Luke Simpkins (Cowan, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

This week is Refugee Week, and in Cowan I have a very diverse community consisting of people who have come from many places around the world. I think it is a testament to the success of Australia as an immigrant nation that so many have come and that so many have made wonderful contributions to the nation and communities such as in the Cowan electorate.

In my area, we have many examples of people that have come as refugees from other places, people that have fled in desperation from harsh conditions and personal risk. I know a former refugee that fled by camel from Iran and registered with UNHCR across the border in Pakistan, I know people of Vietnamese origin that came to Australia after being in the refugee camps at Hong Kong in the years following the Vietnam War, I know people that came from refugee camps in Africa and I know people who have lived for years in the refugee camps in on the Burma-Thailand border—camps that I have seen with my own eyes. When I saw the conditions in such camps and I saw how desperate the conditions were, it was easy to be moved by that experience. That is where my sympathy lies: thousands of people with a mere handful of dollars, a meal a day, subsistence conditions at best, yet more typically borderline starvation. I saw it in the eyes of those refugees. They had lost hope that their nearby homeland could be safe from brutality, landmines or persecution. Instead they wanted a future where their children had a chance for an education and a future of safety. With that loss of hope, they replaced it with the dream of the future in the land of opportunity, Australia. It is the land of opportunity, because this is a country where your success is determined by the content of your character and your determination to harvest the proceeds of your hard work. This is a place where you can come from having had nothing at Mae La shelter near Mae Sot in Thailand. If you are prepared to work and get a job, the road to that opportunity is being paved by our policy of border control.

I am therefore delighted that our humanitarian intake is now determined by need rather than cash. I say this because, after Labor changed the working immigration policy in 2008, the intake became entirely about cash and not need. I make the point that those who came by boat had cash to pay the people smugglers. Those from the Middle East had also already flown on an aeroplane to get to the people smugglers. Again, cash and means differentiated them from those in refugee camps.

I hear the fans of unfettered boat arrivals saying that there is no queue where these people come from, and that is absolute rubbish. UNHCR and the IOM have officers and representatives in many places that those who come by boat have bypassed. While Labor was letting people arrive by boat with their weak policies, those who were stuck in refugee camps waited longer and longer. While those who were heading to Indonesia were checking out duty-free options at Doha or Dubai airports whilst waiting for their Jakarta connecting flights to depart, refugees in camps were wondering whether they could eat today or get their children some clothes. As the camp kids were kicking a worn soccer ball through the dust of the refugee camp, Labor's preferred intake was handing over wads of cash or transferring thousands of dollars to bank accounts as they prepared to hop on a boat to Australia or, better still, a planned interception by the Australian Navy so they did not even need to come the whole way.

But what a contrast it is now. Since this coalition government was elected, the refugee intake goes to those in most need: persecuted and at-risk women and children; Christian refugees from the war in Syria; and those from the Burma-Thailand border, the Karens and Chins—people who know how to work hard and who are determined to succeed, just like the refugees we took from Europe after World War II or after the Vietnam War. The many refugees we took are almost entirely from refugee camps in Asia.

I know that those in the Labor Party want to return to a means-over-need system, just like the Greens. I have seen enough in this world to know that the fair way is not to accept those who step ahead with cash but always to remember those who are stuck behind the barbed wire of refugee camps and those who have a great record of fitting in and working hard when they get to Australia in the right way.

So, Minister, this is the big issue for me with regard to border security. While the Labor Party and the Greens want to whinge about the outcomes on Nauru or Manus Island, created entirely by their polices and the way in which they threw away those facilities in 2008 and then rushed to re-establish them in 2012, we are now dealing with those policy disasters. Above all I see that at last with us, those refugees with the greatest need are the priority and that Labor's disgraceful cash-over-need priorities are at an end. Therefore, Minister, I ask you how the government is restoring integrity to the humanitarian program in the budget and what will happen if Labor returns to government?

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