Laura Smyth (La Trobe, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

What the previous speaker's contribution reveals to me is what I had long anticipated and that is that those opposite would rather resile from convention obligations internationally and ultimately have no concept of them. It gives me a considerable degree of concern about their capacity to have Australia under their watch represented on the international stage. It is extremely troubling.

When I came to this place I had hoped for something more than the absolutely scurrilous offerings that pass for public policy from those opposite on the question of asylum seekers. Yet again we are served up this evening the dross that passes for their proposed legislation in this place.

Temporary protection visas introduced by the Howard government were a resounding failure on any measure: humanitarian or practical. They failed from the point of view of providing protections to refugees. They failed as an effective means of dissuading people from making the perilous journey to Australia to seek refuge. They failed from the point of view of the mental health impacts on those who were held on temporary protection visas. They failed then; they will fail now. This is simply garbage public policy that is being pushed here this evening by those opposite.

What I ultimately aspire to—and I should say this at the outset of this debate—is a regional arrangement which affords asylum seekers convention protections, which treats them fairly and consistently and which engages countries in our region that are not currently convention countries to become convention signatories or adopt substantially the protections afforded by the convention. That kind of role is the role that Australia has typically played in advancing its perspective on human rights and humanitarian obligations right around the world. It is the right push for Australia to make.

I realise that that will require detailed work. I realise that it will require relationship building in the region and time, and I certainly understand the efforts that have been made by successive ministers for immigration from this side in the Bali process and otherwise to try and achieve that outcome. In the meantime, while I certainly cannot say that I have been comfortable with everything the panel report has recommended—and that would be well known—it has presented recommendations which allow that important work to be carried on.

But TPVs have utterly no place in the panel's recommendations and they have utterly no place in Australia's response to the circumstances of asylums seekers. It should be made clear that neither in the recommendations of the Houston panel report or in its commentary does it sanction the use of temporary protection visas, and there is very good reason for that. Indeed its comments on TPVs are confined to referring to them as merely historical measures at page 91 of the report. It is worth while noting that the report refers to the rules associated with the Howard government's TPV arrangements being 'difficult to interpret and apply'. It concludes by saying that 95 per cent of asylum seekers arriving by boat who are granted temporary protection visas were ultimately granted a permanent visa in Australia—these are the facts.

The opposition has long claimed that TPVs act as a deterrent to asylum seekers travelling by boat to Australia. The facts simply do not bear that out. Around 11,200 temporary protection visas were issued between 1999 and 2008 and, of that number, around 380 people actually left Australia—that is around 3½ per cent. In addition, following the introduction of TPVs, there was a rise in the proportion of women and children on those vessels which arrived in Australia carrying asylum seekers since the new visas did not permit family reunions.

On practical grounds, TPVs simply fail, but the crux of this evening's debate is that refuge is not refuge and cannot be refuge if it is permanently qualified, forever able to be taken away. How can people ever be expected to feel safe when their claim for asylum, though accepted at one point in time as a well-founded fear of persecution, is only ever treated as a temporary stay?

The cruelty of TPVs is that, even if an asylum seeker is found to be owed protection under the convention and our laws, they would face the entire assessment process again before the expiry of the three-year period for which they are applicable. The bill would then put the onus on refugees to demonstrate that their well-founded fear of persecution prevailed.

Under the bill before us a person in genuine need of protection who has travelled through a country that is a refugee convention country will be permanently barred from applying for a permanent protection. There are many reasons why people move between countries, and this provision is simply a penalty. It means that those people could remain without any kind of certainty for an unknown period of time.

The Liberals' previous version of this was that a TPV holder would be ineligible for permanent protection if, in their travel to Australia, they resided in a country for a minimum of seven days where they could have sought protection. And as the Houston report said, and as I remarked earlier, this was difficult to interpret and apply because of what was meant by 'could have sought and obtained effective protection'. The bill before us this evening uses precisely the same language as the original—in other words, the Liberals have learnt absolutely nothing from the failure of their original attempt at TPVs. So it fails on practical grounds and it fails in its drafting.

But the most important issue for me, and for many others on this side of the chamber, is the question of the hardship faced by those who were placed on TPVs during the Howard government's term. And they ought to be remembered in this place. I refer particularly to the findings of some research done by researchers at UNSW in 2004 which ultimately found that TPVs increased the risk of their holders developing post-traumatic stress and depression. I quote one of the co-authors of the study, Zachary Steel, who has said:

Unless somebody has the sense of safety, all of the basic survival mechanisms that tell a person that they need to escape from danger don't get turned off, they stay on, and so the individual stays locked into this perpetual state of alarm that at any time in the future they're facing immediate life threat. So they're living with basically executioner’s axe over their head, and it just doesn't provide an environment that allows them to recover and begin to rebuild their lives.

So we have TPVs failing as a practical measure to dissuade people from coming to Australia. We have TPVs in fact prompting more women and children to get on boats and come to Australia. We have TPVs failing when those people arrive in Australia. We have 95 per cent plus of the people who have been issued TPVs ultimately arriving here and staying here. And then we have the extraordinary hardship and the mental anguish—the real mental health impacts, verified by researchers—that arise from TPVs. What a wonderful policy move! What a well-thought-through initiative! What a humanitarian approach to take! What an extraordinary approach, and what a feeble response.

I really must say that this is a disgraceful debate that has been brought on by those opposite. Ours is a nation that is engaged in conflict for humanitarian reasons. We are engaged in peacekeeping. We have been a participant in international peacekeeping missions. We have been involved in post-conflict state building. So it is surely not too great a leap for us to realise that conflict has implications for the large-scale movement of refugees. To my mind, if we have the will to engage in conflict then we really must have an equivalent will to provide refuge for those who seek it.

What the debate this evening has revealed to me about those opposite is that they have no intention of honouring the convention obligations. So I invite them to reflect on why they think it is important for Australia to sign up to conventions, because you simply cannot pretend to be an internationalist, a responsible international participant, and yet resile entirely from your convention obligations when you are back at home. But this continues to be the approach taken by those opposite.

This is an extremely troubling debate from the point of view of the mental health circumstances of asylum seekers. It is an extremely troubling debate because it provides no practical response to the circumstances of asylum seekers arising here. It is at odds with the Houston panel's report, and it is at odds entirely with all of the facts that were borne out during that period of time that the Howard government had TPVs in place. Indeed, this is a callous debate brought on by those opposite, and I think it will be revealed to be so by the very many people who will remark on it, I suspect, in the days which follow.

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