Michael Danby (Melbourne Ports, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

In speaking on the Anti-People Smuggling and Other Measures Bill 2010, I am pleased to continue to speak for a consistent and coherent policy that this government has established since it has been in office. As chair of the Joint Standing Committee on Migration I have been closely involved with these issues, including those addressed by this bill, over the last two years. It is pleasing to hear remarks like those of the member for Mayo, who just spoke: relatively conciliatory and supportive of the humanitarian program that Australia has. Moreover, I listened carefully to the speech of the honourable member for Cook, who is now the shadow minister for immigration, and I am also pleased that he indicated the opposition will be supporting this bill. He expressed support for some of the measures the government has taken to combat people smuggling both by strengthening the criminal law and by further developing the framework of cooperation with our neighbours, particularly Indonesia and Malaysia. But the member for Cook spoiled his good start by repeating the opposition mantra that the reason we are seeing an increased rate of unauthorised boat arrivals along our northern coast is policy changes made by the Rudd government.

Of course, he did not say what changes he was referring to. He did not explain how these changes caused the increase in unauthorised arrivals and he did not commit the opposition to reversing any of these changes if they win the election due later this year. Neither did he tell us what alternative policies the opposition was developing especially to deal with this problem. The opposition rhetoric is very puzzling for people like me, who go along to the immigration committee and listen to members of the opposition, who at various stages of this parliament have advocated that we abolish mandatory detention on Christmas Island. We had an enormous fight at the migration committee with the member for Kooyong and some of his supporters, who thought that the consistent policies of this government were too hard line. They are darlings of the press for their liberal views. They make one argument in the committee and then come into this parliament and make a different argument. I wish the members of the opposition would put the work into the inquiries that we have made into immigration at the very same time that they take to come into this parliament to bash the federal government’s consistent policies on immigration.

I would have thought that the opposition wanted to hold the government responsible for the increased rate of unauthorised boat arrivals. Its responsible shadow minister should have been able to specify exactly what the government did to cause that increase. I would have thought the shadow minister would have been able to explain how those changes produced that outcome. I would have thought, most of all, that the shadow minister would have been keen to commit the opposition to bringing back the policies of the previous government which opposition members claimed were so successful in preventing unauthorised boat arrivals.

We heard the member for Cowan, a member of parliament whom I think quite highly of, talking in his contribution about how some of these unauthorised arrivals get to use the gym, have unmonitored use of the internet and go duty-free shopping on their way here. He asked: where does the money come from for their arrival in Australia? These kinds of comments are very regrettable if you study the situation and they betray a lack of imagination about why people come to Australia in these kinds of circumstances and give effect to the kind of pub talk that leads to hysteria about unauthorised arrivals. I will return to some of those issues in a minute.

Let me help out the honourable member for Cook and his colleagues. Let me tell them about some of the changes that the Labor government has made. Immediately after the 2007 election, we carried out our election commitment to end the Pacific solution, and by February 2008 the camps at Nauru and Manus were closed. In May 2008 we abolished TPVs. These were the policies we took to the election, the policies that were voted for by the Australian people. We carried out those commitments and we were right to do so. However, as I mentioned, despite a large lobby in the Joint Standing Committee on Migration by members of the Liberal Party urging that we abolish mandatory detention, the committee made no such recommendations to government.

We did not suggest that the government open the floodgates, lay out the red carpet or any of the other colourful phrases the opposition likes to bandy about. We continued to argue for preventing the arrival of unauthorised arrivals reaching the Australian mainland by boat. I believe that in the more than two years of this current Australian government only one boat penetrated Australia’s migration zone—a much better record than the Howard government could boast. We continued to detain unauthorised people at Christmas Island where they are processed. We continued to send unauthorised arrivals home if they could not make a case to be considered genuine refugees. We saw that the other night on Lateline where the federal Minister for Immigration and Citizenship was criticised by one of the small ‘l’ liberal lawyers in Melbourne for sending a Sri Lankan unauthorised arrival in Australia home. He had no valid reason for being in Australia. His elderly mother had achieved permanent citizenship as she had other relatives who are here in Australia and, unfortunately, the recommendation of the minister was that, since this person had no authorised reason for being in Australia, he must go home.

Let us look at some of the figures from Europe as to why people might be leaving. Let me just remind this House that, in 2006, Europe as a total had 227,000 people making refugee claims. In 2007, that figure was 256,000; in 2008, it was 289,000. Australia during that period had 3,800, 4,200 and 5,000. In 2007 alone, over 51,000 persons arrived by boat on the coasts of Italy, Spain, Greece and Malta. In 2008, 44,000 undocumented migrants were detained when crossing the Turkish border into Greece. The official number of foreigners living in Greece is 800,000, but this number does not include an estimated 200,000 undocumented migrants, often escaping conflict and instability in countries such as Afghanistan, Iraq and Somalia.

The increase in unauthorised boat arrivals that began in 2006 had nothing to do with the Howard government’s policies. What it did have to do with was changes in the international situation, most noticeable being the deterioration in the situation in Afghanistan, the security situation in Iraq and the culmination of the civil war in Sri Lanka. The fact is that the opposition does not like to comment on or acknowledge the whole history of unauthorised boat arrivals over the past 15 years that has been, in my view, largely driven by international factors. The horror of the Taliban regime in Afghanistan caused an outpouring of about three million refugees, hundreds of thousands of whom tried to find asylum in Western countries. The liberation of Afghanistan in 2001 allowed millions of these refugees to go home and the flood of asylum seekers turned to a trickle.

The member for Mayo who just spoke did not focus on the fact that it was during a period of relative peace in Afghanistan that the number of asylum seekers to Australia, particularly Afghan Hazaras, went down. There was another surge, though not nearly as large, following the invasion of Iraq in 2003. As conditions in Iraq improved after 2005, this surge also slowed. Then we had the final, extremely bloody phase of the civil war in Sri Lanka which displaced half a million Tamils from their homes and caused 150,000 Tamils to look for refuge or asylum in other countries.

Figures from other countries bear this out. If we took a graph of the number of Afghanis seeking asylum in  the United Kingdom, for example, we would see the same patterns as we have seen in Australia—a peak of arrivals in 2002, a sharp decline in the middle of the decade and rising levels of arrivals from Afghanistan in 2007. The number of Afghanis seeking asylum in the UK peaked at 90,000 in 2002, fell to 25,000 in 2006 and now has risen again to 35,000. I ask the opposition: did the UK have a Pacific solution? Did it have TPVs? Has it changed its asylum policies in a way which would explain these fluctuations? The answer is no. The pattern in the UK is the same as we see in Australia because the cause is the same—the changing number of people seeking to escape from Afghanistan and find refuge elsewhere.

It is very disturbing to hear proposals from particularly the British government—which has understandable reasons for wanting to continue to receive intelligence information from the Pakistani government—that there should be arrangements made with the Taliban for peace between the international forces, the Karzai government and the Taliban. If I were a Hazara living in Afghanistan, those proposals would terrify me. The possibility that the fanatics from the Taliban regime may take over Afghanistan again, so eloquently explained to the Joint Committee on Foreign Affairs, Defence and Trade by Professor William Maley a couple of nights ago, would understandably lead to a huge exodus of Hazaras seeking to flee for their lives in case those fanatics from the Taliban regime took over their country, given what we all know happened to the Hazara minority there when the Taliban were in control.

Members opposite do not have to take my word on this comparison with other countries; figures from the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees support the point I am making. UNHCR figures for 2009 show a rapid rise in the number of Sri Lankan asylum seekers in countries around the world: this year, an increase of 30 per cent in France, 14 per cent in Germany and more than double in Japan, admittedly from a very low base. Japan is a notoriously unwelcoming country for foreign arrivals, so the fact that Tamils are trying to beat down Japan’s door shows how desperate they are. Even New Zealand, which is a very long boat trip from anywhere, had an increase in asylum seekers last year. We see the same story with asylum seekers from Afghanistan. This is relevant because nearly all of the current wave of arrivals on Australia’s maritime borders are either Sri Lankans or Afghanis. This is a worldwide problem and not one that is much influenced in either direction by immigration policies in the countries to which these unfortunate people are trying to gain entry.

Let us look at this issue from another perspective, and I am grateful to the blogger known as Possum Comitatus for posting these figures on his website recently. In 2008 Australia saw 161 unauthorised boat arrivals. In the same year the UK, France and Italy saw a combined 96,000 arrivals. The 51 industrialised countries participating in the UNHCR’s statistics program received 382,000 applications for asylum. Globally an estimated 827,000 people were seeking asylum, a small part of the estimated 15 million recognised refugees in the world that year. In other words, the 161 arrivals which the opposition tried to present as such a terrible threat to Australia’s security and prosperity were just a tiny part of a great global problem, the problem of millions of displaced people fleeing from civil war, terrorism, natural disasters et cetera.

Australia’s problem with unauthorised arrivals is small compared to the problems being experienced in France, Italy, Spain, the United Kingdom, Canada and the US. Of the 150,000 Sri Lankans looking for asylum I mentioned, the great majority are trying to enter European countries. Only a small number risk the 4,000-kilometre trip across the Indian Ocean to get to Australia. It is so obvious to any reasonable person, such as the member for Braddon, who spoke before me, that the solution to Australia’s border security problems lies in doing several things. The most important is to work at the source of the problem in countries like Afghanistan, Iraq, Somalia and Sri Lanka. We do that in cooperation with other countries and through the UN, our military presence in Afghanistan, our civil and military training assistance in Iraq and our international development program.

It is in the Australian national interest that the scourge of terrorism in Afghanistan, as a base for al-Qaeda, is defeated. It is also in our national interest that waves of potential unauthorised arrivals be prevented leaving the country through peace being established there and through civil authority being established over as much of Afghanistan as possible. Therefore, I am greatly alarmed by proposals by the British foreign secretary, Mr Miliband, who insists on talks with the Taliban. For the British, getting information from their friends in the Pakistani intelligence service to prevent terrorism in London may serve the British national interest. But scaring the wits out of the people of Afghanistan that somehow the Taliban are going to be put back in office via their old mates in the British Colonial Office—sorry, the foreign office—does not serve the international interest or Australia’s interest.

On another level, it was very disappointing to see Senator Joyce, presumably speaking on behalf of the opposition, calling only last month for Australia to cut its foreign aid program. No wonder Andrew Hewett, the Executive Director of Oxfam Australia, said that Senator Joyce’s comments were worrying and disappointing. He understands what an important contribution our development aid makes in stabilising the situation in the very countries which are the source of the asylum seeker problems that the opposition claims are such a terrible threat to Australia.

The second leg of an effective policy is to work with our regional neighbours who must tackle the issue of the flow of asylum seekers to our borders. The opposition likes to make jokes about the ‘Indonesian solution’, but the fact is that the Indonesian archipelago lies across our northern maritime approaches and virtually all boats passing our northern coastline have come from or passed through Indonesia. The recent visit by President Yudhoyono showed relations between Australia and Indonesia are at an all-time high. Cooperation on asylum seeker issues, as with most issues, has never been better. I am going to Jakarta soon on what will be my fifth or sixth trip there. I regard it as a duty of any Australian parliamentarian interested in international affairs to have a primary interest in Indonesia, our closest and most important neighbour. Australia’s policy is clearly far more effective now than it was under the previous government, although I acknowledge we have a much more constructive negotiating partner now than in the days of President Megawati.

The third leg of our policy must be to maintain an orderly and fair refugee program. At present we take about 13,000 refugees a year. With our very large immigration program I personally think that figure should be higher, but relative to our population it is a high figure when compared to refugee intakes in other wealthy countries. I have to again remind the House that when unauthorised arrivals come to Australia they become part of the humanitarian program. The impression of a huge surge of boat people is created by some people who want to exacerbate tensions for political benefit. The member for Cowan suggested the asylum seekers get free internet access and go duty-free shopping before they come to Australia. This is a program that is funded and part of our immigration program. There is a marginal extra cost to Australia in processing these people, who after all are judged by the relevant authorities in the department of immigration as to whether or not they fulfil the requirements to come to Australia. They are all evaluated very seriously with health and security checks, as they should be. But none of them just floats into Australia, as the impression being conveyed suggests.

In order to make sure that our refugee program is both fair and orderly and that political support for our migration program as a whole is maintained, we need to take a firm stand against people smuggling. People smuggling puts people’s lives at risk, it undermines support for our refugee program and it encourages lawlessness and corruption in the countries where the people smugglers operate. The Australian government has taken a strong stand against people smugglers, and the measures in this bill are a reflection of that stand. They widen the legal scope of the offences for which people can be prosecuted in relation to people smuggling and they increase the penalties for those convicted.

These are necessary measures, but we would be kidding ourselves if we thought law enforcement alone was sufficient to prevent unauthorised arrivals. The US spends $3.5 billion a year patrolling its borders. It does not stop 500,000 people crossing illegally from Mexico into the US, nor does it stop 6.5 million Mexicans living illegally in the United States. This is not because the United States has rolled out the red carpet to illegal immigrants; it is because, given the economic disparity between the US and Mexico, it is simply impossible to prevent the influx of people across a border that is more than 3,000 kilometres long. Likewise, our maritime border is long and porous, and no amount of law enforcement will ever entirely stop unauthorised boat arrivals—although, as I said earlier, our problem is insignificant when compared to problems faced by other countries.

So long as there are countries like Afghanistan and Sri Lanka, whose political problems are driving people to seek asylum, we will have this problem. Measures like the ones in this bill can reduce it but I am afraid they will not eliminate it. That is why it is so silly for the opposition to boast that their Pacific solution and their TPVs succeeded in stopping the boats during the years of the Howard government. Those policies inflicted unnecessary cruelties on hundreds of hapless people, as even Liberal members of the Joint Standing Committee on Migration acknowledged when they signed up to our report on immigration detention. All of the members of that committee, including the then shadow minister for immigration, signed off on a proposal that did not soften our attitude to unauthorised arrivals but regularise it. The Australian of the Year, Professor McGorrie, explained why the changes to indefinite detention were necessary. He said that these people were being unfairly mentally tortured. (Time expired)

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