Chris Bowen (McMahon, Australian Labor Party, Minister for Immigration and Citizenship) Share this | Hansard source

The member for Cook could have taken the opportunity in his MPI contribution to tell us what those limited circumstances are. I think the Australian people have the right to know what he as the alternative minister thinks those limited circumstances are. The member for Berowra has indicated publicly in the past that we are right when we point out that you cannot turn the boats around.

The member for Cook might want to indicate where he is going to turn them around to, given that Indonesia will not accept them. He might want to indicate to the naval personnel in Australia’s north in what circumstances he would ask them to risk lives by turning boats around, risking that they would be sunk. The member for Cook might have taken the opportunity to let our naval personnel know when he would ask them to risk their lives. He still has the opportunity at any time of his choosing, but he has not taken it in this debate. At least we know it is a very limited set of circumstances.  That is a relief. The alternative Prime Minister sitting in Kirribilli on the boat phone would not need to do it very often, because we know that they would say it is a very limited set of circumstances but we do not know what it is.

Then we have had the reopening of Nauru—the third stage of the real action charade. We had the shadow minister for immigration in his Jessica Fletcher moment on the doors waving documents, saying he had a smoking gun, he had found the weapon. But he did not repeat different parts of the information released in relation to the same FOI request. He could have quoted this document, which said:

… results of the previous government’s policy of excision as part of the suite of broader measures are unclear.

Or he could have quoted this one:

The vast majority of those who arrived at excise offshore places and who were found to be refugees were settled in Australia and New Zealand.

He chose not to quote that. We closed Nauru because it was the right thing to do. The shadow minister lectures us about the length of time that people are in detention. What did we find when we came to office? The average length of stay for people on Nauru was 501 days, a year and a third. And the longest wait in Nauru was five and one-third years, and the member for Cook lectures us about the length of time that people are in detention. It was five and one-third years.

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