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

The Afghanistan situation had been going on since 2001. What changed in Iran? What changed in Iraq? Absolutely nothing. The whole point is this: what changed was Australia’s domestic policies. The region knows it, your own public servants know it, and the whole of Australia knows it. If you cannot admit it you are never going to be able to tackle this problem. That is the sad thing about Labor’s response. If they cannot identify that they are the cause of this problem then they certainly cannot do anything to fix the mess that they have created.

We have heard also from this minister today about the ongoing comedy that is the regional processing centre for East Timor. Pretending that this is ever going to happen is as unhelpful to this problem as refusing to identify that it is domestic issues that have caused it in the first place. If you pretend that we are going to be able to establish a regional processing centre on East Timor then you cannot look for actual solutions to this problem, such as talking to the government of Nauru, who are willing and able to host this facility if the Labor Party ever asks them to do so. While the government buries its head in the sand and continues this state of denial that we have seen on display again today, people smugglers are more and more emboldened and they send illegal boats at an increasing rate to Australia.

We have just seen another grim milestone passed by this government. The rate of illegal boats coming to Australia was double this year what it was last year. If they do not do anything about this problem, if they refuse to acknowledge that they have this problem in the first place, then we are going to continue to see the collapse of our detention capacity. As the minister wanders around looking for new places to put illegal arrivals, we are going to see emboldened people smugglers increasing the rate that they bring people to Australia illegally. This is going to be our fate if the government refuse to take action on what is a clear and present policy problem for Australia. This failure to take action has ramifications for every single Australian. The cost blow-out of $1.1 billion—and that of course is a very conservative estimate—means that this government’s failures on border protection will cost every single Australian $500.

There are also significant consequences for individual communities who now have to host the consequences of this failure. Inverbrackie in the Adelaide Hills and Northam—and I would like to say a little bit about that later on if time allows me—are facing the consequences of having to host these facilities. They were clearly and consistently misled by the Labor Party in the lead-up to the election. The Labor Party pretended they actually had a plan to do something to stop the flow of illegal boats and they pretended that they actually had any hope of convincing the East Timorese to host this regional processing centre.

While the minister is in the House I want to make reference to an issue that he has not addressed but which I think is very important. Following the overcrowding on Christmas Island and in other detention centres around Australia, there was a riot in November 2001. Some of the people who were involved in that disturbance went through the Western Australian court system in November of this year. What the magistrate had to say when he handed down his judgments on these events was damning on the Labor Party’s administration of the immigration department. He said that the immigration department had effectively sabotaged a police investigation into the incident.

Just to refresh the House’s memory, this was an incident that involved differing racial groups housed at Christmas Island in what are incredibly overcrowded facilities—there are 2,800 people in a detention centre that was originally built to house 800 people. These groups set upon each other with weapons. The result was that the immigration department shipped those people to the mainland within 48 hours of that disturbance. That was described by Magistrate Malley as bizarre. He believed that that showed ‘little or no regard as to whether those they were releasing had committed serious or criminal acts’. He further went on to say that the department had in effect assisted these people to evade prosecution and that the department had shown reckless disregard for the significance of these events. The minister has not commented publicly on these things at all. But he will have the opportunity to do so at some stage later on today. It is very important that he does so.

The former coalition government faced a similar problem to the problem that is facing this current government: a surge in illegal arrivals. The difference is that we did not bury our heads in the sand. We drafted policy prescriptions that had the effect of driving people smugglers from business. The result after those tough but necessary policy prescriptions were taken was that we had a rate of arrival of three arrivals per year from the year 2002 until the year 2008. Three arrivals per year—a weekend’s work for this government under this minister. We took the tough but necessary decisions that worked to drive the people smugglers from business. This government continues to bury its head in the sand and do nothing to protect Australia’s borders.

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