Sharon Bird (Cunningham, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I thank you in several ways, Mr Deputy Speaker Sidebottom, for facilitating my participation in the debate today by taking my chair duty and allowing me to continue with the debate. It is greatly appreciated. I continue with the very brief comments that I made last night before debate was interrupted. I indicate to the House my support for the Anti-People Smuggling and Other Measures Bill 2010. It is my intention, for the information of the House, to take about 10 minute to complete my comments. I want first of all to outline the provisions that are in this bill, then to put the bill within the context of the government’s actions on anti-people-smuggling measures and then to wrap up with some general comments about where the debate is at the moment.

I should indicate to the House that this bill seeks to amend some other acts in order to increase the capacity to deal legally with people smugglers. It establishes a new offence of providing material support and resources towards a people-smuggling venture. This is contained in the Migration Act and Criminal Code. The offence will apply to a person who provides material support or resources to another person or organisation and to the provision of support or resources aids if there is a risk that the provision of support or resources will aid the commission of the offence of people smuggling. The offence applies if a person is reckless about whether the money or resources they provide will be used in or to assist with a people-smuggling venture. It would not apply to a person who pays smugglers to facilitate their own passage or entry to Australia or to a person who pays for another person in that venture. The maximum penalty for this offence will be 10 years, 1,000 penalty units—$110,000—or both.

This bill also extends the mandatory minimum penalties in the Migration Act. The Migration Act currently contains mandatory minimum penalties for the aggravated offences of people smuggling. That is a five-year sentence with three years non-parole or, for repeat offenders, an eight-year sentence with five years non-parole. The bill extends the application of the mandatory minimum penalty to the new offences, which are people smuggling involving death, people smuggling involving exploitation or danger of death or serious harm, and providing support or resources for people-smuggling activities. The higher mandatory minimum sentences of eight years and the non-parole period of five years will automatically apply to the offences of people smuggling resulting in death and exploitation or danger of death or serious harm irrespective of whether it was a repeat offence. This is to reflect the serious nature of these offences.

The bill will also extend the higher mandatory minimum sentence and non-parole period to a people-smuggling offence involving children and to a person convicted of multiple people-smuggling offences. The bill before the House also seeks to harmonise people-smuggling offences between the Migration Act and the Criminal Code. This is in order to strengthen the criminal framework and for greater consistency. There is also a section of the bill that improves the capacity for law enforcement and national security agencies to undertake the new tasks that become operative with the bill.

The bill before us sits within a context of a wider range of border protection policies that the Rudd government has put in place. The framework clearly outlined by the Prime Minister—which received, I have to say, a fair degree of bipartisan support early on when the opposition was endorsing some of the measures that the government put in place—was to have a more humane framework for those who were seeking asylum and to take a much harsher position with those who were seeking to make profits out of the exploitation of those people.

Within that framework, there have been a series of actions already taken to create a strong border protection policy within which the bill before us today sits. The Rudd government, for example, has maintained excision, mandatory detention and offshore processing of irregular maritime arrivals on Christmas Island. We have committed $654 million to a whole-of-government strategy to combat people smuggling. This is part of the Rudd government’s $1.3 billion strategy to strengthen national security and border protection. It includes $63 million for aerial surveillance to monitor a range of border threats, including irregular maritime arrivals and illegal foreign fishing. It also includes $42 million to better equip the AFP to stop people-smuggling ventures before they launch for Australia. This has involved ramping up the crucial partnership between the AFP and the Indonesian police to investigate and dismantle people-smuggling syndicates. It also involves funding to Customs and Border Protection to strengthen its international engagement in critical transit countries with people-smuggling activities, including new posts in Malaysia and Sri Lanka and boosting its presence in Indonesia.

This has been backed up by a range of other actions, including the establishment of the dedicated Border Protection Committee of cabinet to ensure the whole-of-government strategy is driven in a coordinated way; a single point of accountability for matters relating to the prevention of maritime people smuggling within the Australian Customs and Border Protection Service; continued regional engagement and cooperation, including reinvigorating the Bali process at the ministerial level; working with Indonesian authorities to assist in arrests of key high-level people smugglers—and it was very good to see the Indonesian President addressing this parliament only last week; increasing maritime surveillance and patrolling by Border Protection Command; making sure we successfully prosecute people smugglers and extradite alleged people smugglers; and strengthening the offences and the penalties that apply. This is all part of an important coordinated whole-of-government approach to delivering on the commitment that we made to get tough with the people smugglers.

This sits within an international context. I am going to give a bit of recognition here to someone who is known to many in this place by the pseudonym  Possum Comitatus—otherwise known as the individual writer, Scott Steel, who only recently in the Crikey newsletter had a wonderful graphic representation. As a member of the Standing Committee on Procedure and out of respect for our report on props in parliament, I have not brought it in with me, so I will paint a bit of a word picture for members. It was a black square that indicated the 161 boat people who arrived in Australia in 2008. That square was placed within a bigger square which was the 4,750 asylum applications that were received by Australia in that year. Then that square was placed within another square which was the 96,870 asylum applications received by France, the UK and Italy in the same year. That then was placed in another square. That square represented the 382,670 asylum applications received by all 51 countries in the UNHCR statistics program. Then in another square were the 827,000 asylum applications across the globe. The final square indicated the 15.2 million forcibly displaced refugees around the globe in 2008. The graphic gave a very, very strong visual concept to people about the size of the problem we are dealing with. It is a serious problem. The reason that we want to stop people smugglers is that they put at risk the lives of the vulnerable people that they are preying on. Nonetheless, it has to be kept within the context.

I was very pleased to see that the period we had for a relatively short time in Australia where we took a strategic approach that said that you punish the vulnerable who are seeking asylum to send a message to the others has been replaced by a view that you punish those who prey on the vulnerable to send a message. That has certainly been a bipartisan position of this country since the 1950s. We had an aberration from it, but I was pleased to see that, when we came to government and introduced new legislation that would be humane with the vulnerable and tough with those who seek to prey on them, we had bipartisan support. Sadly, that does not always persist through to today, and I think that is a very regrettable outcome. The bill before the House is part of that sensible and balanced approach to what is a very difficult issue, and I endorse the bill.

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