Laurie Ferguson (Reid, Australian Labor Party, Parliamentary Secretary for Multicultural Affairs and Settlement Services) Share this | Hansard source

Last evening in my speech in the second reading debate on the Anti-People Smuggling and Other Measures Bill 2010 I was referring to claims by the shadow minister in relation to his view that the crisis in Sri Lanka is just about over and that the crisis in Afghanistan is disappearing et cetera. Quite frankly, I am more prepared to listen to the Auburn Tamil seniors group that I met on the weekend at a Seniors Week event than the shadow minister. I think details around the world tend to reinforce their view rather than his. It is interesting to note that the Immigration and Refugee Board of Canada as late as January this year pointed out that there are 100,000 Tamils in the Indian state of Tamil Nadu alone, 27,000 of those being prepared to live even outside refugee camps.

We are in a situation where the opposition candidate in the general elections, General Fonseka, has been court-martialled and placed under house arrest during this period. Indisputably, even if people were very critical—(Quorum formed) As indicated, I would have more faith in the Tamil seniors group in my electorate than in the shadow minister for their view and knowledge of the situation in Sri Lanka. I was making the remark that the situation there at the moment has involved the arrest and court-martialling of the presidential candidate. It is a situation where a recent vote by British Tamils found 99 per cent support for an independent state in Sri Lanka. What those figures and the number of people in camps in India say to me is that there is still a very serious human rights issue in Sri Lanka which would lead to people seeking refugee status, whether it is in India, Europe or Australia.

The Indonesians, of course, are acting with regard to people smuggling, with regard to the formation of a task force and in cooperation with the AFP, because, unlike those opposite, they understand the practical circumstances that are the push factors leading to refugee claims in our region. It is very clear that there is very confused thinking amongst those opposite. There is very grave opportunism. The joint committee on migration matters last year came down with a number of recommendations which they would now say are advertisements for refugees to come to this country. We had a unanimous report from this committee last year which says that after three months every person whose security and health situation has not been finalised should be subject to a departmental review, after six months be referred to the ombudsman and, after a year, be given judicial review. These are the people who once the boats start coming start throwing up their hands and saying it is because of government liberalisation in this area, and yet when many of the measures were adopted by this government they sat on their hands and failed to oppose, most particularly with regard to temporary protection visas.

It is interesting to note the record, in which they say that we can overcome this. They say that if we detain children for an average of a year and eight months, as they did; if we have large numbers of temporary protection visas, where people are insecure about what is going to happen to them, not knowing the future; and if we detain women then somehow people will not come by boat. It is interesting to note that, despite the millions of dollars of taxpayer money that was expended with regard to people on temporary protection visas, the situation was that the overwhelming majority of them stayed here in the end anyway. They might have been uncertain about their future, they might have been unclear about when and where they were going to get permanent residence but the truth is they virtually all stayed here. As we know, some of the figures indicate that amongst the highest years of boat arrivals were ones after the introduction of some of the opposition’s draconian policies. There is no clear, emphatic correlation between the number of boats coming to a country and the internal policies with regard to how the country processes claimants.

See this speech in context