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

There are people who have criticised the Malaysia agreement. There are people who will continue to criticise the Malaysia agreement as being too harsh. There are difficult decisions for governments and ministers and parliaments to make. There is nothing as harsh as dying on the sea. There is nothing as harsh as saying to people, 'You must risk your life to come to Australia in order to receive Australia's protection.' There is nothing humanitarian about that approach and there is nothing as harsh as saying, 'We will let that position continue.'

The opposition say it is the job of the government to govern, and they are right. It is the job of every member of parliament to look inside their conscience and act in the national interest. There has been a legitimate debate now for many years about what works and what does not, about what would be effective and what would not, about what is fair and what is not. The opposition say that a detention centre on Nauru would work as a disincentive. We disagree. By itself, it is simply people being processed and then transferred to Australia after receiving refugee status. We say that would not work. We say the Malaysia agreement would work. The opposition disagree. But we say this: is there one single member of this House who could argue with any conviction, with any responsibility, that implementing the Malaysia arrangement and a detention centre on Nauru could not save lives? Is there one member of this House who could argue that? I would submit there is not. And, if every member of this House accepts that implementing Malaysia and Nauru together would save lives, there is an obligation to vote accordingly. There is an obligation to act in the national interest. There is an obligation to put people's lives before partisan politics.

The opposition say that they have had a consistent view for many years. But the view that an asylum seeker can only be transferred to a country that is a signatory to the refugee convention is a new one. Nauru was not a signatory to the refugee convention when the policy was implemented by the previous government. My colleague the shadow minister for immigration, when asked whether it would be a precondition that Nauru be a signatory to the convention, said on 27 July, 'No, it is not a precondition that Nauru is a signatory to the refugee convention.'

Nauru is a participant of the Bali process. The member for Lyne's bill makes clear that transfers could only occur to nations that are signatories to the Bali process. The opposition say that you cannot transfer somebody to a country which is not a refugee signatory, but their policy, which was repeated just then by the opposition spokespeople, is to return boats on the high seas to Indonesia, which is not a signatory to the refugee convention. They say it is okay to turn a boat around to a non-signatory country but it is not okay to send people by plane to a non-signatory country. The House will forgive me for questioning the consistency of that approach. To me that says one thing: there can be, on behalf of the opposition, no consistent and coherent opposition to this bill.

I conclude my remarks with a quote from a Prime Minister:

In commending this bill to the parliament, I again say to the opposition—to their representatives in this House and also in the other place—that it is in the national interest that this bill go through tonight.

That was not this Prime Minister. That was John Howard in August 2001, appealing to the opposition to support the bill which allowed Nauru. The then Leader of the Opposition, Kim Beazley, acted in the national interest. He said that he did not agree with everything that the government was proposing and that he did not support the government in all elements but that he recognised that governments have an obligation to act in the national interest, and I call on this opposition to do the same. (Time expired)

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