Peter Slipper (Fisher, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

No reasonable person could oppose the Anti-People Smuggling and Other Measures Bill 2010, and the aims contained in the bill are clearly laudable. It is a bill to deter people smuggling, to expand the charter of the Australian Security Intelligence Organisation to include border security issues and to make related amendments to the Telecommunication (Interception and Access) Act 1979, the T(IA) Act.

There does, however, appear to be somewhat of a contradiction with the provisions of this bill and the record of the Rudd Labor government, which has in effect opened the door and created a superhighway across the seas into Australia. What the Rudd government has done is to put out the welcome mat to people smugglers and those people who want to jump the queue to come here in contravention of the laws of Australia. This is of course in complete contradiction of and in contrast to the very strong position taken by the Howard government, which said that we would determine who crosses our borders and that it is really a matter for the government and the people of Australia to determine who is able to enter Australia.

What this government has done by watering down the regime it inherited from the former government is essentially to send the green light out there to people smugglers. When one looks at the appalling record of this government in recent times as far as boat arrivals are concerned it is obvious that the softened, watered down, gutted policy that we have in relation to people smuggling has failed dismally. Really what the government should do is to keep faith with the Australian people. It should adopt the promise made by the now Prime Minister prior to the 2007 election—namely, that when boats were intercepted on the high seas they would be turned around and sent back. But the government’s reaction in practice has been quite the opposite of what the Prime Minister promised to the Australian people before they entrusted him at the November 2007 election with the keys to office.

Unfortunately the government in office at the moment has as its hallmark all talk but no action. People refer to the Prime Minister and say, ‘Blah, blah, blah.’ It is starting to penetrate the collective mind of the Australian people that this government is big on noise but small on performance. I can see the minister at the table, the Minister for Resources and Energy, smiling somewhat. I am not sure whether he is privately agreeing with me. I did not want to verbal him by suggesting that. But if the government had more ministers of the calibre of the minister at the table I believe we would have less talk and more action. Unfortunately the government has to work with the material it has, and it does not have anywhere near as many effective ministers as it would like. Of course, the minister at the table is one of the best that the government actually has.

Having said that, before you accuse me, Mr Deputy Speaker, of embarking on my own unity ticket with the minister at the table, let me say that I think the people of Australia are really disappointed with the approach of this government. This government has in effect set out the welcome mat for people smugglers and those people who want to jump the queue. This government has indicated that it is prepared to bow to pressure, that it is prepared to blink when confronted. What the government has to understand is that people smugglers only respect strength. They do not respect weakness.

The now government criticised us while promising strong border protection, but what we have really seen is an open door policy. The government blinks, as on the Oceanic Viking. The unauthorised arrivals on that vessel held the government to ransom, and the government has given preferred treatment to people who have in effect been rewarded for thumbing their noses at the government and the people of Australia by seeking media coverage as they did. Their plight was highlighted and the government folded. I understand that there were some people on the Oceanic Viking whose security assessments were less desirable than one would have liked, yet the government has been extremely benevolent towards them as well.

It is very important that this bill includes a provision to expand ASIO’s role. I am not suggesting that al-Qaeda is hijacking boats and bringing large numbers of people via the government’s boat people superhighway to Australia, but it is theoretically possible for people who are terrorists to get on a boat and to try and pass themselves off as genuine asylum seekers or refugees. ASIO and the other security organisations in Australia need an adequate capacity to vet those people otherwise they could enter Australia via the back door, particularly in view of the fact that, were they seeking to enter Australia through a more recognised, traditional and conventional process, they would be picked up by the very stringent checking that Australia quite appropriately does with respect to people seeking to join us. It would be terrible if we had some sort of terrorist incident because it was not possible to vet those people adequately.

I notice that the government says that this bill will not include any extra outlays. That presumably means that ASIO is going to have to fund the additional responsibilities it is quite appropriately given in this legislation from its existing budget. The government really needs to tell the Australian people—and I hope the minister at the table notices this, although I presume he is not the minister who will be summing up this particular bill—whether it considers there is so much fat and slack in ASIO that it can afford to reallocate existing resources to vet people who arrive on boats organised by people smugglers. That is a fair question, because the government has given this responsibility to ASIO. It is quite right that that should occur; however, I have to ask myself whether ASIO can afford to do what the government is asking it to do without the additional resources that it would quite appropriately need.

Is the government saying that ASIO has more money than it currently needs to perform its function? Does the government want ASIO to close down some of the functions that it already carries out to perform these new functions? ASIO simply will be unable, in my view, to carry out the excellent job that it does for Australia generally and then do this additional task, for which it is eminently suited, unless the government is prepared to provide additional resources to the Australian Security Intelligence Organisation. It is appropriate that we should focus on the criminals who organise these boats to Australia, the people smugglers themselves. To a certain extent people who board those boats are victims, but they do so in many cases quite knowingly.

A few years ago, when the Woomera and Baxter detention centres were open and were being criticised, particularly by the then opposition, I organised to visit those two centres so that I could see with my own eyes whether the allegations of brutality and inappropriate treatment of unauthorised boat arrivals were in fact accurate. At the Baxter detection centre I was able to sit down with a lady whose religion was Sabian Mandaean. I had not heard of the faith before. Apparently, they are a group that emanates from Iran and they are followers of St John the Baptist. Water has a particular significance in their religion. I had a really good talk with this lady. She was really upset that she found herself in the Baxter detention centre. She felt it was a breach of contract because she and her family paid US$20,000 to people smugglers. They had bought an airline ticket from Amman in Jordan to fly to Jakarta. When they got to Jakarta they junked their passports and made their way overland to a port where people smugglers operated from, jumped on a boat and came to Australia. They felt they had a contractual arrangement to come to Australia and were really miffed not only because they lost their US$20,000, which is what they paid for their passage, but also because they found themselves in the Baxter detention centre.

I am not sure what ultimately happened to that family, but I did have a sense of sympathy for them. They seemed to be decent people and it just seemed to me to be entirely wrong that people smugglers were able to treat these people as they did. I believe we should throw the book at people smugglers, but that does not mean that we ought to willy-nilly allow the victims of people smugglers into Australia. As a former Labor immigration minister told me once, more than a million people are knocking on the door of Australia to come here legitimately and join our Australian family. That was quite a few years ago, so maybe now we have 1½ million people wanting to come to join us in Australia. We have freedom, we have stability and we have a way of life that has made Australia the envy of people throughout the world. While we might disagree with the result of an election—we were very disappointed that we lost in November 2007 and I am sure you were not, Mr Deputy Speaker—

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