard source

In rising to support the measures that are put forward as part of the Anti-People Smuggling and Other Measures Bill 2010, I start out by saying this: while we do support the measures, from what I have just heard, Labor seems intent on pursuing their age-old strategy for dealing with most issues, and that is to try to spin the boats away. You cannot spin the boats away; you need to take action and you need to put in place measures which stop the boats. The measures that the coalition put in place while we were in government have been roundly criticised by those opposite, but they did have one very interesting result. Under the coalition over the last six years of our government, after we introduced most significantly offshore processing known as the ‘Pacific Solution’, the number of boats went to three per year. Today under this government in 2010 we have an average of 10 boats per month. That is the highest rate of arrivals on record.

But before I go back there let us talk about the bill specifically. This bill creates a new offence of providing material support or resources towards a people-smuggling venture. It establishes in the Migration Act an aggravated offence of people smuggling which involves exploitation or danger of death or serious harm. It applies mandatory minimum penalties. It creates an offence of providing material support that does not apply to a person who pays smugglers to facilitate their own passage or that of a family member to Australia. We do not oppose these amendments. We do not oppose bringing in tough laws that deal with people smuggling. But we need to be clear that this bill offers no comprehensive solution to the problem the government find themselves with of their own making.

There are some things we agree on, and I think that it is worthwhile spending some time on the things we agree on before we focus the debate on the areas of points of difference. I think that we all can agree about the challenge globally of dealing with refugees. There are 10.8 million refugees in the world today and less than one per cent of those will get a resettlement outcome this year. The UNHCR specifically has 203,000 listed as needing resettlement and this year around the world probably around 90,000 of those will get an outcome. The challenge of this number of people moving around in these situations is not going to be solved by Australia acting in isolation with either our resettlement policies or any other matter. There is a global big picture here that has existed for a very long time and whether it is at its lower levels of demand or its higher levels of demand, the level and scale of this problem requires, I believe, a rethink of how we deal with these things internationally.

Secondly, I think we can all agree, and particularly with President Yudyono here in this place last week, that regional and international cooperation is obviously a part of the solution. There is no one solution to this problem but, equally, there are some important solutions to this problem that need to be part of the package. Regional and international cooperation is certainly part of that—working internationally at the source, as the coalition did when we were in government—but also regionally to manage the secondary movements of people and to deal with people smuggling and law enforcement matters. To that end we welcome the announcement by President Yudyono of introducing people-smuggling criminal sanctions in Indonesia and we look forward to that coming into place at sometime in the future, although at this point we do not have any detail of when that might occur. Nevertheless, it is a welcome move from the Indonesian President.

We also agree on both sides of this chamber that an intake currently of refugee and humanitarian settlement of 13½ thousand people is a good program. It is a program which is supported and there are no proposals, I believe, on either side of this House that it should be cut, or increased for that matter. We also agree that when it comes to refugees, settlement services are incredibly important. I would argue that our ability to provide proper resettlement for people, who have come from very difficult situations from all around the world, having experienced things that, hopefully, none of us in this place would ever experience, is crucial to provide them with the opportunity they need to engage with the Australian community and be supported in doing so. That is not an inexpensive exercise and it requires constant modification and improvement, but our refugee resettlement programs in this country have been heralded around the world as being first class, and that is a product, I believe, of governments of both persuasions over a long period of time, working hard on those initiatives. They need to engage, they need to equip, they need to integrate and they need to be provided with the tools for rehabilitation. They also need to do this in the right places and in a way that gives us an opportunity to provide what is in this resettlement program an opportunity for a second chance. So we can agree on these things.

We can agree also on the statistics because the statistics simply do not lie. The statistics tell us that the boats are coming again. Ninety-two boats have arrived with over 4,000 people since August 2008. Twenty-four boats have arrived since 1 January this year, with almost 1,200 people. There were 18 boats, an average of three a year in the last six years of the coalition government, and we have gone from three per year to more than two per week, or the historic high of 10 boats per month, under the arrangements in this calendar year.

The costs are also escalating and these do not lie. Earlier, when the additional estimates process was being pursued, the government asked for an additional $132 million on top of the about $130 million that they already had in their budget for the year. That is not surprising given the extraordinary increase in arrivals in this financial year, but it is interesting that in Senate estimates, when we pursued the government as to how many people they thought would seek to arrive illegally by boat in Australia in 2009-10, the answer was 200 people. They seriously thought that under their policies 200 people would arrive in this financial year. In November they thought they had got that a bit wrong and so they went to Finance and said, ‘No, no, we think there’s going to be 1,400 people.’ They committed this to us in estimates at a time when 2,600 people had already arrived—extraordinary stuff. At this current rate there is no doubt that we will be looking at not just the $132 million extra they asked for. We estimate that somewhere in the vicinity of another $250 million will be needed before the year is done. We have gone from an expenditure of around $130 million to $500 million in one year. When it came to dealing with these issues, the forward estimates had that as the budget for almost those full four years. We have spent that in one year, based on an incredible increase in arrivals over that period. The cost is significant and it continues to increase. The government need to advise what they believe that cost will be because clearly the extra $132 million they asked for will not be enough.

I think the other matter we agree on and can acknowledge is that the vast majority of those who are seeking to come to Australia by boat are secondary movers. The vast majority do not come primarily from the source country from which they departed. It is also true that the secondary movers are moving through a whole series of countries before setting off for Australia from either Indonesia or Malaysia. It is also true that a number of these, and it could be quite a large number of them—we do not know the exact proportion although the government know because they ask for this information on their entry interview when they get to Christmas Island, but they have not released the information—have spent many years on that journey. I know from speaking to them directly that some of them have spent up to 10 years living and working in Malaysia. The UNHCR tells us we have a pipeline currently in Malaysia of not quite 80,000 who are registered in Malaysia and an estimated further 20,000 who are in Malaysia. Some have Burmese backgrounds and others are from Sri Lanka, Iran and particularly Afghanistan. A significant number of people have been in the region for a very long time. The pipeline is there and available to be exploited by the people smugglers.

Christmas Island is full but, for whatever reason, the government pretend that it is not full. Going on the most recent information we have—and you have to ask for this information through the media because it does not come directly from the government—just last week there were 1,854 people on Christmas Island, and that was before the around 240 people who have turned up on boats since that number was made available had set foot on the island. The capacity of that island is around 1,920 and it is simply a matter of time before Christmas Island is full. I was there in January when they were in the process of putting in the additional 400 beds which will go in demountables adjacent to the northern IDC. In estimates the government said that will be ready by the end of this month. I hope that is true. I think it is unlikely to be true based on what I heard when I was there, but let us hope that it is true and that they are able to get those beds in place, because far too many people are living in tents, which is the alternative.

No doubt the government will be moving within the next few months to transfer people—as is their stated policy—to Darwin, to the northern IDC at Berrimah in Coonawarra. They have already advertised for the extra staff. They have already asked the local fire crews and emergency services to familiarise themselves with that facility. I would not be surprised if those whose claims have not been assessed—and this is a critical issue—are transferred to the mainland, thereby ending one of the most significant—if not the most significant—elements of the coalition’s border protection regime, which is offshore processing.

I think we can agree that Australian standards of detention have improved over time, which we can all be very pleased about. In particular, the major reforms that were introduced following the reviews that were undertaken in 2006 have been very significant. When I was on Christmas Island I was very pleased to see that those reviews, inquiries, recommendations and policy changes that were made in 2006 have been taken up and are making the major practical difference on Christmas Island. I asked about what practical changes had been implemented as a result of the policies announced by the new government and the answer was ‘effectively nothing’ practical—that the practical changes that had been introduced were as a result of the 2006 changes. One thing I commend the department on very highly is that they themselves have a culture of continuous improvement in their management of the detention centres. The department and those who run those centres take their responsibilities very seriously, regardless of which party is in government, and they do the best job they can. Equally, I think the contractor on the ground, Serco, is doing an excellent job.

But what don’t we agree on? We do not agree about why they are coming. Australia’s growth in asylum applications in 2009 was over 30 per cent. This differs from comparable countries. I refer to data released by the UK Home Office, which tracks 32 Western countries. The data showed that in the UK asylum applications actually dropped by six per cent. Interestingly, in the last quarter of 2009, they actually fell by 30 per cent compared to the last quarter of 2008. Why do I make reference to the UK? Because, as with Australia, the Afghan population makes up a reasonable number of those who are seeking asylum in the UK, so they have similar challenges. Their experience has been one of declining applications rather than increasing applications.

The current surge also does not reflect the magnitude of the trends that we saw when the coalition dealt with these issues from 1999 to 2001. The global asylum application figures of those 32 countries—as I just cited, they are from the UK Home Office—today are 40 per cent lower than they were in 1999, 2000 and 2001. The number of Afghan refugees during that time was 3.8 million; today it is 2.8 million. Further to that, just last Friday the UNHCR announced that they will be looking at reassessing their guidelines in relation to both Sri Lankan and Afghan asylum seekers, pointing very much to the fact—and I am quoting Richard Towle here—that:

… there has been a significant number of people who have left the camp populations in Sri Lanka … in the process of returning to their places and regions of origin.

The same reference is made in relation to people in Afghanistan, particularly in the north. That is not to say that there will not be legitimate asylum seekers or refugees from Afghanistan, but the point is that, over the period of time in which the UNHCR has noticed that things are improving—we have one million Hazaras living in Kabul today, and there has been a repatriation of Afghans to Afghanistan over the last six or seven years or so, notwithstanding the difficulties last year—contrary to what the government is suggesting, as situations have been improving our applications have been increasing. More significantly, our arrivals of illegal boats have been increasing as well.

So, while the government might want to make the claim that it is about push factors, the truth is that there have always been push factors. Push factors were there back in 1999, 2000 and 2001 and all through the last decade, because there are 10.5 million refugees. There will always be millions and millions of refugees around the world looking for asylum. That is a sad fact of the world that we live in. But the point is that the demand for people smugglers is ubiquitous, regardless of whether people judge demand to be high or low. It does not have to be high or low; there is always plenty of demand. What is different is if you flick the switch to give the people smugglers a product they can sell, and that is what has changed with this government. That is the message that has changed with this government, both in the changes to policy and increasingly, I would argue, in the changes to the way the government is addressing this issue.

There is probably no greater example of this than the Oceanic Viking. Since the Oceanic Viking debacle, we have had more than 40 boats arrive. So almost half the boats that have arrived since the changes to policy that began back in August 2008 have arrived since the Prime Minister entered into his special deal with those on the Oceanic Viking, because people smugglers not only look to see what your policies are—and they do—when framing the product they wish to sell; they also look for a test of your resolve. What we see with this government is no clear resolve.

The previous speaker chastised the opposition for our view that we would return to a policy, where the circumstances allow, of turning back boats. Apparently this was a heinous policy. Well, it was a heinous policy announced by the current Prime Minister of this country the day before the last election. Maybe the previous speaker should share that with his leader, but it was a promise made by the Prime Minister before the last election that he would turn back boats. He has not done so. He has changed the policy. He has not said when he changed the policy, but it is clear from the inquiry into the SIEV 36 explosion that the policy had been changed. The promise has been overturned. The Prime Minister wished to talk tough on these issues when he was the Leader of the Opposition, but he has not had the resolve to follow through. Like so many other promises, this one went by the wayside, and we have seen the consequences of that decision before us as boats arrive. In the last eight days, we have had six.

The coalition’s policies on this issue were well articulated when we were in government, and the record of those policies is understood by the Australian people. The government may want to argue the toss, some in the media may want to argue the toss and there will be other academics out there who may want to argue the toss, but the simple fact is that, following the turning back of the Tampa and the introduction of the measures that were introduced in 2001, in a year when global asylum applications remained at over 600,000—exactly the same as the year before, more or less—the number of boats fell from over 40 to one. That is the message that resolve and a clear purpose will send to those who are in this insidious business.

Those who oppose the coalition’s policies like to engage in some sort of false moral debate and declare their own virtue in contending with the coalition’s lack of humanity on these issues. When they want to put forward a policy that works, we will support it. In this bill, we are supporting a policy that we believe will help and will add. But, largely, it is not the issue. Regional cooperation is no substitute for strong domestic policies. The people-smuggling laws that have been introduced will not make up for soft policies when it comes to the immigration settings this government has put in place, which are acting as a magnet for people smugglers and are drawing people here at historic levels. This government needs to wake up to the reality of what is occurring up in our northern oceans almost on a daily basis, and it needs to take action and stop talking. (Time expired)

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