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

Here we are yet again, discussing this issue because the opposition has once again wheeled out its old faithful political weapon—hysteria and exaggerated rhetoric about unauthorised boat arrivals. Debate surrounding unauthorised boat arrivals in this country has had many low points, as I said last night, but some of the lowest occurred during the recent election campaign. We all remember the opposition’s extraordinary ads with red arrows indicating hordes of people coming to our shores from Asia and the Middle East. Who can forget the overblown rhetoric of the member for Warringah, the Leader of the Opposition, that Australia was suffering a ‘passive invasion’? Today, we heard from the member for Cook more exaggerated rhetoric about an ‘unprecedented catastrophe’. Even if, at its worst, we get 6,000 unauthorised arrivals, we are a country of 22 million people so what is he talking about?

The debate descended into the downright bizarre when the member for Warringah, the Leader of the Opposition, suggested that he would establish a ‘boat phone’ to facilitate turning boats back. Of course, he would not do that. We all know that the rhetoric of the member for Warringah is worse than what he would actually do. He would not push women and children back out to sea. Nor would the member for Cook or the member for Stirling—and of course the member for Brisbane, who has spoken here so movingly about refugees—do it either. But slogans and publicity stunts are what we have come to expect of the opposition, rather than measured and sensible responses to this difficult issue facing our country.

The fact that there are boats arriving in Australia in an unauthorised manner is an issue, but it is far from the overblown, hysterical, end-of-days issue painted by the opposition. The reality of the situation can be seen by examining figures on the number of asylum seekers Australia receives and accepts compared to other countries around the world. From July 2008 to 25 October 2010, there were 8,141 unauthorised arrivals, including 443 crew, in 212 vessels intercepted in Australian waters and taken to Christmas Island for initial processing. Many of those people will not be granted a humanitarian visa in Australia, but those who are will become part of Australia’s humanitarian visa quota—just as the member for Brisbane said, perhaps unintentionally, this is because they are equally suitable as refugees as some of the people picked out by our representatives overseas. They are equally suitable because, by the criteria they are judged by, these people are judged to be refugees and therefore Australia has responsibilities to meet.

The quota for our immigration program this year, as it has been for many years, is 13,500 people, and I will say again that the overall number is not altered whether a few thousand people arrive in an unauthorised manner or none at all. That 13,500 is just one very small part of our immigration program, which totals around 180,000 people. In 2009, an estimated 377,200 asylum applications were recorded in the 44 European and non-European countries reported on. This is nearly the same number as in 2008, when there were 377,100 claims. As the Minister for Immigration and Citizenship pointed out, Australia ranks 36th amongst countries accepting refugees from overseas. As for the rhetoric that these people are coming to Australia because Nauru was closed down, Nauru was closed down because of simple economic rationality. It was empty for months, and the Australian government saw no reason to keep it open, particularly when we had, as it appeared at the time, the enormous Christmas Island asylum seeker centre that had no people in it. The government dealt with the Nauru centre quite rationally; it was not done to excite people smugglers.

The number of asylum seekers coming to Australia, substantial though it is, is dwarfed in the context of the 2009 UNHCR report, which said a total of 42 million people were forcibly uprooted by conflict and persecution last year. This worldwide total included 16 million refugees and asylum seekers and 26 million internally displaced people uprooted within their own countries. Eighty per cent of the world’s refugees are in developing countries, as are the vast majority of internally displaced people. Major refugee-hosting countries in 2008 included Pakistan, 1.8 million; Syria, 1.1 million; Iran, 980,000; Germany, 582,700; Jordan, 500,400; Chad, 330,500; Tanzania, 321,900; and Kenya, 320,600. Clearly, when put in a global context, the number of asylum seekers arriving in Australia is tiny. You would not know this if you saw the member for Cook last night in the Main Committee—all red-faced and hysterical about this issue. We have come to expect this exaggerated rhetoric from the opposition. As my colleague and friend the member for Chisholm put it, they are followers and not leaders.

The government is developing a policy response to this issue that is focused on regional engagement. We will successfully manage this issue of unauthorised arrivals only by working with our neighbours—those countries through which the vast majority of unauthorised arrivals transit. Those of us who remember more than what happened yesterday will recall that during the Fraser government there were regional processing centres in Vietnam and Malaysia, and they had bipartisan support. This was a mature and rational way of dealing with the problem. The government’s policy may not necessarily be a quick fix, but it will achieve a lasting result.

As I have said previously, every person who is seriously involved in the asylum seeker issue knows that the central issue for Australia is what happens in Indonesia. Thankfully for Australia the government in Indonesia is democratic and the best friend Australia has ever had. Indonesia has an excellent President and an excellent Foreign Minister. The possible passage by the Indonesian parliament of legislation giving sentences to people smugglers is much more germane to people in the Adelaide Hills than is the hysteria displayed last night in the Main Committee by the member for Cook and his colleagues. This is the kind of mature policy response that Australian leaders, not followers, ought to be pursuing with our friends in Indonesia. None of us support people coming in unauthorised ways to Australia and being assisted by people smugglers. We should be pursing cooperative solutions to this issue.

I cannot understand the opposition’s policy. I was chairman of the Joint Standing Committee on Migration when the shadow minister for immigration, the member for Murray, voted on the committee in 2009 for asylum seekers to be treated more humanely and more rationally. She voted for that policy. That was the time when the opposition ought to have been demanding any changes they wanted to make to our migration policy, to the way we receive asylum seekers, rather than making hysterical political points during an election period with red arrows coming down to Australia, boat phones and passive invasions, when we really had to deal with a group of asylum seekers who need to be housed in a particular centre in the Adelaide Hills.

Our policy is about ensuring that Australia retains its rightful role of welcoming a reasonable number of the world’s refugees while maintaining the security of our borders. With the member for McMahon, the current minister, at the helm I have every confidence that our policies will succeed. The cheap political slogans implicit in this motion will not.

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