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

He said, ‘We have a suite of measures.’ He is right about that: there are a number of measures on the table from the opposition. I have never said, as he alleged I had, that there is only one measure. Whenever you ask the member for Cook about the solution to any problem in the world, he says, ‘Nauru.’ You could ask him the solution to global warming and he would probably say, ‘Nauru.’ You could ask him the solution to famine in the world and he would probably say, ‘Nauru.’

Nevertheless, I recognise that he has a number of measures on the table. Firstly, he has the detention centre, the offshore processing centre, at Nauru. He says that that would somehow reduce the incentive to come to Australia. He says that a detention centre at Nauru would create uncertainty as to the result of your claim for asylum in Australia. I thought: Okay, let’s have a look this. How would that work when you take into account that, of those who were settled out of Nauru, 96 per cent were settled in Australia or New Zealand?

The member for Cook says, ‘This would create uncertainty. This would stop people coming.’ It was so uncertain that 47 got settled in other countries—that is true. Out of the thousands of people, 47 people were settled in other countries; 96 per cent were settled in Australia or New Zealand. A detention facility at Nauru, with all due respect, would be another Christmas Island—an offshore excised place, a different country, but with the same result of people being processed and settled in Australia. He says, ‘Take the sugar off the table. You’ll have to spend some time in Nauru, maybe 12 months, and then you end up in Australia.’ What is the difference between being processed in Nauru, Christmas Island or Curtin? I am not sure, but the honourable member for Cook seems to think it would make a difference.

The member for Cook needs to answer some questions. Who would run the Nauru processing centre? Would it be the International Organisation for Migration? Has he been to Geneva and met with them and asked them if they would run it? Has he met with the UNHCR and asked them to run it? Or would it be run by the Department of Immigration and Citizenship? If, for example, the member for Cook tried to get an international organisation to run it and those international organisations said, ‘You’ve got to be kidding! We tried that last time. It was a disaster. We’re not going to associate our name with that sort of project,’ he would have to run it himself through the department of immigration, and we all know the legal implications of that, following the recent High Court case.

With respect, the member for Cook then talked about temporary protection visas in point 2 of his suite of measures, as he likes to call them, and he is right. He says: ‘We would introduce temporary protection visas.’ What is the impact of uncertainty there? How does that take the sugar off the table? Consider this: of the 9,043 people granted temporary protection visas, 8,600 were then granted permanent residency—95.1 per cent. So you have 96 per cent of the people at Nauru making it to Australia and 95 per cent of the people who got temporary protection visas were given permanent residency.

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