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

What we know is that the detention centre at Nauru will fill up just as it did last time, and the opposition has not indicated what it will do afterwards. To be consistent, if it requires the government to say what it is going to do after the 800 spots are filled then the opposition should explain what it is going to do. It should also explain what arrangements it has in place for the resettlement of people from Nauru. What discussions would the member for Cook have if he were minister for immigration? What countries would he negotiate with? Maybe he could send the member for Flinders, who is going to go and negotiate for Indonesia to sign the refugee convention. Maybe he could do a deal with them at the same time for some resettlement. Otherwise anybody who is regarded as a refugee on Nauru will be resettled into Australia. Why wouldn't they? Other countries around the world are going to say: 'That is not actually our problem. That would be your issue, because they came to Australia and you transferred them to Nauru.' What we negotiated with Malaysia was a very different set of circumstances, where people would be transferred to Malaysia.

Clearly, what we have here is an opposition who are so concerned that this might work that they are prepared to do anything to stop it. They are prepared to sit with the Greens in the upper house, in the coalition of convenience, to stop this arrangement proceeding. They have been prepared to send the member for Cook on a little holiday up to Malaysia with his little home video camera to try to criticise the Malaysian government; to stand outside detention centres and say, 'This is where they are going to come,' and to send home a little home video. That is wrong. Nobody sent to Malaysia under this arrangement will be sent to a detention centre.

The opposition are prepared to go out and criticise the Malaysian government, up hill and down dale, for their record on how they treat asylum seekers—and, in doing this, they were prepared to damage the relationship with Malaysia in a most irresponsible way. Thankfully, people here in Australia and in Malaysia see this for what it is. They see it for the cheap opportunism that this opposition have become known for.

If the opposition are really so concerned that the Malaysian arrangement would not work, if they really think it is not going to provide a disincentive and if they really think it would be the failure that they say it would be then, just from a political point of view, why would they not let us do it? Why would they not say, 'The government are on their own. We will let them do what they want, but if it does not work we will hold them to account'? If they really think it will not work, that would be the political calculation that they would make.

But, no; the member for Cook understands this policy area—I grant him that. He has looked at the situation, heard the advice from the experts and he has said, 'Mr Abbott, I think this might actually work. I think we have a bit of a problem here because the government's policy might actually work. We better stop this policy working because we know that when Nauru was operational that the majority of people arrived in Australia, so that won't work.' When they had TPVs over 90 per cent of those were granted permanent residency, so that is hardly going to work. And now we have the 'turn back the boats' policy. Apart from the evidence that we know of—that people will sink and sabotage their boats so that they have a rescue at sea situation and must then be transferred to Australia—they will not be able in any consistent way to transfer people to Indonesia because they will not be able to provide the guarantees that they have said are so important.

The Leader of the Opposition says that we are too soft on asylum seekers and then that we are too hard. He says he supports offshore processing and then he walks away from it and he sits with the Greens and votes against it. He claims the patent and then claims to kill it. At first he says that the ALP are too compassionate and then he says that we are not compassionate enough. The Leader of the Opposition wants to stop the Malaysian arrangement for one reason, and one reason alone: because he is terrified it will work. He is terrified that his cheap and opportunistic strategy will come to an end, and he knows how bad that would be for him. He is prepared to let the national interest slide so that he can keep his cheap slogans going. (Time expired)

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