Richard Marles (Corio, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Immigration and Border Protection) Share this | Hansard source

Let me start by making one clear point: there has been no reduction in the boat arrivals today compared to where they were at immediately prior to the federal election. In the two weeks prior to the federal election, four boats came to this country. As far as we know, in the last 14 days there have been at least five boats that have come to Australia—albeit we cannot be completely sure because we will not know exactly until Friday. Let us be clear: in the two weeks prior to the election, when Labor was still in power, there were four boats that had arrived. In the two weeks to today, that figure is now five.

The piece of policy which has changed the game when it comes to stopping the tide of boats from Indonesia is the PNG arrangement. There was almost a 90 per cent reduction in the numbers of people arriving at the time of the PNG arrangement before the election. Indeed, in some weeks, there was more than a 90 per cent reduction. This is an inconvenient truth for the now government but that is the truth indeed.

We hear the government out there talking about 75 per cent reductions or that they are out there stopping the boats but the simple fact of the matter is that prior to the election, compared to now, there has been no reduction in the flow of boats from Indonesia. The PNG arrangement, July 19, and other important measures such as the refusal of automatic visas on arrival for Iranians entering Indonesia—a matter that was negotiated through cooperation by the then Rudd government in Indonesia—are the issues, the pieces of policy, which have changed the game.

This is an evolving area of policy. What we have on the government side are people who are inexperienced and who have found themselves in a time warp, believing that the policies that existed in 2001 such as TPVs, turning back the boats and the Pacific solution would represent a solution to this problem in 2013. The fact of the matter is: had all of those policies stayed in place after the Howard government, they would be dealing with the issue as this country faces it in 2013. The contemporary solution to the contemporary problem has been the PNG arrangement and other measures such as what was negotiated for Iranian arrivals in Indonesia. That was the game changer.

All we have seen from the government since the election are bells and whistles. We have seen a language edict issued requiring officials of the Department of Immigration and Border Control to now refer to asylum seekers as 'illegals'. We had that in October. We now have a grand operation sovereign border. We have seen the militarisation. We have seen weekly briefings but there is nothing in all of this which amounts to a hill of beans of substance, nothing at all.

What we have seen is a culture of secrecy. What we have seen from this government—

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