Scott Morrison (Cook, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Immigration and Citizenship) Share this | Hansard source

It is my understanding, and I think that of most people around this place, that the Minister for Immigration and Citizenship, after the recent decision of the High Court, offered his resignation to the Prime Minister. The member for Lindsay—the 'Commander', as he is known—may have just failed his audition to take his place. It is totally understandable that the minister would have offered his resignation, given the bungles and the disasters that have occurred in his portfolio, only equalled by those under his predecessor. However, it is not for his failure to have a crystal ball on the High Court that I believe he should chastise himself; it is for his failure of policy.

It is understandable that the Prime Minister did not accept his resignation because the Prime Minister would have well understood that the minute the minister walked out the door she would have to follow him straight afterwards. She was right not to make the minister for immigration the scapegoat for this government's failed policies, because she was equally culpable as the architect of this government's 'anything but Nauru' strategy that has taken them to this cul-de-sac, this dead end, of policy failure. It really matters little though who the minister is, or even who the Prime Minister is, in this government when it comes to managing this issue of border protection because the result is always the same: it is just one big mess and that mess continues. As people outside of this place speculate about who will be the Prime Minister of this country or who will be the minister for immigration, one thing is certainly true: you can shuffle this Labor deck all you want, every time you will pull out a joker.

The government say they want to break the people smugglers' business model. What they refuse to admit is that since the Rudd-Gillard government abolished the Howard government's border protection regime—against advice that they now come into this place and pretend is sacrosanct—Labor have become the people smugglers' business model in this country for the past three years. If you went to people-smugglers'' boardrooms, you would find the pictures of the former minister and Prime Minister joined more recently by the current Prime Minister and the current minister. They would be the most popular policymakers in the people smugglers' fraternity throughout Indonesia. Where was the apparent respect for this advice, which this government now claims it has, when they were presented with the facts, when they were told, 'If you dismantle this you will encourage the people-smuggling business again'? There were just four people—less than the number of fingers on one hand—in the detention network who had arrived illegally by boat. Under this government it has exceeded 6,500.

Since they abolished the Howard government's regime, 12,262 people have arrived on 241 illegal boats, the most recent of which was the Prime Minister's own personal tonne of policy failure as the hundredth boat on her watch arrived and is now being unloaded at Christmas Island. What we have seen from this government, after it abandoned the processes and the policies that had worked so effectively, has been a procession of policy failures. Firstly, the asylum freeze, which they have gone very quiet about on that side. This was the most discriminatory immigration policy introduced to this parliament since we had the White Australia policy. That is what came from members on that side. That is what this government did. They introduced a policy which said; 'If you're Sri Lankan, if you're an Afghan, we will not process your claims. Your nationality would determine your assessment status before the Australian government.' And they have the hypocrisy to give lectures about non-discriminatory immigration policy! That was a very black day for Australia when the previous minister for immigration and the previous Prime Minister—supported by a cabinet that included the then Deputy Prime Minister and now Prime Minister—implemented that disgraceful policy. That was strike one.

Strike two was the East Timor farce, which the Deputy Leader of the Opposition has gone well into in her remarks here this afternoon. That was just simply embarrassing. Regional leaders were forced to endure the polite conversation of failed policy time and time again. Serious issues for our region had to be put on the backburner while this Prime Minister went through this farce, this zombie foreign affairs as the Deputy Leader of the Opposition mentioned in her remarks. The East Timor farce became yet another policy failure.

Then, of course, we have the Malaysian non-solution. This solution, as it was described, has become exactly the opposite. Four hundred people have turned up on an 800 cap since it was signed and almost 1,000 since it was first announced. Why and how this government thought it was a good idea to announce this arrangement before completing any negotiations is beyond this side of the House. It really took the incompetence of negotiating to a whole new level and betrayed their complete incompetence as a government.

These failed policies have led to what we have seen: a detention network which has descended into chaos and riots. More than four critical incidents, which include self-harm, violence and even death, occur in the detention network every single day. We have had budget blow-outs. The government tried to lecture us on budgets on the weekend. This is a government that took a policy that was costing less than $100 million a year and turned it into a policy that is costing $1 billion a year—and they want to lecture this side of the House on how to manage these matters and how to manage costs!

The former minister and the current minister ignored warnings time and time again as the boats arrived. I would really like to know this: after how many boats did it take for this government to finally work out that it had to, as they like to say ad nauseam, break the people-smugglers' business model, which is code for to reverse the pull factor effect, the magnetic effect, of their failed policies. After what boat was that? Was it after boat two? Because after boat two, the Canadian government introduced temporary protection visas. Was it after boat 100? Was it after boat 200? Was it after boat 230? After which boat did they finally work out that their policies were responsible for the mess that has happened on their watch?

They also ignored the warnings in our detention network. Last week I was part of the detention committee inquiry on Christmas Island where we learnt in October the minister, this minister, was on Christmas Island and was warned that the security fence connecting the two major compounds needed to be upgraded and CCTV cameras had to be put in the Aqua/Lilac compounds. That was the advice from Serco, from the Australian Federal Police and from the minister's own department. When riots broke out on 11 March that fence, which Minister Bowen did not fix, was the one they broke through. That fence was the one they fashioned weapons from. In that compound the CCTV cameras did not exist. And this is the minister who likes to lecture those on this side of the House about the need to listen to his department and take its advice. The Malaysian solution is being presented to this place and those opposite are expecting this parliament to overlook the policy failings of this government, the policy failures that are within the construction of this proposal, and simply give them a legislative blank cheque. I would consider that this minister has already abused the discretion he thought he had with these protections. These protections are an important principle within the Migration Act. It did not say that you could just declare a country and send them anywhere you like. It said there had to be protections in place. This is a minister who has sought to come back to this place and say, 'I do not need any more protections'—and in fact he said this in the House yesterday—'The protections are satisfactory.' He is happy with the protections that are in place, which see 94,000 people share one clinic and children who are sent there not going to public schools, and he is happy to see them go to a country where for five years 16 people were caned every single day, on average, for immigration offences. But he is happy with the protections. This is what he wants to put in place.

He came back to their caucus and to this parliament and said, 'I am not going to fix the policy; I am just going to look for a legislative excuse to deal with it.' And the zombies on that side of the House, as they paraded into the caucus the other day, simply rolled over on their Prime Minister and let her do whatever she wanted. We are not going to necessarily give this government a legislative blank cheque on protections. They need to address their policy failures, and they are manifest. (Time expired)

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