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

The opposition says that the Malaysian arrangement has not worked because people arrived after it was announced. It says, 'Oh look, almost 1,000 people have arrived after it was announced, and Nauru worked.' I make this point to the opposition: the Malaysian arrangement has not even been implemented. It has had an effect—the number of people arriving in Australia has fallen as people looked at the Malaysian arrangement—but if the opposition is going to judge because almost a thousand people have arrived then let us look at how many people arrived after Nauru was announced. In the same time period since the announcement of the Malaysia arrangement, 1,998 arrived. So if you are going to apply the test you apply it consistently. Let the member for Cook explain how Malaysia does not work because 974 people arrived but Nauru was a great success because 1,998 people arrived in the same period.

The opposition says: 'The Malaysia arrangement is too expensive. We couldn't possibly approve that because it costs almost $300 million over four years.' Most of that is the cost of resettlement of people in Australia. Then we have this furphy from the opposition that Nauru is somehow going to happen for free. No charge! I'll throw in a set of steak knives! The Nauru detention centre is not going to cost the Australian people anything! It is not in their costings. It was not in their costings before the election and it is not in their costings now. It is a $71 billion black hole because Nauru will cost $1 billion over four years just in operational costs. That does not include capital costs—I am not going to allocate those because it would be hard to assess. The opposition says the centre is ready to go, despite the fact that it has not been used in a long time and is now a school. It says it is all ready to go and wouldn't cost a cent. I do not think that is quite right, but even if we just use operational costs it is $1 billion a year.

The opposition then says: 'This deal with Malaysia has got a use-by date—it's only got 800 people. I wonder what you are going to do when you run out of the 800 spots.' My question to the opposition is this: what are you going to do when you run out of your 1,500 spots at the Nauru detention centre? You have the advice that this is not an effective deterrent.

Mr Champion interjecting—

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