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

From their own costings provided at estimates, it is costing $81,000 per additional arrival, based on their additional ask for money. My colleague the shadow minister for border protection will inform the House, I am sure, that it is a further $25,000 in additional Customs and Border Protection costs. So every boat that turns up, with an average size of around 40 people, is costing this country $3.6 million.

The Rudd government likes to blame push factors, yet it conveniently ignores the evidence from the UK Home Office, released just a few weeks ago. Based on tracking a full year’s data of asylum seeker applications across 32 industrialised Western countries around the world in 2009, it showed that together there had been an increase in applications of half a per cent. What was the Australian result for that year? It was 31 per cent in one year. The UK was down six per cent for the full 12 months. Declines were also recorded for Canada and the United States. In the final quarter of last year, the UK was down 30 per cent. There were also the recent comments from the UNHCR. The UNHCR has said that the situations in both Afghanistan and Sri Lanka have been improving in recent times. So, while the situation globally is improving, boat arrivals and illegal arrivals in Australia are going through the roof at a rate of 10 per month—the highest on record.

The Prime Minister says it was worse under John Howard but, as I said before, the rate of arrivals today is higher per month than at any other time. Global asylum applications around the world today are 40 per cent lower than they were in 1999, 2000 and 2001. So when the Howard government was dealing with a surge of arrivals, asylum applications were 40 per cent higher. They are 40 per cent lower now, and boat arrivals are higher.

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