Sharman Stone (Murray, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Immigration and Citizenship) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise to oppose the Migration Amendment (Abolishing Detention Debt) Bill 2009. The policy of billing people for the cost of their detention was introduced in November 1992 by the then Labor government. Speaking during the introduction of the Migration Reform Bill in 1992, the then Minister for Immigration, Local Government and Ethnic Affairs, Gerry Hand, stated:

A primary objective of the Migration Act is to regulate, in the national interest, the entry and presence in Australia of persons who are not Australian citizens.

This very simple but important objective should guide all that we do in relation to changes to immigration policy, in particular when amendments are proposed that may further weaken this objective or put more border crossing decisions into the hands of international criminals.

The objective of this bill is to remove the liability for immigration detention debt and related costs for detainees and liable third parties and to extinguish all outstanding immigration detention debts other than those incurred by convicted illegal foreign fishers and people smugglers. Given the fact that detainees who make a successful bid to remain in Australia, and eligible third parties, very rarely pay any detention debt, virtually nothing, in effect, changes with the amendments introduced by this bill other than the principal itself. Right now, people who incur debt as asylum seekers are very rarely required to pay. In recognition of their means, less than 2.5 per cent of the detention debt invoiced since 2004-05 has been recovered, with nearly 95 per cent of the debt waived or written off. It should also be noted that the latest statistics show nearly 80 per cent of detainees are in detention for less than three months, which would create debts of around $10,000, not the hundreds of thousands of dollars often referred to in discussing this amendment. Nonetheless, the coalition agrees that such comparatively smaller amounts should still be waived or written off if the asylum seeker cannot pay.

A recent report by the Joint Standing Committee on Migration recommended the abolition of detention charges. The committee has also called for the release of detainees into the community before the processing of their identity, health and security status has been completed. It would mean even less time in detention for all if this very unwise recommendation were adopted by the Rudd government. I repeat that the coalition fully supports the waiving of detention debts and write-offs for asylum seekers found to be refugees and who are unable to pay. If, as the government argues, there is a problem with record keeping and the administration of the debt recovery or write-off programs then this government should improve that administration, not abolish the program that, I argue, serves a very important purpose. It would be an extraordinary precedent for any government if an important program were removed simply because it was maladministered.

There is no doubt that announcing to the region that this Rudd Labor regime is abolishing the 17-year-old policy of recovering detention debt would bring great joy to the people smugglers who are once again very active in our waters. Just yesterday we saw the arrival of the 22nd boat—and there have been over 800 unauthorised arrivals—since the softening of policy in August 2008. Abolishing the detention debt principle is going to remove one more deterrent in the way of people smugglers arguing now that Australia has a wide-open backdoor.

Members need to be reminded that ALP minister Gerry Hand introduced the measure to recover detention debts 17 years ago, for this program to be a deterrent. At the time, Australia was experiencing an early surge in unauthorised boat arrivals. The government of the day, the ALP, introduced a range of amendments to the Migration Act to try to restore order and to save lives. Measures included mandatory detention, the establishment of the migration and refugee review tribunals, time limits on the lodgement of applications for asylum and also this detention charge we are discussing today. In his second reading speech Gerry Hand said:

In spite of the 1989 reforms, a major issue confronting the government is border control. There are people who are intent on bypassing the established categories of entry into this country. Some do this by trying to avoid immigration processing altogether by arriving in Australia without authority. The boat people are a good example. Owing to weaknesses which have been inherent in our migration laws for many years, these people are often successful. Many manage to stay here, even though they do not fall within the specific visa categories, which is the only lawful way to enter and stay in Australia. At the very least, many manage to delay the substantive decision on their case and, as a consequence, their departure, by using the courts to exploit any weaknesses they can find in our immigration law. This must stop.

These of course were the words of Gerry Hand, a Labor minister who knew all too well that the cost of compromising the integrity of the migration and humanitarian programs for our nation was a loss of our capacity to help those suffering in refugee camps around the world, people who would never have the cash or contacts to engage the people smugglers. Without good regional engagement and a properly managed migration and humanitarian program, we cannot afford to offer safe haven to those most in need—people, for example, like those who are coming out of Africa, the Thailand border regions and the Bangladeshi border regions.

Writing most recently in theAustralian on 26 May, another former ALP minister for immigration, Barry Cohen, pondered Australia’s response to people like his ancestors, the European Jewry, fleeing after World War II. He said:

How many should Australia have taken: 30,000, 300,000, three million? There was always going to be a limit that would be too many for some, too little for others. Which brings us to the present debate in Australia about refugees, illegals, asylum seekers; call them what you will. It’s still a matter of numbers.

Labor minister Gerry Hand also identified the problem that a surge of unauthorised arrivals posed for Australia’s capacity to offer new settlers comprehensive support for some of the world’s most desperate refugees. He was also, of course, concerned about our orderly migration program.

The Hon. Julia Gillard was once similarly convinced about the need for a strong migration policy with integrity, but of course she has since been silenced. In 2004 Julia Gillard, the now Deputy Prime Minister—

Peter Slipper (Fisher, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Order! The honourable member for Murray ought to refer to the Deputy Prime Minister by her title.

Sharman Stone (Murray, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Immigration and Citizenship) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I am doing that, as I will explain. In 2004, Julia Gillard, the now Deputy Prime Minister, was shadow minister for immigration. She wrote the ALP policy for border protection, and her principles and views echoed those of her previous immigration ministers and the coalition. There was no ALP immigration policy, of course, to speak of in 2007, when Tony Burke was shadow minister immediately before the election. We are told he was asked to bury migration policy or, at the very least, to make it a very small target. Julia Gillard, deputy leader, wrote into her 2004 immigration policy the following:

… the continuation of temporary protection visas; continuation of mandatory detention; the introduction of a US style coastguard; increased penalties for people smuggling, including 20-year jail terms, $1 million fines and confiscation of boats; streamlining of the Australian processing regime to make it the same as that applying in refugee camps, to help remove the motivation for asylum seekers to risk their lives journeying to Australia in leaky boats; limiting the appeal on a decision to refuse protection to only one appeal by leave on points of law; asylum seekers found not to be refugees to be quickly sent home; and manifestly unfounded claims to be fast-tracked and resolved within a week.

Notably, none of these measures have been adopted or even talked about since the Rudd government was elected. In November 2007, instead, we saw a reversal of these strong types of principles. The Gillard policy proposals mirrored the coalition policies of the days when we had recently experienced the surge in people smuggling in 1999-2000. The coalition policies were hugely successful in stemming the 1999 surges in people smugglers, saving countless lives. Within 18 months of those new policies introduced in late 1999, we saw people smugglers out of business. Of course Julia Gillard, now deputy leader of Labor, had closely observed that. Under the Rudd-Evans regime Labor has softened policy, with the tragic consequence of a flotilla of unseaworthy boats once again pushing off from our northern neighbours’ shores and people being burned, drowned and maimed. Deputy Prime Minister Julia Gillard must be appalled at this amendment now before us and at the continued unravelling of both Labor and coalition policy that put previous governments in the driving seat in relation to who enters this country and who has the right to remain.

Of course, this is a government of many firsts. The Rudd Labor government is the first in Australian history to borrow and spend at rates that will see us paying back the debt for the next 20 to 30 years. It has even outborrowed Prime Minister Whitlam. This is also the first Australian government since Federation not to acknowledge the importance of maintaining border protection and the integrity and orderly management of our migration program, because no country can afford an open-door policy. Ex-Labor minister Barry Cohen wrote in the previously quoted opinion piece from just the other day about the reaction to John Howard’s statement: ‘We will decide who comes to this country and the manner in which they come.’ He said:

For the chattering classes this was final proof that Howard was a racist. What they overlooked was that his words could have been used by every PM from Edmund Barton to Kevin Rudd.

                  …              …              …

Howard could have chosen his words more carefully but he merely reiterated the policy of his predecessors. No Australian government, and for that matter, no government in the world has an “open-door” policy.

The weakening of immigration policy by this government has stimulated the biggest surge in people smuggling since 2001-02, when the coalition’s strengthened strategy put people smugglers out of business within 18 months. You have to wonder if this Australian government is also the first to imagine that an open-door policy will deliver safety to fellow human beings. The detention debt policy—that is, the one we are discussing today—was introduced 17 years ago to assist in the proper management of Australia’s borders and migration programs, to act as a deterrent to those entering the country unlawfully as illegal fishers or people smugglers or those with vexatious claims for protection. It was to help ensure Australians did not pay for the detention of people with no real claim on their protection or their hard-earned tax dollars.

Right now, people smugglers are telling their customers that the Rudd Labor government has reopened the back door to Australia—with the 22nd boat since August 2008 arriving yesterday. When the policy softening was first announced there had been virtually no boats for several years. We have had over 800 people on these 22 boats since August and another 1,000 people have been intercepted on our behalf by the Indonesians, although they are not quite sure of the numbers because tragically bodies are rolling up on the beaches after failed attempts at people smuggling. Now is not the time to give people smugglers another boost, another angle, to sell their dangerous passages to and through the back door into Australia. There are stories circulating that people smugglers are offering passage to Christmas Island on a down payment, with the outstanding moneys to be paid over time once the asylum seeker is processed into Australia and has access to work or our welfare system. This business evolves then from people smuggling to the even more evil crime of people trafficking, with individuals and families pursued for payback for years. It is a brutal business, and we should not for a minute imagine that the people smugglers have any interest—other than for profit—in the welfare of their clients.

Why would anyone support removal of any deterrent? Why would anyone seek to improve the returns to those who traffic humans, to those who as I say have no regard for the safety of their clients and who have already been responsible for countless lives lost when boats were so unseaworthy they could not even get beyond Indonesian waters. There is no doubt that the smugglers monitor every move the Rudd government and others make. A recent article reported the story of Mr Mandalavi, a recent asylum seeker who also used people smugglers for passage into Australia in 2002. The article said that, after the Rudd government scrapped TPVs, a people smuggler ‘mafia man’ persuaded him to set sail. Mr Mandalavi said:

He told me the laws had been changed in Australia, and that Mr Rudd wanted refugees.

Well, we all want to help refugees. One of my sons-in-law was a refugee. He, like many Australians, came to our shores because his family was processed by the UNHCR and he was invited to settle in a new country, where we supported him through English language programs, job-seeking support and accommodation. We have an enormously proud record and have had a very generous intake of offshore-sourced refugees—out of the hellholes of war torn places. However, we know people smugglers do not care about the safety of their asylum seeker customers. They are motivated solely by profit. Too many lives have been lost and too many have been terribly injured. The criminals who smuggle people must not be given further incentives to offer to their clients. They must not be given further comfort in their extraordinary efforts to entice more to get on board. Per capita Australia has the third-biggest refugee resettlement program in the world, after the USA and Canada. This year we will resettle 13,750 out of the world’s hellholes. Six thousand of these will be refugees who have been judged by the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees to be in the most urgent need of resettlement. None of these 13,750 people could afford to pay people smugglers to deliver them to Australia. We in the coalition argue that those who cannot afford to pay, who have not got the criminal contacts, should not be dropped to the back of the queue.

There are 15.2 million refugees who the UNHCR has determined are in urgent need of a resettlement place. We must listen to their advice. The coalition are determined to help preserve the integrity of our migration and refugee programs, so we will not support any changes in policy that actively encourage the business of the barbaric people-smuggling trade. The Rudd Labor government, on the other hand, has unravelled measures designed to keep our refugee intake focused on those most in need. We cannot have an open-door policy. We do not have a limitless set of resources. With this government’s rising debt levels, our ability and capacity to settle more—appropriately—is contracting over time. We believe that the best interest of Australia and Australians is to settle those most in need of our support and to do that comprehensively and in a way that gives those new settlers the best chance of work and freedom and to live with fellow Australians in peace and security.

People smugglers are hooked to the internet and follow closely all of the moves and shifts in Rudd government policy, and they are declaring that it is a softening and a new back door. Abolishing the in-principle payment of the costs of detention is a measure that, along with abolishing temporary protection visas, abolishing the 45-day rule, which says that you should seek asylum within 45 days of arriving in this country, introducing another protection visa category for those who do not at the moment comply with UNHCR categories, gives comfort to the people smugglers, who are offering their passages to people desperate to have a new life in Australia.

We can understand their interest in a new life in our great country. We have to say, though, that there are ministerial intervention discretions. The minister right now can overlook when someone has taken more than 45 days to claim asylum in this country, so there is not a problem with the 45-day rule, which was introduced to make sure that the system was not abused. You can imagine the circumstance of an international student who has been in Australia for, perhaps, two or three years. They have completed their course and they wish to stay even longer to do some work and to send more funds back home, perhaps. They understand that if they apply for asylum, even though they have been for many years in Australia, their application will be duly processed and that, while the application is in process, they may continue to work. This is an outright invitation to a plethora of vexatious claims, clogging up the work of the Department of Immigration and Citizenship, which is, of course, already battling under the constraints of a reduced budget and some 900 fewer officials.

The minister also has discretion to give protection to someone whose plight is so bad but whose conditions do not fit exactly within those that the UNHCR describes or within other treaties that Australia is a signatory to. This minister is not shy about using his intervention powers. We have recently discovered that he is in fact the all-time champion of use of intervention powers as a minister for immigration in this country. He has in fact overturned some 1,000 decisions made by the Refugee Review Tribunal, the Migration Review Tribunal and the courts. Over 1,000 cases brought to this minister have been overturned by him, so he has no hesitation at all in using the intervention powers that the migration acts gives to him. So why would we invite more vexatious claims for protection in this country, all the time distracting the work and diverting resources from those most in need—those in hellholes in Africa, Myanmar, Thailand and Bangladesh? This is not a humane way to conduct a migration or indeed humanitarian refugee policy. Certainly this amendment before us today is along the same lines of distraction and unnecessary softening that just gives comfort to people smugglers.

There are already safeguards in the legislation to ensure that asylum seekers who do not have the means to pay are given manageable repayment schedules or have their detention debts waived or written off. When I was parliamentary secretary for finance, I had these cases come before me regularly, looking for waiving or writing off payments, or indeed for ex-gratia payments, and I did not hesitate to move quickly to resolve those cases when there was clear evidence that the person needed to be freed from any debt in the process of re-settling or settling into our great country.

The Department of Immigration and Citizenship advises that detention debt liability is written off for ex-detainees who have been granted humanitarian and refugee visas or for persons detained unlawfully. In fact, less than 2.5 per cent of detention debt has been invoiced and recovered. So this is not an issue of refugees now in our community walking around with multi-thousands of dollars in debt burdening them, destroying their chances of settling properly and peacefully into this country. That is a furphy. However, it is wrong to equate the failure to collect the debt with a failure of the measure. It was never intended or seen as a revenue raiser for any government before. It is a deterrent and a principle that says that the Australian taxpayer should not have to pay for the detention of people such as illegal fishers, asylum seekers who are found not to have a call on this government for protection or indeed people smugglers themselves.

Clearly, it goes without saying that administrative arrangements do need to be improved if they are found to be wanting. If it costs more to collect some of this debt than the debt itself, then quite clearly the department of immigration should get its act together. But the principle should not be thrown out the door because the administration of that principle is wanting.

So the coalition opposes the Rudd Labor government’s decision to abolish all detention debts. At this time of surging illegal boat arrivals we believe that all government policies must send a clear and unambiguous message that people-smuggling will not be tolerated in Australia, nor will people-trafficking. The integrity of our migration and humanitarian programs must be a government priority. This is important for purposes of human rights, for the rights of individuals who are suffering right now in camps and places where there is no hope of their ever raising cash or having contacts to buy their way out of these terrible and inhumane conditions.

In summary the coalition considers there are safeguards already in the legislation to ensure that asylum seekers who do not have the means to pay can have their detention debts waived or written off, and over 95 per cent of these asylum seekers with these debts find their debts waived or written off. We support the continuing collection of detention debts owed by convicted illegal foreign fishers and convicted people smugglers. I repeat that it is also very important to improve the administration of this detention debt policy if, as the government argues, it is seriously inefficient. However, I repeat: we cannot support the further watering down of border protection policies and the integrity of our humanitarian refugee programs. The illegal boat arrivals continue to surge in response to Mr Rudd’s new regime. We think that is a terrible thing.

Yvette D'Ath (Petrie, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise to speak in support of the Migration Amendment (Abolishing Detention Debt) Bill 2009. This bill amends the Migration Act 1958 to remove the liability for immigration detention and related costs for certain persons and liable third parties and extinguish all outstanding immigration detention debts. It was interesting listening to the member for Murray and shadow minister for immigration today. Recently the member for Murray erroneously suggested that the Joint Standing Committee on Migration’s second report recommended that asylum seekers move out of detention as quickly as possible before their security, health and identity checks were completed. I am sure others from the Joint Standing Committee on Migration can defend their own report, but looking at the committee’s second report, as a member of that committee, nowhere are such recommendations made. I would also note that the chair of the committee, the member for Melbourne Ports, on 1 June 2009 commented that the shadow immigration minister twisted the committee’s recommendations beyond recognition.

Today we heard the member for Murray and shadow minister taking a different approach to the position taken by that member in the first report of the Joint Standing Committee on Migration. I note the member has left the chamber, but I certainly call on the member to have a look at the committee’s report and remind herself that, in fact, she did support the recommendations in the first report. I also refer the member for Murray back to the evidence and research that was relied on to support the recommendations of the committee. I will come to that evidence and research shortly.

I, on the other hand, continue to support the recommendations of the Joint Standing Committee on Migration in relation to detention charges. As a member of the Joint Standing Committee on Migration, I have been able to inform myself of the issues surrounding the detention debt and the history of the debt in this country and to compare Australia’s practices with countries around the globe. The committee in its first report, Immigration detention in Australia: a new beginning, released in December 2008, raised the issue of detention debt in Australia. Chapter 5 of the report specifically deals with the evidence put before the committee in its inquiry and the committee’s recommendations in relation to removals and detention charges.

In the Migration Act 1958 there is an obligation to detain any unlawful noncitizen. Currently the act only provides three mechanisms for subsequent release from detention: the grant of a visa, either a substantive or a bridging visa; removal from Australia; or deportation from Australia. Under the Migration Act currently, a noncitizen who is detained is liable to pay the Commonwealth the cost of his or her immigration detention. An individual begins to accumulate debt with the Commonwealth as soon as they are placed in detention. As at June 2008 the charge for an individual to be held in immigration detention was $125.40 per day. This daily charge applies to immigration detention centres, residential centres and community detention. Spouses and dependent children are also liable for charges, with the parent or guardian being liable for the costs of a dependent child.

The costs accumulated by a person in immigration detention can be significant. Paragraph 5.55 of the committee’s report provides an example given by the Refugee Action Committee of an accumulated debt for a family held in detention:

After six years in a detention centre and another three years living as a refugee in Melbourne, Hossein (family name withheld), an Iranian refugee, has been advised by the Department of Immigration and Citizenship that he owes an amount of $200,000 which represents the cost of keeping his wife, daughter and son locked up in the Curtin Detention Centre in Western Australia for three years.

Paragraph 5.56 of the report notes that the Forum of Australian Services for Survivors of Torture and Trauma advised:

Detention debts can be very considerable. In the year ended 30 June 2007, one family was advised that their debt was more than $340,000.

The debt notification letter and invoice sent by the Department of Immigration and Citizenship to a former detainee is not merely an exercise on paper, with no real effect on the individuals served. The act provides the Commonwealth with specific powers to recover any outstanding debt. These powers include restraining dealings with property, preventing a bank or financial institution from processing any transactions in any account held by the debtor, attaching the debt to specific forms of income of the debtor and entering the premises in order to seize and sell valuables belonging to the debtor.

Evidence to the inquiry showed that, where debt recovery is pursued, a payment plan is commonly negotiated with the former detainee. However as reasonable as this may sound, the Forum of Australian Services for Survivors of Torture and Trauma gave the example of one former detainee with a detention debt and repayment arrangement to the Commonwealth that would take him over 80 years to repay. This clearly would be seen by any reasonable person to be unacceptable.

The original objective of the detention debt policy in division 10 of part 2 of the Migration Act was to minimise the cost to the Australian community associated with the detention of unlawful noncitizens by ensuring that all unlawful noncitizens bear primary responsibility for the costs associated with their detention, deportation or removal. The second objective of the policy was to require former detainees to repay their debt to the Commonwealth, or make suitable arrangements for repayment, as a condition for the grant of a visa for re-entry to Australia. The inquiry held by the current Joint Standing Committee on Migration is not the first to review the issue of detention charges. In fact there have been several reviews, with concerns raised as to the equity, recovery and cost-effectiveness of maintaining this policy.

In 2006 the Senate Legal and Constitutional Affairs Committee report Administration and operation of the Migration Act 1958 noted:

The evidence clearly indicates that the imposition of detention costs is an extremely harsh policy and one that is likely to cause significant hardship to a large number of people. The imposition of a blanket policy without regard to individual circumstances is inherently unreasonable and may be so punitive in some cases as to effectively amount to a fine. The Committee agrees that it is a serious injustice to charge people for the cost of detention.

The committee recommended that the imposition of detention debt be discontinued except in instances of abuse of process or where applicants acted in bad faith.

In July 2007 the Commonwealth Ombudsman initiated an ‘own motion’ investigation into whether the department’s administrative processes and procedures were appropriate and applied reasonably and consistently across the department. The Ombudsman’s reportDepartment of Immigration and Citizenship: administration of detention debt waiver and write-off was published in April 2008. The Ombudsman found that, while the department was administering the debt waiver and write-off of detention debt according to legislative and policy requirements, there was scope for improvement. Most recently, of course, has been the report issued by the current Joint Standing Committee on Migration, which I have already referred to.

The questions that need to be asked in relation to whether the detention debt procedures should be retained go to: firstly, whether the Commonwealth in fact has recovered the costs and, if so, minimised the costs to the Australian community associated with the detention of unlawful noncitizens; and, secondly, whether the detention debt has been a disincentive for unlawful noncitizens to attempt to come to Australia. The answer to both of these is no. In practice, recovery of many detention debts is not pursued, with debts waived or written off. When a debt is written off this means that a decision is made not to pursue recovery of the debt. However, at some time in the future the Commonwealth may choose to execute debt recovery. When a detention debt is waived the debt is extinguished.

In the financial year ending 2008 nearly $3.5 million of detention debt was waived for 142 former detainees. The hardship arises from the fact that write-offs were in fact much more commonly employed, leaving the individual or family to still have to live with the fact that the Commonwealth could choose to execute debt recovery at any time in the future. On the issue of deterrence, there was not evidence that such a debt against unlawful noncitizens willing to risk their lives to come to Australia in treacherous conditions made them less inclined to come because they may incur a debt.

There is one other reason that is more fundamentally important than the two that I have highlighted, and that is the basic human rights of individuals to seek refuge in this country and this country’s policy on detention debt compared to those of advanced countries around the world. The committee heard a range of criticisms about the practice of applying charges to persons in detention. There was consensus of opinion condemning the policy as punitive and discriminatory. Labor for Refugees NSW described it as ‘intentionally punitive, unjust and inhumane’. In his appearance before the committee, Julian Burnside QC stated:

We charge [people in detention] by the day for the cost of their own detention. In connection with a case which challenged the validity of that section [of the Act], the Department and I against them, carried out some research which showed that we are the only country in the world which charges innocent people the cost of incarcerating them. It is not a distinction that is deserving of much merit.

There is also no evidence of citizens and noncitizens who are detained as punishment for crimes in Australia being made liable for the cost of their detention. Other detainees subjected to ‘administrative detention’, such as individuals suffering from mental health issues who are detained pursuant to the Mental Health Act 1983, are not required to reimburse the Commonwealth for the cost of the deprivation of their liberty. Nor are detainees detained for quarantine reasons pursuant to the Quarantine Act 1908 required to pay for their segregation from the Australian community. Detention of noncitizens pursuant to the Migration Act 1958 remains the only form of detention in Australia that requires the detained to pay for their own detention. This is outlined by Azadeh Dastyari of the Castan Centre for Human Rights Law at paragraph 581 of the committee’s report.

Concerns were also raised with the committee regarding the impact of detention debt on ex-detainees, in particular the burden on mental wellbeing, the ability to repay the debt, and the restrictions a debt could place on options for returning to Australia on a substantive visa. The Refugee Action Committee in Canberra noted:

Policy [relating to detention charges] stands as a barrier towards refugees fully integrating into the community, and continues to put significant pressure—both emotionally and financially—on those people who have already experienced so much trauma and uncertainty in their lives.

The committee report also noted that a 2008 Commonwealth Ombudsman report into detention debt administration indicated that the added burden of having a large debt caused high levels of stress in people that had formerly spent a period of time in detention.

It is for all of these reasons and more that I support the bill before the House. I also believe that it is equally important that this bill not only removes the future charge of detention debt but also extinguishes the existing debts of individuals. To do so is to acknowledge that such harsh and inhumane treatment is no longer accepted in Australia.

It is important to note, however, that the Rudd Labor government, despite the claims of the member for Murray, remains strongly committed to border security and it is for such reasons that the bill will retain provisions in relation to convicted illegal foreign fishers and convicted people smugglers, ensuring that the legislation imposes a liability on those persons for detention and transport costs while in immigration detention. I wonder whether the member for Murray is aware of this retention provision, based on her speech today.

It is important that Australia has a strong migration policy and border control measures. It is equally important that those measures are targeted in the appropriate way and towards the appropriate people. People smuggling and illegal fishing need to be a key focus of the Australian government and will continue to be into the future with the tough stance that this government is taking on this issue and the continuing dialogue that this country is having with Indonesia and other countries to stop this illegal conduct. People’s lives are being put at risk by people smugglers and we need to ensure that those who are responsible for orchestrating the people smuggling are prosecuted to the full extent of Australian laws.

That is why I am pleased to commend the Rudd government’s announcement of a massive $1.3 billion package in this year’s budget to further strengthen Australia’s border protection and national security regime. Of this $1.3 billion, $654 million is specifically dedicated to a whole-of-government strategy to combat the people smuggling, something that I note the member for Murray failed to mention. This bill gets the balance right. It continues to ensure that Australia’s migration laws deter unlawful noncitizens, while at the same time ensuring that Australia complies with its international obligations to asylum seekers and refugees in a fair and humane way. I commend the bill to the House.

Petro Georgiou (Kooyong, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I speak in support of the Migration Amendment (Abolishing Detention Debt) Bill 2009. It is a bill that takes another step towards closing a dark chapter in our history. This dark chapter is about the incarceration of men, women and children behind razor wire in isolated locations. It is about the imprisonment of innocent people for periods longer than criminals convicted of serious felonies. It is about the demonisation of people fleeing persecution. It is about the denial of psychiatric attention to sick people to whom the government owed a duty of care. It is about conditions in detention centres that traumatised not just the detainees but also their guards. It is a chapter about lip sewing and suicide attempts. It is a chapter of harming people fleeing persecution who asked for and were entitled to protection in our country.

This chapter is a stark contrast to the openness and compassion of the one that preceded it. Some members will recall 1976 when our country was faced by the unprecedented challenge of Indochinese boat people. Two thousand of them landed on our shores in a handful of years. Some people proposed that we should put them into detention centres or push the boats back. The Fraser government, supported by the opposition, rejected this. We accepted the Indochinese refugees into our society and we participated in an international effort which resettled almost 1.5 million people from Indochina across the world with about 130,000 of them coming to Australia. The sense of responsibility and compassion that prompted this was a tribute to the Australian people and to our leaders. History shows that our nation benefited.

But just 15 years after the first Indochinese arrived on our shores unannounced, the parliament turned its back on this record of compassion and achievement and a new chapter was opened. Its first pages were penned by the then Minister for Immigration, Local Government and Ethnic Affairs, Gerry Hand. In response to 449 people arriving by boat over the preceding three years, Minister Hand proposed a new and punitive policy. His colleague Neal Blewett described the process:

Hand supported his proposals with his usual blend of vivid anecdotes about the wickedness of the boat people and their sinister manipulators (Chinese tongs this time) and attacks on the self-righteous attitude of the churches and the do-gooders.

By allegations of wickedness, manipulation and by attacks on churches and do-gooders, Minister Hand persuaded the Labor cabinet to adopt this bundle of legislation in 1992. This legislation made it law that asylum seekers—men, women and children—automatically be placed in detention and made liable for the cost of that detention. A few days ago, the member for Melbourne Ports said that the charging of the cost of detention was:

… one of the particularly odious policies of the previous conservative government …

Yes, Mr Deputy Speaker, it is an odious policy, but it has to be recognised that it was introduced by a Labor government. If we are going to try to make things right on a bipartisan basis, we cannot distort the facts. We have to confront the reality that both sides of parliament were involved individually and collectively. All of Hand’s harsh measures were at the time supported by both sides of the House and the succeeding coalition government maintained Labor’s measures and toughened them. The Pacific solution was established, Australian territories were excised from the migration zone and boat people who were found to be genuine refugees were given only temporary protection visas in contrast with the established history of Australia. All of these measures were supported by the coalition parties and Labor.

I can attest that these measures disturb some members on both sides. I think that does need to be said. But it also needs to be said, and it cannot and should not be denied, that we did go along—we all did. The votes in the parliament show this. Going along had its consequences. Vulnerable men, women and children were harmed by the legislation we voted for and by the practices and abuses that it spawned. But by 2005 the recognition was grown in both the parliament and the community at large that our treatment of people arriving by boat seeking sanctuary was cruel and contrary to Australia’s best values. The coalition government was persuaded that the harshness with which the people seeking sanctuary were treated should be ameliorated and the reforms were supported by the opposition. It was agreed that children were only to be held in immigration detention as a measure of last resort, that all families with children were to live in the community without security supervision, that the Immigration Ombudsman would independently review and report on all cases of long-term detainees and the permanent protection visa applications by temporary protection visa holders would be expedited and treated favourably—and they were.

These changes softened the mandatory detention regime. The treatment of refugees became more open and more compassionate. But what we achieved was a compromise. The people arguing for change knew this and we publicly said so. The fact is that the mandatory detention regime was left in place. The process of reform that was begun in 2005 was continued by the Labor government, with a series of measures that increased the humanity of our treatment of people seeking protection in Australia: the Pacific solution was dismantled; non-judicial review processes were improved; and temporary protection visas were abolished and all refugees were given permanent protection.

There has recently been some discussion of the impact of the abolition of protection temporary visas. I would like to make my own views crystal clear. There is no evidence that giving people who are found to be genuine refugees only temporary protection has deterred people from seeking sanctuary in Australia. The statistics are quite clear. In summary: in the five years prior to the introduction of the temporary protection visa there were 3,103 boat arrivals and in the five years after TPVs were introduced there were 11,433 arrivals. Does that show it is a deterrent? I remain unconvinced.

This is not to say that the introduction of TPVs had no impact; it did. Unlike holders of traditional permanent protection visas, holders of temporary protection visas were denied the ability to apply for family reunion. They were found to be legitimate refugees by our process but could not apply to have their families join them. The evidence is that, by preventing women from applying to join their husbands, they were more susceptible to resorting to people smugglers. DIMIA officers gave this evidence:

… because of the removal of the ability to seek family reunion for those holding temporary protection visas in 1999 … increasingly women and children arrived in Australia unlawfully …

The Secretary of the Department of Immigration and Citizenship recently concluded:

There is no evidence to suggest that the abolition of Temporary Protection Visas has resulted in increased unauthorised boat arrivals.

Rather, an examination of the TPV data indicates unauthorised boat arrivals increased following the introduction of TPVs.

But beyond this there is the record of the 353 people who tragically drowned when the boat designated ‘suspected illegal entry vessel X’ sank in October 2001 on its way to Australia. We will probably never fully know who was on SIEVX or their motives. The AFP has testified that it had a list that could not be disclosed for operational reasons and may not be accurate, but what has been established beyond doubt by journalists’ investigations—and this is on the public record—is that passengers on SIEVX were trying to reunite with their spouses.

Here are just some of the tragic cases. Ahmed al-Zalimi was living in Sydney on a TPV, which precluded him from applying for his family to join him. His wife and three daughters boarded SIEVX to be reunited with him. His three daughters drowned. Mohammed al-Ghazzi was living in Perth on a temporary protection visa. He lost a total of 15 family members on SIEVX, including his wife and three children. Hazam al-Rowaimi was living in Victoria on a temporary protection visa. He lost his wife, four children and mother. Haidar al-Zoohairi was living in Sydney on a temporary protection visa. He lost his wife, two children and brother-in-law. SIEVX was a tragedy of major proportions and its passengers attest to the unintended consequences of the temporary protection visa. I welcome the return to giving people who have been found to be genuine refugees permanent protection with the ability to have their family join them. There is no way that temporary protection visas—or any variation of them—should be reintroduced.

Nonetheless, I welcome this abolishing detention debt bill as a further step in closing this dark and distressing chapter in our history. This bill terminates the law that charges people seeking refuge in Australia the costs of their mandatory detention. The most obvious reason for repealing it is that it has totally failed to achieve its objective. The stated objective of charging people in detention was that asylum seekers should pay for the costs of being detained. I have searched assiduously to find a deterrent objective but unfortunately I have not been able to discover one—at least not on the public record.

Since the policy was initiated, only four per cent of the costs have been recovered. Over the last four years, $139 million or 81 per cent of charges have been waived or written off, mainly by the coalition government, because it was impractical or uneconomical to recover the charges. This year it is estimated that it will cost $709,000 to collect $573,000. There is simply no rational basis on which continuing the charges can be defended. This is not surprising. How could Gerry Hand and his department have ever believed that refugees could repay these charges? In some cases refugees owe hundreds of thousands of dollars when they are released. I say again that this policy has failed abysmally to achieve its stated objectives.

What the charges do achieve is making the lives of those subject to them more difficult and them more anxious. All former detainees, regardless of their status, receive a debt notification letter and invoice from the department prior to the consideration of a waiver or write-off. This contributes to the stress of former detainees and their families, who do not know if they will be liable for the debt. The overwhelming evidence—and it is overwhelming because there was no other evidence—provided to the Joint Standing Committee on Migration in its recent inquiry showed that the detention charges policy is:

… a barrier towards refugees fully integrating into the community, and continues to put significant pressure—both emotionally and financially—on those people who have already experienced so much trauma and uncertainty in their lives.

And:

The policy reinforces and prolongs emotions such as shame and guilt which are common effects of torture and trauma, and impedes the recovery of survivors.

This has been replicated in any number of other reports. At the end of last year, having considered all the evidence, the Joint Standing Committee on Migration was unanimous in its recommendation that the legislation be repealed. This bill effectively implements the recommendations while still charging people smugglers and illegal fishers.

In my view, there is another fundamental reason for ending the detention charges. It is because imposing these charges is part of the process of dehumanising people seeking refuge, part of the way they have been presented as being worse than the worst criminals. Do we charge drug dealers, serial paedophiles, sadistic murderers and multiple rapists the costs of their detention? No, we do not, whether or not those criminals are Australian citizens, noncitizens, illegal immigrants or Uncle Tom Cobley. The charging of people who arrive on our shores seeking protection for the costs of their detention is part of the way in which we have demonised them and presented them as being worse than criminals. And this image, I believe, underpins the abuses which have been discovered by inquiries into our mistreatment of people in detention. The fact is that throughout history people have fled their homes to escape persecution and violence and to seek safety where they can—across the border or across the ocean. Since 2005 we have moved to return humanity to our treatment of refugees. That process is not, in my view, complete.

At the present time Australia is confronted, as are many other countries, with an increase in people seeking refuge on our shores. The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees in his most recent report shows that the number of individual claims for asylum worldwide rose for the second year in a row by 28 per cent to 839,000. Developed countries like Australia do attract asylum seekers, but the fact is that 80 per cent of the world’s refugees are hosted by developing countries: Pakistan, Syria, Iran and Jordan. Amongst the developed countries, the US received 49,600 applications for asylum; France, 35,400; Canada, 34,800; the UK, 30,500; and Italy, 30,300. Australia received—and this is taking together boat arrivals and plane arrivals—4,500 asylum claims. That is 0.5 per cent of the total, and almost all of them did not arrive by boat.

The number of people seeking asylum has resulted in some calling for a return to harsh policies or for an end to the amelioration of the harshness of policies, which is still there. We have experienced the cruelty and harm that such policies have caused. We should not contemplate returning to them again, and I will not do so.

The members of this House are legislators in a 21st century Australia—a civil society, a precious society, a country under the rule of law which is generally just and equitable. We are also human beings, with good and bad instincts, and we are capable of making good and bad decisions. Our fellow citizens have put us into this place, temporarily, so that we can pursue decent public policy outcomes for our society and legislate decent law. No advanced society should allow on its statutes a law which so degrades and humiliates fellow human beings who are legitimately calling on our protection. We have an obligation to our own generation and to future generations to support this bill. I will support the bill and I commend it to the House.

Tony Zappia (Makin, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I have just listened to the member for Kooyong and I respect and appreciate his honesty, his understanding and his passion on this issue. But it was disappointing that the member for Murray, the opposition spokesperson on immigration, came into the chamber earlier on and continued to misrepresent the findings of the Joint Standing Committee on Migration’s second report, to distort the effect of this legislation and then, after having supported the joint standing committee’s recommendation to abolish detention debts, say that now she opposes this bill.

I am speaking in support of this bill, the Migration Amendment (Abolishing Detention Debt) Bill 2009. It implements a unanimous recommendation of the Joint Standing Committee on Migration’s first report, tabled in December 2008, entitled Immigration detention in Australia: a new beginning. In essence, this bill abolishes the current practice by the federal government of charging detainees with the daily cost of detention for the period held in detention, including any transport costs associated with that detention. The bill also extinguishes all outstanding debts, as at the time the bill comes into effect.

Importantly, the raising of detention debts for illegal fishermen and people smugglers will continue and will not be affected by this bill. The government maintains rigorous ongoing surveillance with respect to illegal fishing in Australian waters and the retention of detention debt liabilities for persons convicted of illegal foreign fishing or people-smuggling continues to be an additional, necessary deterrent.

The legislation is prospective and therefore there will be no refunds of any detention debts that have already been paid. No other comparable country, including the USA, the UK, New Zealand, Sweden, the Netherlands, Germany and Denmark, imposes detention charges on refugees held in detention. In Australia, whilst a daily charge currently of around $125 is raised, most of the money is never recovered. For example, over the two-year period 2006-07 to 2007-08 the total amount of detention debt raised was $54.3 million, of which only $1.8 million was recovered. Administrative costs of managing and recovery of the detention debt for the 2008-09 year are estimated to be around $709,000. Administration and recovery costs are almost equivalent to the amounts recovered. If recovery levels fall, then it may cost the Australian people more to administer the immigration detention debt process than what is actually recovered.

The joint standing committee’s recommendation was not the first time that the practice by government of raising a detention debt has been questioned, as the member for Petrie highlighted earlier. In 2006 the Senate Legal and Constitutional Affairs Committee recommended that the practice of raising detention debt be discontinued. Concerns about detention debt were also raised in 2008 by the Commonwealth Ombudsman.

On a technical matter—and it is a matter that goes to the heart of what the member for Murray was saying about why detention debts should remain in place—the intention here is very clearly to abolish the debt practice, not to write off or waive debts, as is the current practice. It is argued that we do not need to introduce this bill because the debts never get repaid anyway because we do not call on them to do so and we simply write them off or waive them, and it is argued that this is a practice that should continue. That is not the case, and it should not continue, because a debt that is written off can always be reinstated at a future time. Also, if debts were to be waived, a cumbersome process of assessing each and every individual debt would be required.

I understand that it has been a longstanding practice of the department not to pursue a detention debt incurred by a person who was subsequently granted a protection or humanitarian visa, and that such debts were written off. This bill makes it clear that such debts will not be raised in the first place and therefore provides absolute certainty to persons affected by the current provisions.

In the course of its inquiry the committee received numerous written submissions and met with former detainees and refugee advocates from around Australia. The question of detention debts was frequently raised because of the financial hardship faced by former detainees and because of the ongoing stress caused by having a debt hanging over their heads. If a person is provided with a protection visa or a humanitarian visa, it logically follows that the person met the criteria as a refugee and, therefore, long-term detention was inappropriate. To then charge that person for the unnecessary detention would also, logically, be inappropriate. To quote Julian Burnside QC, as the member for Petrie did earlier on, who appeared before the Joint Standing Committee on Migration:

… we are the only country in the world which charges innocent people the cost of incarcerating them.

As a signatory to and having ratified the 1951 United Nations Convention relating to the Status of Refugees, and its protocol, Australia agreed to provide protection to people seeking asylum in Australia. The charging of detention costs is clearly not in keeping with the intent of the 1951 convention. Whilst the Department of Immigration and Citizenship recognises the 1951 convention and, I understand, generally does not issue an invoice or pursue debts for people found to be genuine refugees, it is a complete waste of taxpayers’ money to administer a system, at substantial cost, for no benefit to taxpayers.

There are several other points I want to make about the effects of detention debts on people. Firstly, the debts add more stress and trauma to people who in most cases have already endured incredible suffering and hardship. Secondly, the burden of detention debt can become another barrier in a person’s ability to resettle in Australia. Most detainees face serious financial hardship on their release, with considerable difficulty in finding employment and housing. Thirdly, an outstanding detention debt can prevent a person from re-entering Australia or from sponsoring other family members who wish to migrate to Australia, thereby preventing a family reunion.

The treatment of asylum seekers by the Howard government was a sad chapter in Australia’s history and was condemned by people from all sides of politics, including from members within the Howard government ranks. People’s lives did not matter; what mattered to the coalition was the political opportunism arising from a politically divisive issue. The Rudd government, on coming to office, quickly moved to change government policy relating to the treatment of asylum seekers. On 29 July 2008, Senator Chris Evans, the Minister for Immigration and Citizenship, handed down a new policy on immigration detention—a policy that was widely welcomed throughout the community, including by coalition members of the Joint Standing Committee on Migration. I would just point out that on that committee were the member for Hughes; the member for Kooyong, whom we heard speak earlier on; the member for Murray; and Senator Alan Eggleston—all coalition members and all of whom supported not only the recommendations of that committee but also the policy that was announced by Senator Evans when it was being discussed at committee meetings. It is a policy that ensures that all unauthorised arrivals are detained until health, identity and security checks are established—again, contrary to what the member for Murray would have this House believe.

This measure in no way weakens or diminishes the Rudd government’s resolve to prosecute illegal foreign fishing and people-smuggling activities. Firstly, not pursuing detention debts from asylum seekers who are granted a protection or humanitarian visa was a practice of the previous coalition government. It did not just start; it was a practice of the previous coalition government. Secondly, the Rudd government has one of the toughest and most comprehensive border security regimes in the world. It is a regime based on mandatory detention of all unauthorised boat arrivals until health, identity and security checks have been carried out; extensive air, land and sea patrols, strengthened only last week by the introduction of the Migration Amendment (Protection of Identifying Information) Bill in this House, which will aid and assist law enforcement officers in tracking down people-smugglers around the world; prosecution of people-smugglers; and, strategic regional engagement with source and transit countries to address people-smuggling. Thirdly, the Rudd government continue to focus on the complete spectrum of this complex refugee issue, including stabilisation, prevention, deterrence, detection and interception.

This policy is about bringing some humanity to the way we treat asylum seekers who come to this country and who have, as I said earlier, inevitably been through some exceptionally traumatic conditions. It is a measure that was unanimously supported by the joint committee, it is a measure that was consistently supported by people who made representations to the committee and it is a measure that I know will be welcomed by those many people out there right now who have debts hanging over their heads and who are uncertain of their future because of them. I welcome and support this bill and I commend it to the House.

Wilson Tuckey (O'Connor, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The opposition opposes this change to the legislation, and in my view for very good reason. It is not a wise move to send signals to the people smugglers of the world that further encourage them to entice people into a very risky process that can only be described, in terms of Australia’s refugee policy, as queue jumping. Queue jumping is not to be encouraged. I will read from some of the advice I received on the costs that the member for Makin just so proudly mentioned. In fact, the government, through a variety of budget measures, is spending about $400 million on various policies designed to restrict the activity of these people. Whilst they might be effective, in the present period where the government will eventually borrow some $315 thousand million one would think that there would be a policy within the government to attempt to reduce expenditure if other measures were as effective.

The Howard government progressively added to the provisions of the Hawke government in trying to get effective measures that by themselves discouraged the process conducted by people smugglers. Bit by bit, as the people who arrived realised they would most probably be sent back or otherwise not allowed into mainland Australia, it became apparent that that particular inexpensive legislation seemed to have effect.

In dredging around for an excuse, as this government does on all occasions, the government has said, ‘Oh, but this is all to do with increased violence throughout the world.’ Well, the war in Afghanistan has been virtually perpetual, going back to the days of Rudyard Kipling, and the circumstances in Iraq have settled down substantially—I might refer a bit further to the refugees that we might encourage or assist in terms of the people of Iraq.

The reality is that building the detention centre on Christmas Island, something I as minister was somewhat involved with at the time, was a very expensive process. I believe the detention centre was built at a cost far in excess of reality. I will take the opportunity of reading the Auditor-General’s report on that matter as soon as I am free of the duties of this House.

The fact is that we need legislative measures and a clear policy that says, ‘If you come, don’t anticipate being allowed into Australia and don’t anticipate having access to the entire court procedures.’ These procedures have been abused by their predecessors but, while they lost them progressively, it did extend their stay in the country significantly, consequently making it more difficult for Australian residents. Australian citizens seeking the services of the court to resolve commercial disputes and other issues of that nature could not get in, so crowded were the lists of our relevant courts. I think at one stage the waiting list, if I could call it that, at the High Court numbered about 160.

Persons who had arrived in this place, and are to be released from debt by this legislation, somehow or other found the money to progressively go from, presumably, a magistrates court or similar judicial body through to the High Court as a device to allow them to continue to stay in Australia—probably some did have children who, having been born in this country, had some qualification to citizenship. The interesting thing about those applications to the High Court was that they were typically withdrawn on the announcement that they were to be called on. These are the people who are portrayed by the member for Makin and other speakers as being traumatised, greatly disadvantaged and too hard up to refund the Australian taxpayer for costs they incurred in their processing or other activities. Rumour has it that the price of a dodgy passport to Indonesia in Afghanistan is somewhere between $10,000 and $20,000. So it is okay; they can pay that, breaking the law in the process, and when they get here and put Australian taxpayers to considerable expense in very difficult times—when their government is borrowing comprehensively, at burden to their children—we should forego any opportunity to recover moneys allocated in these circumstances.

Let us add to that the comment of the member for Makin: ‘This is a hugely expensive process.’ Well, I am not sure why that should be. If it is, and if there is a massive bureaucracy sitting there waiting to collect these dues, find them other employment. Considering the very system that is associated with collecting this money, hire a debt collection agency on a fee-for-service basis. If there are moneys to be collected, you do not have to have some public servant sitting behind their desk waiting for an account to come across their desk. That is silly. There is no reason why there should be a cost associated with collection.

There has always been—to a point of generosity, I would criticise—a process of forgiving the debt, unless it has happened on many occasions. And, as I pointed out, we are not necessarily dealing with people of small means. We have no idea what their international connections are once they get here, but typically they are found to be in reasonably comfortable circumstances after a while.

I mentioned earlier that these people are queue jumpers. I hope my staff member is still not looking; I thought I had forgotten this paper and I rang her up and said, ‘Please bring it down’, but I have it. If she is watching, she will have some words to quietly say about me! I looked at the figure of $400 million of expenditures, all designed to prevent entrance by people of this nature. The government are out there saying, ‘Look at all the money we’re spending.’ They measure excellence by expenditure on every occasion. They are happy to spend three times what it cost anybody else to build a school building, to prove they are doing a good job in looking after schoolkids. It is excellence by expenditure—$400 million in a series of initiatives of all sorts of amounts. It is all here, all budgeted amounts: $41 million, $62 million, $15 million, $6.3 million, $54.3 million, $11.3 million, $2.3 million, $7.4 million, $34.9 million. There is $82.8 million for the Federal Police. They are probably worthy of it, but should we need to have them up there, because the word has got out that Australia has become a soft touch? When we were a tough nut, we did not need them. The people were not coming; they were not risking their lives—the problem had ceased. And the minute—surprise, surprise—you relax those very tough laws, what has happened this week? Another 54 are sitting off Rowley Shoals. There are roughly 50 of these people a week.

We read separately—and I did not exactly find it in these documents—of additional appropriations to run the detention centre out at Christmas Island. We read of the local people complaining that they can no longer get fresh vegetables because they have all gone to the detention centre—and why? Why did it change after the legislation was softened? You do not have to have the intellect of Albert Einstein to work that out. You change the law, and then you go out and spend $400 million to try and address the consequence. In my mind that, in these very difficult times, is something that is unwise. To go further by making it public that you can put the Australian taxpayer to all the cost you desire and not have to pay it back is not fair to other people who are looking each week at their budget. A member of that family may have lost their job or be unable to get one, as young people are now, and this parliament is proposing another measure to add to that burden.

These people are queue jumpers. I say they are queue jumpers because every year the Australian people, through the activities of this parliament, invite 13,000 refugees to Australia. These refugees are people who have left their homeland, have been assessed by the United Nations as being genuine refugees and have moved to that locality which is presumed to be the closest to where they can be safe. Having been assessed by the United Nations they go on the list and offers are made by, typically, Western countries around the world, and on a per capita basis Australia is one of the most generous. I think more people per capita of their population are allowed into Canada, and Australia is next. So there is no shortage of compassion. Nobody in this debate from this side is saying: cut that quota. I have a view that we might be more specific from whence we get these people. Without implying a religious inference, I have had representations in my own electorate from an Iraqi Christian. The reality is that this Iraqi Christian, who is a surgeon and giving an extremely good service in part of my electorate where surgeons are pretty hard to find, pointed out to me that the Iraqi Christian community have always been the educated sector. Apparently, Saddam Hussein recognised this to such a point that woe betide you if, as a person of Muslim faith, you attacked these people on the grounds of their Christianity. He knew they were the people who were running his country for him—they were the engineers, they were the surgeons and they were delivering those services, whilst the Muslim community went to university to come out with a degree in reading the Koran. That is not suitable for operating on people, it does not teach you how to build roads and it does not teach you how to build buildings or undertake engineering and other such activities. During the troubles in Iraq those people have been driven as refugees to Syria and other destinations because, during the period when there was virtually no control and one religious group was taking it out on another, the Christians got it worst. I do not think many of them want to go back.

I would like to think that the list of the 13,000 included more of those people, because on arrival they will not incur debts; they will be welcomed and employed forthwith. That does not apply to many of the people whose refugee status is properly recognised and who come through the appropriate channels. The personal circumstances of a valuable refugee in their country of persecution are no different to those of one who comes here. Tragically, there was a family whose child died virtually as they got off the plane, and criticism was levelled at local assistance people because the family concerned—and they were photographed in a brand-new home unit—did not know English and had never used a telephone in their lives, and consequently could not help themselves when their child was very ill. The child probably should not have travelled in the first place. There is the comparison. There are people with refugee status sitting in countries surrounding Iraq who are of Christian faith and are very welcome in this community as far as I am concerned because they would bring professional qualifications and experience with them. This, however, is a side issue.

In the last couple of minutes that I have, I intend to talk again to the fact that this government—by its own admission, in figures that I now have a copy of—is spending $400 million over four years. Some of it is over two years; nearly $100 million is to be spent over two years. Why? Because now the government has to put up all these barricades; Australia has to have a strong body of Federal Police in Indonesia running around trying to catch the people smugglers. The people smugglers gave up on Australia in the latter years of the Howard government. Why? Because of administrative and legislative procedures. It did not cost us much to run that $400 million detention centre at Christmas Island, because we had no-one to put in it. They did not come. Now it must be close to full. What is the message here? Some of them probably have detection beacons on board their boats so that it takes less time for our naval and customs authorities to find them. One of the boats that had the benefit of the sophistication of a GPS went straight to Christmas Island. It turned up and was tied up to the jetty and they said, ‘We’re here; arrest us!’ Why did they do this? Because they knew that within three or four weeks they would be on the Australian mainland at a cost to the Australian people. I do not know how much money they have stashed away somewhere else in the world, but they are typically economic refugees. They are not necessarily those who are suffering; they are queue jumpers.

All this legislation does is open the door a little wider. It can be argued that very few people paid it and therefore it is not a reason to keep it. We conceded after the election, because of promises made in the election campaign, that the government would relax some of the conditions. That has been done. Instead of people being told, ‘Stay out there until we repatriate you to your own country’—if we can find out where that is—people now know that the sooner they get picked up by the Navy or Customs, the better it is for them. I hope they are safer than in the vessels.

I add that we had a tragedy concerning a boat out there. The Federal Police conducted an inquiry into Treasury in a matter of days but are unable to tell us who lit the fire on that boat. Of course, the naval personnel and others know who did it and how it occurred. It reminds me of a colleague who said, ‘If 14-year-old kids can find a drug dealer, why can’t the police?’ The police are pretty quick doing the Rudd government’s bidding, but they have yet to resolve the circumstances surrounding the fire on that boat. (Time expired)

Melissa Parke (Fremantle, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise to speak in support of the Migration Amendment (Abolishing Detention Debt) Bill 2009, which is the important first legislative step in the government’s much needed reform of immigration detention policy. It is another example of this government meeting its election commitments and of the positive reform agenda of the Rudd Labor government.

As the member for Fremantle, an electorate which is proof on both a historical and a contemporary basis of the contribution that migrants have made and are making to Australia, I can say that the immigration reforms being undertaken by this government represent one of its most welcomed policy initiatives. This government has, as part of its mission statement and as part of its mandate, the creation of a fairer, more humane and effective system of immigration assessment, processing and management, including immigration detention when such detention is necessary. I commend the Minister for Immigration and Citizenship for his work in advancing this important reform agenda.

To put it simply, this bill does away with what has proved to be the pointless, absurd and cruel practice of billing immigration detainees for the cost of their detention. Not only does it cease the practice of generating such liabilities but it extinguishes all existing liabilities under the detention debt regime. In doing so, it is to some degree only making real, in legislative and budgetary terms, what was already plain—the fact that more than 95 per cent of the bizarre notional debt being carried on the books from year to year as notional government revenue is irrecoverable.

While some of the provisions being repealed by this bill date back to amendments made to the Migration Act 1992—and I am prepared to say that they were ill-conceived at that time—the Kafkaesque potential of the provisions really only became manifest in combination with the former government’s appalling detention policies. Some of those early provisions were designed with the aim of recovering costs from illegal foreign fishers and from people smugglers. Indeed, that aspect of the Migration Act’s operation is being retained. Those who seek to gain financial benefit from illegal fishing and from the illegal people smuggling trade will continue to be subject to penalties and to liability for the related detention and transport costs. It is, and has been, entirely ludicrous to impose a liability on refugees and asylum seekers, especially when their detention, under the administration of the former government, has been so pernicious and, in many cases, wholly unnecessary.

Contrary to the assertions of the member for O’Connor just now, refugees are people who are perfectly entitled under the UN refugee convention, to which Australia is a party, to seek asylum in Australia and they should not be punished for the manner in which they arrive in Australia. This has been a case of asking the victims of the Howard government’s immigration detention nightmare to pay for their own punishment. Why was it done? It was done as a part of the political positioning of the Howard government on the issue of so-called ‘border control’; as part of the appeal to xenophobia; and as one of several high-pitched tunes to be played on the dog whistle, along with such Howard government favourites as ‘children overboard’, ‘the Pacific solution’ and ‘the Haneef affair’. But policy that produces absurd and perverse outcomes as a matter of its ordinary operation is bad policy.

So when you sight a debt notice from the Department of Immigration and Multicultural and Indigenous Affairs, as it then was, addressed to a detainee who has been behind razor wire in the desert for four or five years, informing them that with their newly, belatedly, determined status as a legitimate visa holder comes a debt of more than $100,000—which they are welcome to repay in monthly instalments of some $300 for the next 30-odd years—you know that you have gone through the looking glass into a world of surreal, distorted, bureaucratic dysfunction. That is a world we are seeking to leave behind.

Those opposite who speak against this bill and against these amendments to the Migration Act—and I appreciate that there are some on the opposite side who are supportive of the bill, including the member for Kooyong, who earlier spoke so passionately and compassionately—should think carefully about what they are really arguing to retain. They are arguing for a cost-recovery program that levies costs against people who have been detained against their will—detained unnecessarily in many cases, and for too long, and on numerous occasions detained quite improperly, and detained in appalling conditions, with appalling results—and which fails to recover enough money to cover much more than the cost of the cost-recovery program itself. The Joint Standing Committee on Migration has noted that less than 2.5 per cent of the detention debt invoiced since 2004-05 has been recovered. In fact, in its report of December 2008, the committee noted that:

The practice of applying detention charges would not appear to provide any substantial revenue or contribute in any way to offsetting the costs of the detention policy. Further, it is likely that the administrative costs outweigh or are approximately equal to debts recovered.

It is of course important to recognise—and, for those who argue against the bill, to consider—in this debate that no other country with immigration detention facilities holds people liable for their detention costs. For all the reasons I have mentioned, this government is rightly committed to returning Australia to a fairer, more humane, and more effective set of immigration policy settings. In doing so, it meets the recommendation made by the Joint Standing Committee on Migration in its report, which calls on the Australian government to repeal the liability of immigration detention costs as a matter of priority because of the punitive nature of the policy, because of the severe mental and emotional burden caused by the levelling of the debt and because the policy has in no way met the object of recovering funds for government. It follows the report, in 2006, of the Senate Legal and Constitutional Affairs Committee, where it noted that:

The evidence clearly indicates that the imposition of detention costs is an extremely harsh policy and one that is likely to cause significant hardship to a large number of people. The imposition of a blanket policy without regard to individual circumstances is inherently unreasonable and may be so punitive in some cases as to effectively amount to a fine. The committee agrees that it is a serious injustice to charge people for the cost of detention.

But let me return to the Joint Standing Committee on Migration’s report and restate the three elements it identified as being the core rationale for amending the relevant provision of the Migration Act: first, that the current system of attributing a debt to immigration detainees is punitive in nature—that it is a punishment, rather than a genuine attempt, let alone a morally justifiable attempt, to recover costs; second, that the levelling of a debt on asylum seekers places an unconscionable mental and emotional burden on people who have already suffered, are already vulnerable and already struggle to participate in economic life; and, third, the fact that the practice of applying detention charges has not in fact offset the costs of detention.

I think it is fair to observe that this government’s emphasis, in its current reform of immigration policy, on appropriate risk management in combination with faster, more efficient status processing will ultimately deliver much greater cost savings than the misguided, ineffective and cruel system of applying detention charges to those who came legitimately to this country seeking refuge and who, in the large majority of cases, are ultimately found to have a legitimate basis for staying in Australia.

Putting the morality and the fiscal inefficacy of the detention debt provisions aside, this was also terrible policy in terms of the most important migration objective—that is, to give legitimate humanitarian refugees, as new Australians, the best chance of making a smooth and rapid transition to a healthy, happy and productive life in this country. It has long been recognised by many in the refugee support and advocacy community that there should be more funding for programs that assist migrants and refugees to make that transition. On that point, I was glad to announce last month that the Fremantle Multicultural Centre, which has made an enormous contribution to diversity, tolerance and social justice in the wider Fremantle community, would receive $267,000 as part of the government’s Settlement Grants Program, with an emphasis on assisting young refugees and migrants.

I want to conclude by quoting from the submission that the Edmund Rice Centre made to the immigration inquiry undertaken by the Joint Standing Committee on Migration. That submission stated that asylum seekers:

… should not be burdened with debts: debts that they have little chance of paying without undergoing further severe hardship, debts which deny them access to other rights of participation and freedom of movement, debts which deny them any possibility of reuniting with their families.

I could not agree more. The detention debt regime, as part of the Howard government’s harsh and ineffective immigration policy, was the very antithesis of the fair go that Australia holds as one of its foundation principles. Today we take a step back into the light.

I commend the bill to the House.

Debate interrupted.