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

I was just making the point that claiming the UNHCR endorses your approach does not mean that the UNHCR endorses your approach. Just like saying, 'We'll stop the boats,' does not mean the boats will stop. You actually have to have a mechanism to do it.

The benefit of the regional framework is that we can engage with partners across the region to deal with problems in not only destination countries such as Australia but in transit countries. Malaysia is a transit country and a destination country. Malaysia is the country in which most people start their boat journey to Australia. Most asylum seekers who come to Australia from the Middle East fly to Malaysia, get on a boat, take that boat to Indonesia and take another boat from Indonesia to Australia. The whole fundamental underpinning of the Malaysian arrangement is that you do not achieve the outcome, because you return to where you began the boat journey. There is no point undertaking a boat journey, a dangerous boat journey, an expensive boat journey, because you get returned to where you began that boat journey.

We are also very keen to use this as an opportunity to expand our engagement in the region, work with countries like Malaysia on protection outcomes and ensure that we are working together and providing every assistance to destination and transit countries in our region and ensuring that we can deal with this matter in a holistic way. That is why I think organisations like the UNHCR have seen some benefit in this, not only the increase in humanitarian intake, which is very important for the government and very important for me personally that Australia should play more of a role in resettling genuine refugees across the region. I am very proud of the fact that under this arrangement, our humanitarian intake returns to its highest level since Labor was last in office in 1996—higher than at any point under the previous government. That is a very good thing and something that we should be proud of.

I know the honourable member complains that five for one is too many. Five to one is a very good outcome because it means that Australia is resettling more people who have been waiting a very long time in difficult circumstances and who do not have the money or the inclination to get on a boat. They should not be forgotten in this debate. These are the forgotten people of this debate, and the opposition can claim that taking five to one is too many. The Leader of the Opposition said yesterday that the fundamental problem with this agreement is that Australia was taking too many refugees. I have a fundamental problem with the Leader of the Opposition's approach because I am very proud of the fact we are taking more genuine refugees. I think that is a very good thing. I think it is a good thing that we are working with a country like Malaysia to improve protection outcomes at the same time as providing a very significant disincentive to get on a boat and it could only be possible through genuine regional engagement, engagement through the Bali process, engagement with the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees—something the other side, when they were in office, never got around to doing.

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