Michael Keenan (Stirling, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Justice and Customs) Share this | Hansard source

I want to respond to what the Attorney-General was just saying because I think this is very important. He said that the policy of temporary protection visas, which was successful in putting people smugglers out of business and which we intend to be successful again when we get back into government, has been responsible for people undertaking the dangerous journey to Australia illegally. I would say to him that the situation is exactly the opposite of that. It is the government’s weakness and lack of resolve on this issue that is encouraging people to undertake this dangerous journey. That is why we are now hearing anecdotal and media reports of boats that have left Indonesia and never been seen or heard from again. Presumably the people who were on those boats were lost, as he indicated at the start of his speech. We all know the Attorney-General is an honourable man; no-one on this side of the House would dispute that. But what he was saying is the exact opposite of what is actually occurring. What is occurring is that, because of the government’s lack of resolve and because of the government’s weakness, people smugglers have been encouraged to go back into that evil trade and subsequently people are again being lost while making the dangerous and hazardous journey to Australia.

In the 2½ years of the Rudd government there have been an astonishing number of failures—pink batts, the bloated school hall program, outrageous wasted spending and latterly this new mining tax that is going to drive a stake through the heart of Australia’s prosperity—but their failure to protect Australia’s borders is perhaps the worst. When Labor came to office, they inherited a situation where this problem had been solved. All they needed to do was just leave well enough alone. If they had come to office and done what they said they were going to do prior to the last election—that is, continue with the tough border protection policies of the Howard government—Australia would not have had this problem re-emerge where we find a tsunami of illegal arrivals coming down to Australia, the greatest rate of illegal arrivals that we have seen in our history.

The empirical evidence on this just does not lie. It is so easy to understand what is happening here. The problem of illegal arrivals has occurred for a long period of time. In the 1990s it started to significantly deteriorate. By the mid-1990s we were experiencing up to 21 illegal boat arrivals a year. That started to increase towards the end of the 1990s. In the financial year 1989-90, we had 42 illegal boat arrivals carrying almost a thousand people. In the year 1999-2000, we had 54 illegal boat arrivals.

By the year 2000 the Howard government understood that if they were not going to do anything, if they were just going to sit back and allow this problem to snowball, it would get worse and worse because, of course, the more people who arrive here successfully, the more often that occurs, the more encouragement that gives to people to undertake this journey. The Howard government decided that we were not going accept this, so we instituted a series of measures that sent the message to the people smugglers that we were no longer going to be a soft touch for them to smuggle people into Australia illegally. Those measures are well documented, so I do not need to go through them all now, and they had an instantaneous effect of making sure that people smugglers could no longer go out and sell their product of gaining people entry illegally into Australia. Once we took those tough measures, this problem essentially evaporated. In the six years from the end of 2002 we had 18 illegal boat arrivals. So, on average, we had three illegal boat arrivals a year. That is just a weekend of illegal arrivals under this government.

As I said, this problem had essentially evaporated because the people smugglers could not go out and sell a product when the message had gone out loud and clear to the international community that Australia was no longer a soft touch on our borders. Then Kevin Rudd came to office. Just prior to the last election he said that he would happily turn the boats around. Like so many of the promises that he made, this one proved to be hollow. In August 2008 he decided that to make himself a hero to the left wing of his own party he was going to weaken the robust system of border protection that was put in place by the previous government. He did that by abolishing temporary protection visas and replacing them with permanent protection, by closing the offshore processing that had been successful in Nauru and Manus Island, by reneging on the promise to turn boats back when the circumstances allowed and, most shamefully, by making a special deal to process 78 passengers on board the Oceanic Vikingcertainly one of the low points in Australia’s immigration history.

When Kevin Rudd came to office he inherited a situation where there were eight people in detention on Christmas Island—there are now about 2½ thousand, and every week there are charter flights taking people from Christmas Island to the mainland—but he could not just leave it alone. As a result of the weakening of Australia’s border protection system, the people smugglers were encouraged back into business. Again you can look at it empirically, it is just so clear: within months of Kevin Rudd making the announcement that he was going soft on our borders, the people smugglers went back into business. In 2008-09 we had 24 illegal arrivals. In this last financial year we have now had 112 illegal boat arrivals in Australian waters. It is the worst year on record, and those boats have brought over 4½ thousand people illegally to Australia.

Just so everyone understands, I will explain the way this evil trade works, because I think that is very important. I have had the opportunity to go out with the Australian Customs and Border Protection Service and with the Navy and also to visit Christmas Island within recent months. What is happening is that people smugglers are incredibly sophisticated organised criminal networks and there is a lot of money involved. People can pay up to US$15,000 a head to be smuggled illegally into Australia. If you think about that, an illegal boat arrival of 60 people could mean up to three-quarters of a million Australian dollars for the criminal networks that have facilitated it. So this is big business and significant organised crime, yet these are the people who are now in control of part of Australia’s humanitarian immigration program.

What happens is that you get to Indonesia or Malaysia and you contact a people smuggler. Those networks are very well established. You make arrangements for them to smuggle you into Australia. You embark usually at one of two points within Indonesia—one in Java and one in West Timor. If you are leaving from West Timor you head directly south to the Ashmore islands; if you are leaving from Java you head directly south to Christmas Island. Contrary to popular opinion you are not trying to avoid the Australian authorities. The whole trade is actually about running into the Australian authorities. The most sophisticated networks will equip these boats with positioning systems and satellite phones so you can identify that you are in Australian waters. You will then contact the Australian government—sometimes the Western Australian police, sometimes the Australian Maritime Safety Authority—and there have been reports of contacting people overseas who have then contacted Australian authorities. The Australian authorities will come and collect you and transfer you to Christmas Island. When you are on Christmas Island you will be processed within, on average, 104 days and then your chance of coming to Australia permanently is in the high 90s.

What a great product for people smugglers to sell! You pay them up to US$15,000, they will get you into Australian waters, the Australian authorities will come and collect you and transfer you to Christmas Island and, within a couple of months of being on Christmas Island, your chances of coming to Australia permanently are incredibly high. Whilst that continues to be the situation, people smugglers will be able to sell that product, as they are doing, in increasing numbers. That is why this problem continues to snowball, why the rate of illegal arrivals continues to increase over time. The consequences are that Labor has broken its promise not to process people on the mainland Australia and that the Australian taxpayer has had to shell out another $1 billion because of the budget blow-out. That is an astonishing figure. It comprises $770 million to increase the offshore asylum seeker management program and $236 million to be spent on capital items, including the upgrade of the facility on Christmas Island, the reopening of the Curtin detention facility and the upgrades to other centres around Australia. And just today we have heard more information about the expensive charter flights which have now blown out to cost the Australian taxpayer $8.2 million.

All this because Kevin Rudd just could not leave the policy alone when he came to government. Only the coalition have the resolve to actually do something to address this issue. The Prime Minister has effectively said that Labor will not do anything more. They just accept that this is now the situation, that people smugglers will control part of Australia’s immigration system. The coalition have a plan to put those people smugglers out of business. We will commence discussions to find a place to process people offshore, a policy that has been successful in the past. We will reintroduce temporary protection visas, a vital part of the program to discourage people smugglers from their trade. We will also turn the boats back when circumstances allow. (Time expired)

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