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

The member’s time has mercifully expired. I have had the misfortune to listen to the Minister for Immigration and Citizenship on this and other occasions and his favourite word—in fact, I do not think he has ever made a speech without using it—is ‘sophistry’. I think he uses it because he thinks it makes him sound intelligent. Funnily enough, it is one of these things where you are just projecting, because the Minister for Immigration and Citizenship never has anything available to him but rhetoric. That was clear today from that contribution.

He mentioned the Howard government’s record and he mentioned the coalition plan. I just want to dwell for a second on the Howard government’s record whilst we were in office, because we faced a very similar circumstance where we had an onslaught of illegal arrivals in the late 1990s. What happened was that the government decided that enough was enough and that they were not going to accept that people smugglers were going to be the ones bringing people to Australia and deciding who came to Australia. So they decided that they would take tough but decisive action to drive those people smugglers from business. Subsequently, they did drive those people smugglers from business and their trade in bringing people down to Australia illegally ceased.

From the year 2001 onwards we had an average of three illegal boats arrive in Australia per year. I just want to go through on a yearly basis what happened once the government decided that enough was enough and that they were going to take tough and decisive action. In 2002 there was one boat arrival, in 2003 there were three boat arrivals, in 2004 there were no boat arrivals, in 2005 there were eight boat arrivals, in 2006 there were four boat arrivals and in 2007, up to the point where there was a change of government, there were three illegal boat arrivals to Australia. That is the Howard government record, which stacks up against the record of this government—a government that inherited a basically solved problem when it came to people smuggling. The resolve of the Howard government had driven the people smugglers from their trade. The detention centres were emptying because there were no new arrivals. Very importantly, there were only 21 children being detained at that time—something the government is apparently now terribly worried about.

Nowhere has the government’s failure been more apparent than just in looking at the raw figures for what happened after the Rudd-Gillard government came to office. They inherited a situation where the boats had stopped and they decided that it was all right for them to make changes to the robust system of border protection that had been put in place by the previous government. In August 2008 they made those changes, which weakened the border protection system, and of course that gave a green light for the people smugglers to go back into their trade. Almost immediately, the results of that were apparent. The people smugglers smuggled people at an increasing rate, to the point where we now have over 5,000 people smuggled illegally into Australia this year alone, and 106 boats arriving illegally on our shores.

When the government changed there were 449 people in detention and, as the shadow minister was saying, only 21 children, none of whom had arrived by boat. There are now over 5,200 people in detention, including over 700 children. Australian taxpayers are out of pocket to the tune of $1.1 billion, and let me assure you that that is a conservative figure. If you want to break that down per head of population, it means that every Australian man, woman and child—every single Australian—is up for $500 because of Labor’s failure to control our immigration system and protect our borders. This is money that the Australian people owe directly as a result of Labor’s failure, and that failure has ramifications for every single Australian.

We have just had an election in this country which returned the Labor Party to office, although, as we have seen, it did not return them to power. During the election campaign, Labor perpetrated a very serious deceit on the Australian people. They pretended that they had a solution to this border protection crisis and they pretended that they were going to do something to stop the flow of illegal arrivals. Every Australian will now understand that they were wilfully misled by the Labor Party during the election campaign.

The Labor Party have known for months that Christmas Island has been full to overflowing and that the onshore detention centres are full beyond capacity, yet they waited until after the election to announce that they were going to massively expand our onshore detention network. This backflip was outrageously justified by the Prime Minister yesterday in her saying that she wanted to take children out from behind razor wire. This is the Prime Minister of an administration under which, when they came to office, there were 21 children held in detention, and of course none of them were being held behind razor wire. The Prime Minister fully knows this, and she understands that these changes were made by the previous government in 2005. It is a complete distortion and fabrication, which again shows that there is no untruth that is beneath this Prime Minister if she senses political advantage.

It also begs the question why—if the Prime Minister and her minister feel so strongly about children in detention—it has taken them three years to do anything about it. We had the minister running around yesterday saying that he was very happy to have this debate, that he was very happy to talk about children in detention. Of course, there is absolutely no evidence that for his three years as part of the previous government he ever raised concerns about children in detention, as the failed border protection policies of the government resulted in 700 children being detained.

We all know that this change in policy, this backflip yesterday, is not about some well-hidden and suppressed belief about the welfare of children. It is because the government has failed so comprehensively that our detention centres are now full beyond capacity and they need to do something to alleviate those pressures. Why is it that those detention centres are full? Why is it that we have been inundated with this surge of illegal arrivals since August 2008 onwards? We just heard it again from the minister and we always hear it from this government when there are questions about this issue—that is, international factors that are beyond their control have resulted in this influx of illegal arrivals. I have never heard one shred of evidence that justifies this. Of course, there is absolutely no evidence that the international environment has changed significantly since 2007. We live in a turbulent world now and we lived in a turbulent world before.

During the second half of the Howard government when we drove the people smugglers from their business, from 2001 onwards, there was a war in Afghanistan, there was an ongoing and vicious civil war in Sri Lanka and there was an existing conflict in Iraq. Yet during that time, because of the tough and decisive policies of the Howard government, they managed within the framework of a turbulent international situation to say to the people smugglers that Australia was closed for business.

Labor talk about international factors as justification for their failure, but there is not one shred of evidence to justify that proposition. They ignore what the rest of us know and what the rest of Australia knows, and that is that the latest influx of arrivals—the tsunami of illegal boats that we are experiencing in Australia—is a direct result of the weakening of our border protection system in August 2008.

This government has failed in what is one of the most basic duties of a Commonwealth government—that is, to control our immigration system and protect our borders. Because of that failure they are exposing the vulnerable victims of this insidious trade to the great danger of making this journey across the sea. The shadow minister referred to the loss of life that we know of, and there is anecdotal evidence that a lot more vessels have been lost making this perilous journey. Those lives are lost because they are encouraged to make this perilous journey by the weakness of this government and the inability of this government to do something serious to drive the people smugglers from this trade.

If you are a people smuggler you rely on your ability to sell a product, and that product is permanent residence in Australia. You also rely on the confidence of would-be customers for that product in your ability to get them to Australia. When the government in Canberra shows resolve and says, ‘No, enough is enough; we’re not going to accept that we don’t control our immigration system,’ the people smugglers, who are very sophisticated criminal networks, will understand that Australia is no longer a soft touch and that they can no longer ply their trade, and pretty soon they will be forced out of business. The government in Canberra could do this if it were prepared to follow the policy prescription that we have been advocating in opposition and that we will pursue when we are returned to government. It is a policy prescription that has been used in the past to address this issue: a return to a form of temporary protection visa and the resumption of offshore processing. Of course, we have a willing candidate within our region, Nauru, which would be happy to host immigration detainees within the facility that already exists on Nauru. The coalition would also turn the boats back as appropriate. I see that the government ridicules this suggestion. (Time expired)

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