Shayne Neumann (Blair, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Indigenous Affairs) Share this | Hansard source

I rise to support the amendment to the motion and I applaud the member for Melbourne. This motion passed the Senate with the support of crossbenchers, the Greens and the Labor Party. On 5 November this year the New Zealand Prime Minister, Jacinda Ardern, reaffirmed New Zealand's generous offer to resettle 150 eligible refugees from across both Manus and Nauru. It's an offer that Labor believes the Turnbull government should accept, and they should, as per the motion put in the Senate, begin to negotiate on terms similar to the US refugee resettlement agreement, to ensure people smugglers do not exploit vulnerable people and people can get off Manus and Nauru.

These places were set up as regional transit processing facilities. Unfortunately, under the government they've become places of indefinite detention because of their failure to negotiate third-country resettlement options. They have negotiated one in relation to the US, and now we have an offer on the table from New Zealand. Labor's asylum policy is different from the Greens' and from the government's. It's clear we don't want the people smugglers back in business, and therefore Labor's position differs with the Greens' in terms of resettlement options concerning Australia.

We do believe in strong borders, offshore processing, regional resettlement and turn-backs when safe to do so. It's clear the government has been in office for more than four years but not in power on this issue. The government has failed to negotiate other third-country resettlement options. Labor strongly supports the US refugee resettlement agreement, which would see up to 1,250 refugees approved and sanctioned by the UNHCR from Manus and Nauru resettled in the United States.

At the time of the US agreement being announced, Paris Aristotle, known to many people in this place, an eminent person, the Chair of the Minister's Council on Asylum Seekers and Detention, told The Australian newspaper about the need for other third-country resettlement options, saying:

That is appropriate and necessary because not everyone ultimately will be picked by the US. There will be a number of cases that will not be successful …

The New Zealand Prime Minister said at the time, reaffirming New Zealand's offer:

… we want to assist as much as we are able in expediting resolution on this issue …

The motion from the Senate is about expediting third-country resettlement for eligible refugees on Manus and Nauru—something the government has failed to prioritise.

In February 2013, then Prime Minister Julia Gillard brokered a deal with then conservative New Zealand Prime Minister John Key to resettle 150 refugees annually who had arrived irregularly in Australia by boat. So the New Zealand offer being made by the New Zealand government currently is not new. At the time, New Zealand said they would work closely with Australia as part of a regional approach to irregular migration, with the arrangement to be within New Zealand's Refugee Quota Program. This original plan was for New Zealand to resettle 150 refugees annually, commencing in 2014, with allocations formalised in the New Zealand program for both the 2014-15 and 2015-16 financial year intakes.

The former Prime Minister, Tony Abbott, the member for Warringah, then scrapped the plans once he was elected in 2013—a wrong decision, in our view. If the agreement with New Zealand had been allowed to proceed by the then Abbott government and continued by the Turnbull government, upwards of 600 eligible refugees would have been resettled in New Zealand as of this year. It's clear that Labor was supporting the New Zealand resettlement arrangement for a long time back in the days of Julia Gillard and has continued to under opposition leader Bill Shorten. We're offering the government support for a New Zealand resettlement offer to get these people off Manus Island and Nauru and resettled as quickly as possible. We urge the government to begin negotiating conditions similar to the US refugee resettlement arrangement.

The irony of all of this is that the government won't release the US refugee resettlement agreement. Labor's been calling on the government to do this. If the government can negotiate a US refugee resettlement arrangement without any pull factors in terms of people smugglers, surely—surely—it's within their wit and wisdom to negotiate similar terms and conditions with our friends across the Tasman. Even the Prime Minister's own backbench have called on him to accept the offer, with former Liberal immigration minister Kevin Andrews, the member for Menzies, saying:

We should give consideration to what New Zealand is offering …The reality is that we have an intractable problem at the present time.

Yes, the United States are going to take some of these people, but there's still a large number there. The current immigration minister has already agreed to terms and conditions with the United States government that he believes will prevent people smugglers using that particular agreement as part of a way of exploiting vulnerable people. We've long called on the government to release the terms and conditions of the US refugee resettlement arrangement, but, despite their refusal to release the full details, we know that the US refugee resettlement agreement is a one-off. It's up to 1,250, and there are more eligible refugees.

We thank for their cooperation the Nauruan government and the PNG government. We also thank the UNHCR for the work they're doing. But the offer is only available for those refugees on Manus and Nauru, and the government should have lifted the bar for those people from Manus and Nauru here in Australia. Conditions which would be essential, in our view, would be to ensure that there are no pull factors, and the government should negotiate that.

Last Monday, 27 November, the New Zealand Prime Minister made clear her stance on people smugglers:

We have sent a clear message to people smugglers, and that is that the full force of the law should come down on anyone who exploits people who are vulnerable by taking money, risking their lives by taking to the ocean … The argument that people smugglers will then use that as an excuse to continue to smuggle … you could … make that argument for the United States as much as you could New Zealand.

In this the New Zealand Prime Minister affirms what the member for Melbourne is saying and what I'm saying here today: those same arguments don't hold water, and the government has a false argument here.

It should be noted that, following the announcement of the US refugee resettlement agreement, the government took steps to increase Australia's border security, describing it as the largest peacetime border security mission, to ensure people smugglers wouldn't exploit vulnerable people. We applaud what the government did in that regard. If an asylum seeker gets on a boat, they should be turned around and resettled elsewhere. They're not being resettled here under a Labor government. The government has pursued, negotiated and accepted appropriate conditions on the US refugee resettlement agreement. Similar conditions can be negotiated. The government can no longer sit on its hands waiting for the US agreement to transpire, when only 54 people have gone. There could be some more to come shortly, according to the minister, but only 54 people have gone. People seem to be waiting indefinitely there.

This is a government woefully incompetent at the management of offshore processing arrangements. We know that the Manus Regional Processing Centre was ordered to close, in accordance with a decision of the Supreme Court of PNG, in April 2016. A full-year later, in April 2017, the Prime Ministers of both Australia and Papua New Guinea confirmed the RPC would close on 31 October this year. By that closure date the government hadn't made everything ready, and failed to be upfront about access to essential services and alternative accommodation for asylum seekers and refugees. The lack of assurance led to the stand-off we've seen on our TV screens and in the media. Now that all the men have moved from the old RPC to alternative accommodation, this government has a moral obligation to ensure refugees have access to essential services in the alternative accommodation—food, water, security, health and welfare services—but we also have a moral obligation, as set out recently by the PNG Supreme Court. It's time we moved forward, it's time we accepted the New Zealand offer, it's time the government released the US refugee resettlement agreement, it's time the government, in its fifth year in office, became the government in power in terms of offshore processing and regional resettlement, did their job and stopped blaming Labor for their failures.

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