Julie Owens (Parramatta, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

A page was left out by the expert panel as well because it is well and truly an abomination. It was in the Howard years and, if it is ever introduced again, it will be again. We are, of course, talking about a very complicated matter here. I know that the member for Berowra has a great deal of experience with this. For a start, we should understand that of any 100 people that the UN assesses as being suitable for resettlement in a third country, only one is actually resettled. For every one we settle, there are 99 that we do not. So the idea that somehow picking this one or that one creates fairness is just nonsense.

We have an incredibly difficult situation to deal with. Temporary protection visas did not work in the Howard years and they will not work now. They did not stop the boats—in fact, the boats increased—and they were not temporary. The vast majority of these people stayed permanently. The visas were cruel beyond belief, and they led to an increase in the number of women and children on boats. So at every level they simply did not work.

The visas were introduced in 1999 by the Howard government in response to a surge in unauthorised maritime arrivals. In that year, there were 3,722 unauthorised boat arrivals. In the two years following the introduction of temporary protection visas, there were 8,459 unauthorised arrivals. There were 3,700 in 1999, when temporary protection visas were introduced, and more in 2000 and then more in 2001. Again, they did not work. The number of refugees in the world in the years following the introduction of this visa actually decreased. To say that the result in Australia was due to temporary protection visas is as irrational as saying that the number of people fleeing to the US or Canada was because of Australia's temporary protection visas. The numbers around the world dropped, and they dropped here as well.

Following the introduction of temporary protection visas, the number of unauthorised boat arrivals actually increased to 8,459 and then there were 5,500 in 2001—and they were also not temporary. Of the TPVs issued between 1999, when they were introduced, and 2008, when they were abolished by Labor, 88 per cent of arrivals had already been granted permanent status, and of the 1,000 left, 815 were granted permanent status. In fact, only 3.4 per cent, or 379 people, actually went home. So they were not temporary. They did not work. The boats increased. They were not temporary: people were given permanent residence.

But on the way to permanent residence there was this incredible cruelty—and we are talking here about people like those in my electorate. They are children who, if you asked them to line up at school, crawl under the desk and wet themselves because the last time they did that terrible things happened. They are the parents whose two-year-old child was forcibly taken from their arms as they fled, and they have no idea where they are. I know a young woman who has been raped so many times in her life that she did not even know it was wrong until she came to this country. I have a man whose sister was arrested at the age of 16 for reading a book and whose eyes were gouged out. A month later, after her torture, he was allowed to collect her body if he paid to do so. People who have lived these kinds of lives were asked to live here in uncertainty and reapply every three years. The cruelty of that—particularly when, at the end of it, you gave them permanent residence, after you damaged these broken people incredibly with this abomination of a policy—is quite astonishing.

That we would talk about reintroducing something under which the boats increased anyway, under which people became permanent, not temporary, and under which they were treated so cruelly is astonishing. It is astonishing that we are talking about this. But the worst thing for me was the change in the range of people who sought to get on boats after temporary protection visas were introduced, because they denied family reunion. You could not leave Australia to visit your family and you could not attempt to bring your family over here. People were separated from their children and their partners for eight years under this policy. So what happened? They put their families on boats.

In 1999, over 12 per cent of asylum applications from people from Iraq and Afghanistan who had come by boat were for women and children. Just two years later it was 42 per cent—from 12 per cent to 42 per cent in two years. Three-quarters of the passengers on the SIEVX, which sank tragically in October 2001—there were 353 on board and 288 were women and children—had family members who were TPV holders in Australia. This is an abomination. At every level this policy failed and at every level it was cruel beyond belief.

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