Peter Dutton (Dickson, Liberal Party, Minister for Immigration and Border Protection) Share this | Hansard source

I thank the honourable member very much. He is doing a fine job as the new member for Fairfax, and he is making an enormous contribution to this debate because, like all Australians, he wants to make sure that we continue the generosity and that we continue the support to new families who come to our country, in many cases from very difficult circumstances. As a government, we do have a lot to be very proud of and as a country we have a lot to be very proud of.

We have been able to stand up, along with world leaders, and point out the number of people who we do take through the refugee and humanitarian program. And there are a lot of Australians who are very interested in this topic, from both sides of the debate. There are people who argue that we should take fewer and there are people who argue that we should take more. I would point all of those people to the information which details, country by country, the number of refugees taken in by Australia and those taken in by countries like France, Germany and many others

I think Australians would be surprised at how far up that list we sit. And, in addition to the 13,750 people we will take through the humanitarian and refugee program this year—and we have committed to the 12,000 Syrians, as the honourable member noted in his contribution—we will take 16,250 next year and 18,750 in 2018-19. Between 1 July 2015 and 7 October 2016, as I have pointed out before, 14,000 visas were granted to people displaced by conflict in Syria and Iraq alone.

Our country has a very significant relationship with IOM and UNHCR, as I pointed out before, but we also have a very important relationship with many communities here in our country. Many communities have established themselves through the contribution of a number of families who, over one or two or more generations, have been able to contribute philanthropically to the betterment of their own communities. They are now in a position to sponsor people coming to our country through the refugee and humanitarian program. We are very proud to be able to work with those communities, and it is part of the success that we have had in settling almost 850,000 people as refugees since the end of the Second World War. It is a considerable part of the fabric of today's Australian society, and we have the ability to contribute more to that.

As the member for Fairfax rightly points out, the Australian public will only support generosity where they see a competent government in control of the process and not being dictated to by people smugglers. One of the most shameful periods of our country's history was during Labor's period in government when we lost control of our borders and 1,200 people tragically drowned at sea. I am very proud that we have not had one person drown at sea since the commencement of Operation Sovereign Borders. We have been able to get children out of detention and we have been able to bring in a record number of people through the refugee and humanitarian programs—and long may that be the case.

Labor's policy disaster was evidenced by the fact that they reached into the Humanitarian Program to use places which would otherwise have provided support to people out of war-torn countries to settle people who had arrived by boat—economic refugees. It demonstrated the corruptness of Labor's process and it demonstrated why, in this debate even today, they do not have the credibility to talk about what they might do tomorrow. They are completely and utterly divided. The people smugglers have this worked out. We saw it reported in the run-up to the election that people smugglers were rubbing their hands together, anticipating the return of a Labor government and a weak Prime Minister in Shorten following weak prime ministers in Gillard and Rudd. That is the reality. Labor's inability to accept this underscores that they still have not learnt the lesson.

The member for Blair has been passed the poison chalice, and I think Mr Marles was happy to run from this portfolio at a thousand miles an hour. It is only the coalition government that can maintain the integrity we have within the humanitarian and refugee programs. We will continue to work with other countries and organisations to make sure that we deliver the best possible outcomes for those most deserving, so that they can restart their lives in this great country.

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