Michael Keenan (Stirling, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Justice, Customs and Border Protection) Share this | Hansard source

You are quite right, Mr Deputy Speaker. The Prime Minister would be the chairman of the board, the Minister for Immigration and Citizenship would be the managing director, and the cabinet ministers would be the board of directors. Labor has been so incompetent on this issue alone that it should be enough for them to be laughed out of office. They have held inconsistent positions on offshore processing, turning back the boats and temporary protection visas. Since August 2008 the opposition has been forced to watch in horror the missteps and the terminally bad judgment that has been displayed by those opposite. Following their border protection policies has been like watching a man falling down in slow motion.

I want to recap for the House the comedic farce that we have seen that has passed for a border protection policy since the government changed in 2007. Firstly, when they came to office they said that the Pacific solution, which was part of the robust system of border protection that they had inherited when the government changed, was morally reprehensible. They called the proponents of it in the previous Howard government racist. The Prime Minister, who was the architect of Labor's immigration policies during that period, said in parliament:

The so-called Pacific solution is nothing more than the world's most expensive detour sign. It does not stop you getting to Australia; it just puts you through a detour on the way while Australian taxpayers pay for it and pay for it.

She later went on in the same speech to say:

Labor will end the so-called Pacific solution—the processing and detaining of asylum seekers on Pacific islands—because it is costly, unsustainable and wrong as a matter of principle.

This is what the Prime Minister used to say about third-country processing. Earlier in this House she spoke about what she called the 'so-called Pacific solution.' She said:

The so-called Pacific solution—stripped of the other policies that the government has scrambled around and tried to put in place since the Tampais really no more than the processing of people offshore in third countries.

That is what she said. She also said:

It is a policy that Labor does not support, because it achieves nothing and costs so much in so many ways …

You do not have to wonder why people have absolutely no idea what this Prime Minister stands for when she held such contrary positions on border protection policies.

The thing about the Pacific solution, and the other policies that the Howard government put in place, is that they were hugely successful. After 2001, when we were faced with a large number of illegal boat arrivals, once the government showed some resolve, once they took a principled stand, the people smugglers understood that the government was not to be tested and they stopped bringing people to Australia illegally.

That is why, when the government changed in 2007, there had been, on average, three boat arrivals per year and a total of 18 boat arrivals in the six years preceding the change in government. When the government changed there were four people in detention on Christmas Island, and those opposite dared to suggest that the Christmas Island Immigration Detention Centre was an expensive white elephant.

As I said, in a fit of moral vanity they went ahead and discarded the pillars of the robust system of border protection that we had when they came to office. Indeed, the then minister basked in the fact that he had been the minister that killed the Pacific solution. The then immigration minister, Chris Evans, said in a speech:

The major Labor policy commitment in my portfolio was to end the former Howard Government's discredited Pacific Solution. That was a shameful and wasteful chapter in Australia's immigration history.

He went on to say, in a speech in 2008:

The Pacific Solution was rightly criticised for seeking to shift our international responsibilities onto developing countries—when we should have been standing up and shouldering those responsibilities ourselves.

He also said that it was a waste of taxpayers' money. Finally he went on to say that it was 'morally wrong and outrageously expensive' and that it failed.

See this speech in context