Ms Julie Bishop (Curtin, Liberal Party, Deputy Leader of the Opposition) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

My question is to the Prime Minister. I refer the Prime Minister to comments reported today from the detainees at the Tanjung Pinang detention centre:

We have been here seven months, and some of the boys have only now been registered … and half of the people have not been interviewed, but in less than one week (the Oceanic Viking Sri Lankans) have been interviewed and registration is going on.

Does the Prime Minister continue to deny that the guarantee to the Oceanic Viking asylum seekers that they will be resettled within four to 12 weeks is not special treatment?

Kevin Rudd (Griffith, Australian Labor Party, Prime Minister) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I welcome that question again from the member for Curtin. I think today we are coming sort of from the left and maybe a bit from the right as well. On the question about processing times for those in Indonesia, first of all by way of context I say to the member for Curtin, the Deputy Leader of the Opposition, that she may be unaware of the fact that in times past—including when the good old member for Berowra up there was in the chair—there was of course quite considerable processing of Indonesian-based refugees by Australia. There was quite a lot of it—several hundred in fact; 400, 500 or thereabouts—and quite a number by other countries. Guess what? The individual circumstances concerning each of those individual processing arrangements differed according to the circumstances.

What are the sets of conditions which pertain here? First, whether a person has already been through UNHCR processing, which of course means that the a lot of the early work has been done; second, if they have not then of course there are a whole lot of primary documents to be checked; and third, if it is established that they are not bona fide refugees then they are sent back home. These are the three categories which we are dealing with here, as were those opposite when they were in office dealing with the 400 to 500 that were settled in earlier years under the UNHCR Australia reprocessing arrangements from detention centres in Indonesia. Each of these varies according to the circumstances. That is the approach we have applied here. A similar approach has been applied in the past and we will deal with all challenges as they present themselves to us in the future as well.