Michael Keenan (Stirling, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Justice and Customs) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The first 2½ years of the Rudd Labor government have been littered with failures. The government has failed to deliver on its promises in health, in the environment and in the economy, and its promises that were made about reducing the costs of living. Many of the areas that the Rudd Labor government said it would address, the government has never lived up to. It has been a government of all talk and no action, whether it is about specific promises that have not been met, such as the timetable for a referendum on health, or whether it is general promises about the philosophy which Labor would use to govern, such as Kevin Rudd’s claim to be an economic conservative. Kevin Rudd’s Labor government is failing to deliver and the Australian people are starting to wake up to this.

But the specific failure I want to address tonight is the failure to protect our borders. This is one of the worst failures of the Rudd Labor government, because it was not just a matter of making promises that were not kept. When they came to government they inherited basically a solved problem. They took that solution and they managed to find themselves a problem by making changes that have led to an influx of illegal boat arrivals and have led to the people smugglers who had been put out of business going back into business. Almost at the rate of one a day now we see a constant influx of unlawful arrivals, and that reminds the whole country that the Rudd Labor government has got this policy area dreadfully wrong.

As the Leader of the Opposition has rightly pointed out, Kevin Rudd wanted to make himself a hero to the latte-drinking Left and he weakened Australia’s border protection policies. We see the consequences of that change in policy in the arrival of every illegal entry vessel that we constantly see reported in the media. We see Labor’s failure in the six boats that have arrived in the past nine days. Labor, when faced with this problem, try to spin their way out of it, as they always do. They put out media releases at odd times about new arrivals. They provide less and less information to the Australian public about illegal arrivals. They refuse to tell us who was on the boats. They refuse to tell us where they were intercepted. They refuse to tell us the circumstances in which the interceptions took place and they continually claim that this problem has nothing to do with them, that it is not a result of the pull factors that they created when they changed our policy. They continually claim that it is all the result of the push factors based on the international situation.

I want to examine this excuse for what it really is—just another in the long line of excuses that this government drums up to account for its continual policy failures. I want this House to be very clear: this government is failing to protect our borders because of the changes that it made to our immigration laws which have had the effect of outsourcing Australia’s generous humanitarian immigration program to predators within the people-smuggling industries. The government is exposing the vulnerable victims of this insidious trade to the great danger of making dangerous journeys across the ocean in unseaworthy boats. These policy failures have resulted in unnecessary stresses and hazards on the hardworking men and women of our defence forces. It results in stresses and strains on the Australian Federal Police and on our Customs officers as they do their job and try to stop this insidious illegal trade.

This government has ultimately failed, because the result of its policies is to relegate further back in the queue thousands of deserving people who are waiting to have their claims for asylum processed legally. These are the tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands of people who are in camps in parts of Africa and South-East Asia, people who might want to get into Australia but whose place is taken by people who have the capacity to pay people smugglers to smuggle them into Australia, taking the place of somebody who does not have the wherewithal to do that.

It is important that we look back at this issue and have a look at the coalition’s record on border protection, because it is only when we look through that historical comparison that we see how badly Labor has mismanaged this problem. In the lead-up to the years 2001 and 2002 there were a significant number of boat arrivals as part of an increasingly sophisticated people-smuggling trade that linked back to organised criminal syndicates. The Howard government were faced with this problem of the influx of illegal arrivals, of this increase in the people-smuggling trade, and showed resolve to solve the issue. They were prepared to take tough decisions and to actually take some responsibility for stopping these boats from coming. The Howard government took action in response and introduced a series of measures that collectively sent a strong message to people smugglers that Australia was closed for business and we refused to be a soft touch for their traffic in human misery. The former coalition government’s policies worked to actually deter illegal immigration by legislating for offshore processing, maintaining mandatory detention and excising from our migration zone those territories off our coast that had become magnets for those in the people-smuggling industry.

If you want to make a judgment about whether or not this policy worked, you only need to have a look at the comparative statistics of boat arrivals from that period up to the present day. People will recall that 2002 was a year of significant international turmoil. It was just after the attacks of 9-11 and just after the invasion of Afghanistan. In 2002-03 there was not one boat arrival to Australia—not one. In 2003-04 there were three boat arrivals. In 2004-05 there were again no boat arrivals. In 2005-06 there were eight boat arrivals. In 2006-07 there were four boat arrivals, and in 2007-08, up to the point when Kevin Rudd and Labor changed the coalition’s border protection policies, there were just three boats. So for the last six years of the Howard government there were only 18 boats in total, which is the equivalent of three a year. So there were three boats a year over the six years after the Howard government showed resolve and took the action that was required to address this problem of people smuggling. We saw more than that within the first two months of this year alone. This is Labor’s incredible failure to protect our borders in comparison to the record of the previous government.

Labor changed our laws in August 2008, but they did not understand that there would be consequences. It is a fact that since the Labor government weakened Australia’s robust border protection system we have had 92 illegal boats arrive, carrying over 4,100 people. So, if we look at the record of the previous six years of strong border protection under the coalition government, we see that 18 boats arrived—three a year. Since that system was weakened, 92 boats have arrived, carrying 4,100 people. This year alone—and we are only 10 weeks into this year—we have attracted 24 illegal boats, carrying over 1,100 arrivals. The worst thing about this problem is that it is increasing. It is snowballing. Last week we witnessed chaos with five boats arriving in just six days, which is almost an average of one boat per day. And, if I can just remind the House again, this contrasts with the final six years of the Howard government, when we had only 18 boats arrive.

It is worthwhile looking at the way the then shadow minister for immigration, who is now the Deputy Prime Minister, approached that problem during those times when we had an average of three boats arriving per year. If we go back and look at her policy responses to those boats, it really makes you wonder how she would judge Labor’s policy in comparison. In 2003, she issued a press release as shadow minister for immigration—this is from Julia Gillard—with the headline proclaiming, ‘Another boat on the way, another policy failure’. That was in 2003, when only three boats arrived in total. So, if another boat is a policy failure, as the then shadow minister would have had us believe, then what does she make of Labor’s 92 policy failures since they weakened our border protection laws in 2008? Let us look at some later press releases she put out, because it is instructive of how she saw the problem then. She put out a press release in 2003, saying, in response to a boat arrival, ‘this boat arrival proves that this government has no solution to the problem.’ Again, if one boat arrival—or an average of three boat arrivals per year—proves that the government has no response to the problem, what solutions does she propose to the 92 illegal arrivals that have occurred on the Rudd government’s watch?

We are very concerned that, as this problem snowballs, the government is actually denying resources to the agencies that are tasked with dealing with this problem. Labor broke an election commitment that they made prior to coming to office about the budget of the Australian Customs Service, and they ultimately cut over $58 million from the Australian Customs and Border Protection Service. I am not sure how they can expect Customs, which is one of the front-line agencies dealing with their influx of illegal arrivals, to absorb this budget cut and not have it affect their significant responsibilities for both border protection and for protecting our borders from other threats, such as illicit drugs.

Customs officers, along with the AFP and Defence Force officers, are on the front line in protecting us from these threats. The Rudd Labor government took this for granted when they recklessly slashed funds from our premier border protection agency. The Customs annual report has also indicated that staffing levels within Customs have dropped during the tenure of the Rudd Labor government. In 2009-2010, there were 5,500 employees, and this was a drop of 179 employees from the total in 2008-2009. I am not sure how the government expects the Customs and Border Protection Service to deal with the massive influx of new arrivals while absorbing this slashing of its budget and still expects it to fulfil the full gamut of its responsibilities.

The same goes for the bill we are discussing here today. The government is increasing the responsibilities of Australia’s domestic security agency to deal with border protection, but they are doing so without providing any extra resources to that agency. It makes you wonder if this is effectively a cut of the agency’s other responsibilities, because they would need to reallocate resources from what they do at the moment to deal with the new responsibilities that they have been given to address border protection.

So, whilst we support the measures contained in this bill, we are concerned about the resourcing of ASIO and we are also concerned that this bill is too little, too late. We are already dealing with a tsunami of new arrivals, and, quite frankly, the government should have done far more in the past to address these issues. We find that illegal boat arrivals are out of control and that the government refuses to address the primary issue, which is that their policies have increased the pull factors which have allowed the people smugglers to go back into business, selling Australia to their clients as a soft touch once again on border protection. The government needs to understand that they can change the responsibilities of ASIO, but the real problem, and the problem they are in denial about, is the magnetic impact of their own failed border protection policies. This is what they must address. These are the hard decisions that they are required to take, but we see them blaming everybody except themselves for this problem of their own making.

We saw a good example of this last week, during the visit of the Indonesian President to Australia. The visit was very well received by the government and the opposition. In true style there was a big announcement about Indonesia taking action to outlaw people smuggling. This announcement was characterised by Greg Sheridan in the Australian, in an article on 11 March 2010, titled, ‘Feel-good show lacked depth’. I will quote some of this, because it is a good example of how spin operates within this government:

Despite the announcement of a new agreed framework on people-smuggling, there is much less to this than meets the eye … Indonesian Foreign Minister Marty Natalegawa said turning back the boats as they came to Australia was not acceptable to Indonesia … It’s interesting, however, that it was Rudd himself who, at the last election, promised to turn back the boats. It’s also instructive that the Indonesians did allow the Howard government to turn back some boats, and this had a critical effect in ruining the credibility of the people-smugglers with their customers.

Mr Sheridan further pointed out:

When the Indonesians have talked about the new framework, they’ve emphasised reducing the time that people spend waiting in Indonesia. This can only mean quicker resettlement to countries such as Australia. And that means a certain increase in people travelling illegally to claim bogus asylum in Australia.

The illegal boat numbers will keep increasing while the Rudd government keeps its basic equation intact. The government in effect has decided that virtually everyone who gets to Christmas Island gets permanent residence in Australia. The boats won’t stop while that is the case.

This is an eloquent summary of Labor’s policy failure within this area. It follows on from what we saw earlier this year with the saga of the Oceanic Viking. It is worthwhile rehashing that in the parliament today while we are discussing the Anti-People Smuggling and Other Measures Bill. This incident was one of the most unbelievable stumbles in the history of protecting Australia’s borders. We had a federal government that actually breached Australia’s own national security by allowing a group of Sri Lankan asylum seekers onto Australian soil, despite them being deemed a risk by our domestic security agency before they were actually brought from Indonesia to Australia. These five Sri Lankans are currently being detained on Christmas Island as the Labor government deliberates over what to do with them. It is difficult to see why these people were actually brought from Indonesia to Australia to begin with. It is impossible to understand why the government would charter a plane and fly it to Indonesia to bring down people who our domestic security agency has deemed to be security risks. It flies in the face of the repeated assurances the Prime Minister gave in this place and outside that no special deal was done or was offered to the 78 Sri Lankans aboard the Oceanic Viking.

Questions still need to be asked about the government’s handling of the Oceanic Viking and also their handling of these people who have been deemed a security threat by ASIO. Why did they charter this plane to bring them to Australia, how do they plan to deal with them now they are in Australia, and how do they realistically expect that a third country will resettle people that Australia has deemed a security risk? The reality is that these people face a period of prolonged detention on Christmas Island, and it is impossible to understand why the Australian government made this our problem in the first place when these people were actually in Indonesia. You can only understand it within the context of the fact that the Australian government did a special deal to resettle the asylum seekers on the Oceanic Viking despite its persistent denial that this was done. Of course, along the way with this Oceanic Viking deal we strained what is a very significant relationship to Australia, and that is the relationship with the Indonesian government. Clearly, despite the announcements of last week, the Indonesian government is less enthusiastic about cooperating with the Australian government to solve this problem of people smuggling. They are certainly not cooperating to the same extent that they did under the previous Howard government.

The purpose of this bill is to amend Australia’s anti-people-smuggling legislative framework. I will briefly touch on the key issues that are contained within the bill. In relation to the Criminal Code, this bill creates a new offence of supporting the offence of people smuggling. It targets people who organise, finance and provide other material and support to people-smuggling ventures entering foreign countries, whether or not via Australia. The penalty for this offence is imprisonment for a maximum of 10 years, or a fine of $110,000, or both.

In relation to the Migration Act, this bill creates two new people-smuggling related offences within the Migration Act—firstly, supporting the offence of people smuggling and, secondly, the aggravated offence of people smuggling involving such things as exploitation or danger of death or serious harm. This will carry a penalty of imprisonment for a maximum of 20 years, or a fine of $220,000, or both.

In relation to the Surveillance Devices Act, this bill will extend emergency authorisation for the use of a surveillance device to investigations into the aggravated offence of people smuggling. Currently the ability to obtain emergency authorisation for a surveillance device does not extended to offences under the Migration Act.

In relation to the Telecommunications (Interception and Access) Act, this bill will simplify the criteria to be satisfied by agencies when applying for telecommunications interception warrants for offences which are contained within the people-smuggling offences of the Migration Act. Under these amendments, agencies will no longer have to establish that the offence involved two or more offenders and substantial planning and organisation, as well as the use of sophisticated methods and techniques and so on.

In relation to the ASIO Act, this bill will amend the definition of the term ‘security’ in the ASIO Act to officially give the agency statutory power to obtain and evaluate intelligence relevant to the protection of Australia’s territorial border integrity from serious threats. Such intelligence can then be communicated to agencies such as the Australian Customs and Border Protection Service or other law enforcement agencies.

Schedule 2 of this bill makes amendments to the ASIO Act. As I have touched on, schedule 2 amends the ASIO Act to enable ASIO to play a greater role in support of government efforts to address serious threats to Australia’s territorial and border protection such as people smuggling. The bill’s explanatory memorandum notes that ASIO’s functions are set out in section 17 of the ASIO Act. These functions include obtaining, correlating and evaluating intelligence relevant to security and communicating any such intelligence for purposes relevant to security.

The existing definition of ‘security’ in section 4 of the ASIO Act does not specifically encompass border security issues. This means that ASIO currently has limited capacity to carry out its intelligence functions under section 17 in relation to threats to Australia’s territorial and border integrity such as people smuggling. Schedule 2 of the bill will amend the definition of ‘security’ in section 4 to include ‘the protection of Australia’s territorial and border integrity from serious threats’.

As recently noted by ASIO’s Director-General of Security, despite not having an express power under the ASIO Act to collect intelligence on people smuggling, the agency does appear to have the ability to pass on information relating to people smuggling to other agencies. On 8 February this year, the Director-General said, in response to questioning at the additional estimates hearing of the Senate Legal and Constitutional Affairs Legislation Committee:

ASIO’s activities must be directed towards those items which are listed under section 4 of the act, which are called the heads of security. Border protection and people smuggling is not one of those, so we do not collect intelligence at home or overseas in operations specifically directed against people smuggling.

From time to time, and as a result of our other inquiries on matters under our heads of security, we come across information that may be relevant to people smuggling, and under the act we are able to provide that to the relevant authorities.

As I have outlined, the coalition support the measures contained in this bill, although they do not address the issues that are creating the problem in the first place. We also are concerned that ASIO, along with the other agencies that are tasked with protecting Australia’s borders—namely the Australian Customs and Border Protection Service, the Australian Federal Police and other key agencies such as Immigration—need to be adequately funded and resourced in order to perform their increasingly difficult task.

Because of the influx of illegal arrivals, both the Australian Customs and Border Protection Service and the Department of Immigration and Citizenship have needed to apply to the government for additional money. Regardless of the fact that this tsunami of new arrivals is resulting in strain to the resourcing of these departments, this bill contains no extra funding for ASIO and, indeed, the bill’s explanatory memorandum states that this bill has no financial impact on the government’s revenue. This really raises questions about how ASIO should be required to sustain its current responsibilities with the proposed additional responsibilities that are contained within this bill. Clearly ASIO are going to be required to divert resources from their existing responsibilities to deal with the extra intelligence functions that they have been asked to adopt within this bill. We are deeply concerned about the effect that it might have on Australia’s domestic security when we have the resources of our domestic security agencies stretched so thinly. The Rudd Labor government is asking these agencies to do more with less, and we have seen this trend repeated with border protection and also with the AFP. Clearly there is a limit to the amount of extra responsibilities that can be heaped on agencies without their existing functions suffering.

You can task ASIO with new powers to deal with people smuggling, and you can continue to deflect blame for the increased number of illegal arrivals that we are seeing in Australia, but clearly what has happened has been a result of the changes that Kevin Rudd and the Labor government made to Australia’s border protection regime in August 2008. That is at the heart of this problem. It does not matter what resourcing you give to agencies. It does not matter that you ask ASIO to increase its intelligence-gathering capabilities to deal with people smuggling; until you address the issue of the weakening of Australia’s border protection laws, until you stop Christmas Island being a magnet for people smugglers, until you send the message that Australia is no longer a soft target for people engaged in people smuggling, then we will continue to see illegal arrivals in Australia. We will continue to see, as we have seen this year, this problem starting to snowball out of control. We have people arriving at such a rate that the facilities at the Christmas Island detention centre are now at bursting point. People are being housed in tents. The facility was originally built, under the Howard government, to house 800 detainees. It is now bursting at the seams and the government has no answers to stop the flow of boats from arriving.

People smuggling is an organised criminal activity and it endangers people’s lives. The government needs to prevent it by taking a tough and hardline stand. This will not necessarily please everybody in the Australian community, but we have plenty of evidence to suggest that it is the approach that will actually work to stop this problem. The government’s border protection policies are neither tough nor hardline. They try to be all things to all people. Kevin Rudd tried to impress the Left of his own party and other parts of the Australian community by going weak on our borders, and he did not expect that there would be consequences for doing so. This led, rightly, to the perception that Australia has softened its stance, which has led to the people smugglers going back into business, and this has led to 92 unauthorised boat arrivals with over 4,100 people on them. You cannot be all things to all people when it comes to border protection. You need to send a clear signal and you need to show some resolve within this area that Australia is no longer open for business. The Labor Party will never do that. It does not matter what resourcing they give to our agencies to deal with these policies; unless they address their own failures we will continue to see this influx of illegal arrivals.

Mike Kelly (Eden-Monaro, Australian Labor Party, Parliamentary Secretary for Defence Support) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The purpose of the Anti-People Smuggling and Other Measures Bill 2010 is to strengthen the Commonwealth’s existing anti-people-smuggling framework. People smuggling is a serious crime and should be treated as such. Those who engage in the practice of people smuggling and its associated networks deliberately flout Australia’s migration laws. This in itself is a serious offence. What is perhaps more confronting about the actions of people smugglers is their complete disregard for the value of human life. People smugglers charge their victims, usually potential asylum seekers, inordinate amounts of money to facilitate their passage, with the promise of enabling an unauthorised entry into Australia. People smugglers will often target the most vulnerable and desperate of asylum seekers, making promises they cannot keep and placing their victims in very dangerous situations.

This bill serves, therefore, to provide a stronger deterrence to people smugglers by strengthening the powers that the Commonwealth currently has to prosecute and take action against them. The bill establishes new offences for providing support for people-smuggling and harmonises people-smuggling offences between the Migration Act and the Criminal Code. These changes will ensure that people-smuggling is appropriately criminalised in Australian law, with consequent tough penalties for this crime. The bill provides Australian government agencies with the capacity and powers to investigate and disrupt people-smuggling networks. These changes will allow authorities to target those who organise and finance people-smuggling syndicates, which is an important step towards eradicating these activities.

These measures demonstrate the Rudd Labor government’s commitment to ensuring that people smugglers, their associated networks and subsequent actions are dealt with and prosecuted accordingly. They demonstrate the Australian government’s hard stance on this issue. It is important to recognise the effort and the strong stance this government has invested in migration and the orderly entrance of people to our shores. It is a fair stance and aims not only to protect Australian citizens and ensure our biosecurity but also to protect those susceptible to exploitation by people smugglers. It is important to remember those facts as we reflect on bills such as this in the face of the constant disingenuous and scaremongering criticism levelled at the government by the opposition.

The opposition is currently addicted to the rhetoric of deception, the rhetoric of the so-called soft touch. Mr Abbott is fond of pointing the finger at the government and insisting that it is our fair but strong policies that are somehow making Australia a soft touch for people smugglers. Bills such as this give the lie to that allegation. This bill is one of the many reforms that the Rudd Labor government have made to Australia’s migration system—reforms which have made the system fairer but still maintained a hardline approach to illegal activities. The number of people seeking asylum around the world is rising. The UNHCR collect statistics on numbers of what they term ‘persons of concern’. This category covers refugees, asylum seekers and internally displaced persons. Although the country of origin and situation may change, numbers of persons of concern continue to rise. Slight increases in numbers of unauthorised boat arrivals can be put down to increased push factors. In 2009 a regional UNHCR representative, Richard Towle, stated that further destabilisation of countries such as Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iraq and Sri Lanka has led to more people seeking asylum in our region, regardless of national border protection policies or changes to migration legislation. As such, it is this government’s responsibility to effectively manage this challenge.

I find it difficult to understand the hypocrisy of the opposition on many issues but on this one especially. This is the mob who floundered with migration policy throughout the 12 years of the Howard government, whose solution to increased arrivals of asylum seekers was to lock them, men, women and, most astonishingly, children, in high-security complexes in isolated parts of Australia for years at a time. This coalition took people who were for the most part running from war and persecution, who were already damaged from the atrocities from which they had run, and further exacerbated this damage by locking them up indefinitely in inadequate conditions, particularly for the children.

I believe Jacquie Everitt’s book The Bitter Shore should be compulsory reading for all Australians to remind us of the devastating impact that the coalition’s policies had on asylum seekers and their children. The tale of Shayan Badraie, the six-year-old boy who features in The Bitter Shore, is a shameful episode for this country, but most particularly for the former immigration minister, the member for Berowra, who refused to respond adequately to all humane advice on the handling of this traumatised child. The unhealthy culture that the member for Berowra fostered in his department was highlighted in the Palmer report of July 2005 and will forever be an indictment of his time in that position and a blight on this country.

In fact, the coalition has worked hard to create a culture of fear that all asylum seekers are somehow evil and terrorists because of the manner of their arrival. This Abbott’s army is the same team who misled the public through the ‘children overboard’ scandal for political purposes. I remember well those times and the feelings of my colleagues in the ADF when the ADF and its reporting were so ill-used. They talked to me of their feelings of having to manhandle women and children into the Pacific camps. They told me how their concerns to comply with international law were often brushed aside by the coalition government. I also remember the Tampa episode as I was serving in the UN headquarters in Timor Leste at the time, along with Norwegians and UNHCR personnel who were shocked at the behaviour of the Howard government. In my experience in various international fora, this did us great damage for many years.

It is also worth analysing the coalition’s so-called Pacific solution, which processed the claims of unauthorised arrivals offshore so that the claimants had no access to legal assistance or judicial review. This policy wasted millions of dollars of taxpayer’s money to generate the illusion that these people would not be coming to Australia. The same coalition sat idly by while an Australian citizen, Vivian Alvarez Solon, was unlawfully deported and while an Australian permanent resident, Cornelia Rau, was unlawfully detained for 10 months. This is the same coalition that allowed people to languish on temporary protection visas for years, with limited access to government services and a callously uncertain future.

With such a track record, one would think that the opposition would be pleased to see that an Australian government is finally able to deal with this issue effectively from a security perspective while ensuring the protection and wellbeing of the asylum seekers. But this is not the case. The opposition continues to criticise the positive changes this government has made and the policies that have worked. What is even more disturbing is that the opposition have made it perfectly clear that, should they return to government, they will immediately reinstate the same flawed legislation that clearly failed them for 12 years.

The mandatory detention policy was, as most would know, instituted by the Keating Labor government. However, what it became under the Howard government was unrecognisable from the original policy. The policy was initially intended to provide for a maximum 271-day incarceration period to allow for the appropriate processing of unauthorised arrivals. Under the coalition, it became an out-of-sight, out-of-mind solution for a problem the Howard government simply could not cope with. A 1998 report from the Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission on the policy of mandatory detention stated that it ‘breached international human rights standards’ and called for the removal of children from detention. It further claimed that, when detention was prolonged, as it frequently was, the conditions in which people were detained became unacceptable and breached Australia’s human rights obligations. The Howard government rejected this report and, in 2004, reaffirmed its commitment to the mandatory detention policy. The Minister for Immigration and Multicultural and Indigenous Affairs at the time, Senator Vanstone, stated that to release all children from detention in Australia would be to send a message to people smugglers that, if they carry children on dangerous boats, parents and children will be released into the community very quickly. Instead of having effective policies to prevent people-smuggling, such as the bill we are debating today, the coalition chose to stick with an internationally condemned policy.

The Rudd government has brought detention back to its original intent—that is, that people will be detained as a last resort and for a short period. Unauthorised entrants are detained on arrival for identity, health and security checks but, once these are completed, unless there are serious security risks or concerns as to whether the entrant will comply with their visa conditions, the majority of entrants will be released into the community whilst their immigration status is resolved.

Labor’s policy ensures that only justified applicants will be able to stay onshore permanently. The opposition claims it will bring back the Pacific solution. As I stated before, this was a particularly nasty policy which ensured that claims were not processed under Australian law and that claimants had no access to legal assistance or judicial review. Such a policy now seems unthinkable. In what other circumstance would someone’s basic legal rights be denied to them by a democracy of our standing? Yet the opposition adheres to this policy and vows to bring it back if it returns to government. In an interview in December 2009, Mr Abbott stated:

Now offshore processing was an important part of the former government’s policy. It was very important in deterring people smugglers …

Instead of developing effective, workable policy, which this bill will do, the opposition would go back to the failed policies of the past. And this was a failed policy. The entry figures are evidence of that. Between 2001 and 2008, a total of 1,637 people were detained in the Nauru and Manus facilities. Of these, 1,153, 70 per cent, were found to be refugees and were resettled in Australia or other countries and 705, around 61 per cent, were resettled in Australia. The Rudd government abolished the Pacific solution on 8 February 2008 and announced that only Christmas Island would be retained for unauthorised boat arrivals. On the same day Jennifer Pagonis, of the UNHCR, welcomed the end of the Pacific solution, stating:

UNHCR had strong concerns about the ‘Pacific Solution’ …

We welcome the prompt decision taken by the new Australian Government to end the Pacific Solution …

We hope that any continuation of offshore processing on the Australian territory of Christmas Island reflects the letter and the spirit of the 1951 Refugee Convention.

And so it does. Yet the opposition still maintains that should it return to government it will bring back the Pacific solution, a program opposed by the UNHCR.

Temporary protection visas were a flawed policy of the coalition. TPVs provided no certainty for their holders. Holders could not travel and they had no access to family reunion visa programs. Although they were not behind razor wire they were trapped, unable to engage in the community they lived in, as they were not able to work and were unable to return home for fear of having their application for permanent protection rejected. Again, this was a pointless exercise. Around 11,000 TPVs were issued between 1999 and 2007 and approximately 90 per cent of TPV holders eventually gained permanent visas. In May 2008 the Rudd government abolished the TPV system. Figures quoted by the Minister for Immigration and Citizenship, Senator Chris Evans, on 24 February 2009, showed that the TPV system had not, as the Howard government claimed, halted arrivals.

In the four years, from 1997 to 2001, 12,651 people were arriving by unauthorised boats. TPVs, which were introduced in 1999, clearly had no impact on these arrivals, which in fact increased following the introduction of this policy. By the time TPVs were abolished last year, almost 90 per cent of people initially granted TPVs had been given a permanent protection visa or another visa to remain in Australia. The opposition wants the return of TPVs—a system that did not work, that did not provide a deterrence for unauthorised arrivals and whose only outcome was to cause ongoing hardship to the holders of TPVs.

From the historical evidence of these three programs—mandatory detention, the Pacific solution and TPVs—it is clear that the Howard government did not have a constructive way forward when it came to matters of unauthorised arrivals. Yet the opposition refuses to learn from these mistakes and vows to bring back all three of these failed programs. I also note the opposition leader’s suggestion that we simply tow the boats back out to sea. This reflects his contempt for international law and basic humanity. I know that all decent Australians will cringe in horror at this idea, as have our Indonesian colleagues in making that clear recently. The Rudd Labor government understands what the coalition does not: Australia needs to have effective and fair legislation on migration, because the numbers of those seeking asylum will rise and fall with international circumstances as, historically, has always been the case.

As stated previously, the UNHCR has acknowledged that numbers of people of concern—asylum seekers, refugees and internally displaced peoples—have been on the rise. Push factors, including the ongoing instability in the Middle East and other regions, will mean higher numbers of asylum seekers attempting to enter Australian territory. Other push factors may also become evident in the future. Environmental refugees from low-lying island nations and coastal areas in the region may begin to look for asylum in other nations as sea levels begin to rise.

The opposition continually suggest that the Rudd Labor government policies are soft-touch policies and are a pull factor for those wanting to take advantage of them. This position is flat wrong. The numbers do not support it. None of the policies of the Howard government were effective in reducing the numbers of unauthorised boat arrivals. Numbers only began to fall in relation to the situations at source. From 2001 to 2003, Iraqis claiming asylum declined by 48 per cent. In the same period, Afghanis seeking asylum fell by 73 per cent and Sri Lankans by 61 per cent. Conversely, from 2005 to 2008, the numbers claiming asylum surged again, including those from Iraq, by 193 per cent; those from Afghanistan by 139 per cent; and those from Sri Lanka by 72 per cent. These facts speak for themselves. In fact, the only pull factor Australians should be concerned about are the coalition. In an enormous attempt at self-fulfilling prophecy, the coalition have been out there for many months in the media, proclaiming to the world that Australia is a soft touch, shamelessly working against the national interest in sending this message around the globe. They should be ashamed of themselves and Australians, understandably, can feel disgusted with this play at politics above the national interest. But then that is what we have come to expect from the opposition. Instead, what is needed is a strong but fair approach to the issue. The Rudd Labor government is achieving this.

Only last week negotiations with Indonesian President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono led to further developments in the relationship with Indonesia and an assurance by the President that people-smuggling would now be criminalised in Indonesia. As part of the 2009-10 federal budget the Rudd government has committed $654 million to fund a comprehensive whole-of-government strategy to combat people-smuggling and to help address the problem of unauthorised boat arrivals. Since the Howard days of 2007 we have increased sea patrols of our borders by 25 per cent, which has resulted in the interception of 98 per cent of all boats before they reach the mainland. This is a huge improvement since the days of the coalition government when, during that time, more than one in 10 boats reached the mainland.

Since September 2008, 61 people-smuggling arrests have been made and 23 persons convicted. There are currently 37 defendants before the courts in people-smuggler prosecutions. In cooperation with Indonesia POLRI has disrupted 85 smuggling ventures, preventing nearly 2,000 persons attempting to arrive in Australia by dangerous unauthorised boat passage. They have also arrested 19 smuggling operatives including the infamous Captain Bram.

To defeat people smuggling and manage asylum seekers we do not need a return to the scaremongering, inhumane and ineffective ways of the past. We need to work to resolve problems at the source of conflict and persecution, as we are doing in conjunction with the international community in Afghanistan, Pakistan and Sri Lanka. We need to continue to enhance regional law enforcement cooperation and refugee management and we need to ensure that our own surveillance, interception, prosecution, management capabilities and mechanisms for the boats set to approach our shores are effective and humane. That is precisely what the Rudd government is doing. I therefore commend this bill to the House.

Scott Morrison (Cook, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Immigration and Citizenship) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

In rising to support the measures that are put forward as part of the Anti-People Smuggling and Other Measures Bill 2010, I start out by saying this: while we do support the measures, from what I have just heard, Labor seems intent on pursuing their age-old strategy for dealing with most issues, and that is to try to spin the boats away. You cannot spin the boats away; you need to take action and you need to put in place measures which stop the boats. The measures that the coalition put in place while we were in government have been roundly criticised by those opposite, but they did have one very interesting result. Under the coalition over the last six years of our government, after we introduced most significantly offshore processing known as the ‘Pacific Solution’, the number of boats went to three per year. Today under this government in 2010 we have an average of 10 boats per month. That is the highest rate of arrivals on record.

But before I go back there let us talk about the bill specifically. This bill creates a new offence of providing material support or resources towards a people-smuggling venture. It establishes in the Migration Act an aggravated offence of people smuggling which involves exploitation or danger of death or serious harm. It applies mandatory minimum penalties. It creates an offence of providing material support that does not apply to a person who pays smugglers to facilitate their own passage or that of a family member to Australia. We do not oppose these amendments. We do not oppose bringing in tough laws that deal with people smuggling. But we need to be clear that this bill offers no comprehensive solution to the problem the government find themselves with of their own making.

There are some things we agree on, and I think that it is worthwhile spending some time on the things we agree on before we focus the debate on the areas of points of difference. I think that we all can agree about the challenge globally of dealing with refugees. There are 10.8 million refugees in the world today and less than one per cent of those will get a resettlement outcome this year. The UNHCR specifically has 203,000 listed as needing resettlement and this year around the world probably around 90,000 of those will get an outcome. The challenge of this number of people moving around in these situations is not going to be solved by Australia acting in isolation with either our resettlement policies or any other matter. There is a global big picture here that has existed for a very long time and whether it is at its lower levels of demand or its higher levels of demand, the level and scale of this problem requires, I believe, a rethink of how we deal with these things internationally.

Secondly, I think we can all agree, and particularly with President Yudyono here in this place last week, that regional and international cooperation is obviously a part of the solution. There is no one solution to this problem but, equally, there are some important solutions to this problem that need to be part of the package. Regional and international cooperation is certainly part of that—working internationally at the source, as the coalition did when we were in government—but also regionally to manage the secondary movements of people and to deal with people smuggling and law enforcement matters. To that end we welcome the announcement by President Yudyono of introducing people-smuggling criminal sanctions in Indonesia and we look forward to that coming into place at sometime in the future, although at this point we do not have any detail of when that might occur. Nevertheless, it is a welcome move from the Indonesian President.

We also agree on both sides of this chamber that an intake currently of refugee and humanitarian settlement of 13½ thousand people is a good program. It is a program which is supported and there are no proposals, I believe, on either side of this House that it should be cut, or increased for that matter. We also agree that when it comes to refugees, settlement services are incredibly important. I would argue that our ability to provide proper resettlement for people, who have come from very difficult situations from all around the world, having experienced things that, hopefully, none of us in this place would ever experience, is crucial to provide them with the opportunity they need to engage with the Australian community and be supported in doing so. That is not an inexpensive exercise and it requires constant modification and improvement, but our refugee resettlement programs in this country have been heralded around the world as being first class, and that is a product, I believe, of governments of both persuasions over a long period of time, working hard on those initiatives. They need to engage, they need to equip, they need to integrate and they need to be provided with the tools for rehabilitation. They also need to do this in the right places and in a way that gives us an opportunity to provide what is in this resettlement program an opportunity for a second chance. So we can agree on these things.

We can agree also on the statistics because the statistics simply do not lie. The statistics tell us that the boats are coming again. Ninety-two boats have arrived with over 4,000 people since August 2008. Twenty-four boats have arrived since 1 January this year, with almost 1,200 people. There were 18 boats, an average of three a year in the last six years of the coalition government, and we have gone from three per year to more than two per week, or the historic high of 10 boats per month, under the arrangements in this calendar year.

The costs are also escalating and these do not lie. Earlier, when the additional estimates process was being pursued, the government asked for an additional $132 million on top of the about $130 million that they already had in their budget for the year. That is not surprising given the extraordinary increase in arrivals in this financial year, but it is interesting that in Senate estimates, when we pursued the government as to how many people they thought would seek to arrive illegally by boat in Australia in 2009-10, the answer was 200 people. They seriously thought that under their policies 200 people would arrive in this financial year. In November they thought they had got that a bit wrong and so they went to Finance and said, ‘No, no, we think there’s going to be 1,400 people.’ They committed this to us in estimates at a time when 2,600 people had already arrived—extraordinary stuff. At this current rate there is no doubt that we will be looking at not just the $132 million extra they asked for. We estimate that somewhere in the vicinity of another $250 million will be needed before the year is done. We have gone from an expenditure of around $130 million to $500 million in one year. When it came to dealing with these issues, the forward estimates had that as the budget for almost those full four years. We have spent that in one year, based on an incredible increase in arrivals over that period. The cost is significant and it continues to increase. The government need to advise what they believe that cost will be because clearly the extra $132 million they asked for will not be enough.

I think the other matter we agree on and can acknowledge is that the vast majority of those who are seeking to come to Australia by boat are secondary movers. The vast majority do not come primarily from the source country from which they departed. It is also true that the secondary movers are moving through a whole series of countries before setting off for Australia from either Indonesia or Malaysia. It is also true that a number of these, and it could be quite a large number of them—we do not know the exact proportion although the government know because they ask for this information on their entry interview when they get to Christmas Island, but they have not released the information—have spent many years on that journey. I know from speaking to them directly that some of them have spent up to 10 years living and working in Malaysia. The UNHCR tells us we have a pipeline currently in Malaysia of not quite 80,000 who are registered in Malaysia and an estimated further 20,000 who are in Malaysia. Some have Burmese backgrounds and others are from Sri Lanka, Iran and particularly Afghanistan. A significant number of people have been in the region for a very long time. The pipeline is there and available to be exploited by the people smugglers.

Christmas Island is full but, for whatever reason, the government pretend that it is not full. Going on the most recent information we have—and you have to ask for this information through the media because it does not come directly from the government—just last week there were 1,854 people on Christmas Island, and that was before the around 240 people who have turned up on boats since that number was made available had set foot on the island. The capacity of that island is around 1,920 and it is simply a matter of time before Christmas Island is full. I was there in January when they were in the process of putting in the additional 400 beds which will go in demountables adjacent to the northern IDC. In estimates the government said that will be ready by the end of this month. I hope that is true. I think it is unlikely to be true based on what I heard when I was there, but let us hope that it is true and that they are able to get those beds in place, because far too many people are living in tents, which is the alternative.

No doubt the government will be moving within the next few months to transfer people—as is their stated policy—to Darwin, to the northern IDC at Berrimah in Coonawarra. They have already advertised for the extra staff. They have already asked the local fire crews and emergency services to familiarise themselves with that facility. I would not be surprised if those whose claims have not been assessed—and this is a critical issue—are transferred to the mainland, thereby ending one of the most significant—if not the most significant—elements of the coalition’s border protection regime, which is offshore processing.

I think we can agree that Australian standards of detention have improved over time, which we can all be very pleased about. In particular, the major reforms that were introduced following the reviews that were undertaken in 2006 have been very significant. When I was on Christmas Island I was very pleased to see that those reviews, inquiries, recommendations and policy changes that were made in 2006 have been taken up and are making the major practical difference on Christmas Island. I asked about what practical changes had been implemented as a result of the policies announced by the new government and the answer was ‘effectively nothing’ practical—that the practical changes that had been introduced were as a result of the 2006 changes. One thing I commend the department on very highly is that they themselves have a culture of continuous improvement in their management of the detention centres. The department and those who run those centres take their responsibilities very seriously, regardless of which party is in government, and they do the best job they can. Equally, I think the contractor on the ground, Serco, is doing an excellent job.

But what don’t we agree on? We do not agree about why they are coming. Australia’s growth in asylum applications in 2009 was over 30 per cent. This differs from comparable countries. I refer to data released by the UK Home Office, which tracks 32 Western countries. The data showed that in the UK asylum applications actually dropped by six per cent. Interestingly, in the last quarter of 2009, they actually fell by 30 per cent compared to the last quarter of 2008. Why do I make reference to the UK? Because, as with Australia, the Afghan population makes up a reasonable number of those who are seeking asylum in the UK, so they have similar challenges. Their experience has been one of declining applications rather than increasing applications.

The current surge also does not reflect the magnitude of the trends that we saw when the coalition dealt with these issues from 1999 to 2001. The global asylum application figures of those 32 countries—as I just cited, they are from the UK Home Office—today are 40 per cent lower than they were in 1999, 2000 and 2001. The number of Afghan refugees during that time was 3.8 million; today it is 2.8 million. Further to that, just last Friday the UNHCR announced that they will be looking at reassessing their guidelines in relation to both Sri Lankan and Afghan asylum seekers, pointing very much to the fact—and I am quoting Richard Towle here—that:

… there has been a significant number of people who have left the camp populations in Sri Lanka … in the process of returning to their places and regions of origin.

The same reference is made in relation to people in Afghanistan, particularly in the north. That is not to say that there will not be legitimate asylum seekers or refugees from Afghanistan, but the point is that, over the period of time in which the UNHCR has noticed that things are improving—we have one million Hazaras living in Kabul today, and there has been a repatriation of Afghans to Afghanistan over the last six or seven years or so, notwithstanding the difficulties last year—contrary to what the government is suggesting, as situations have been improving our applications have been increasing. More significantly, our arrivals of illegal boats have been increasing as well.

So, while the government might want to make the claim that it is about push factors, the truth is that there have always been push factors. Push factors were there back in 1999, 2000 and 2001 and all through the last decade, because there are 10.5 million refugees. There will always be millions and millions of refugees around the world looking for asylum. That is a sad fact of the world that we live in. But the point is that the demand for people smugglers is ubiquitous, regardless of whether people judge demand to be high or low. It does not have to be high or low; there is always plenty of demand. What is different is if you flick the switch to give the people smugglers a product they can sell, and that is what has changed with this government. That is the message that has changed with this government, both in the changes to policy and increasingly, I would argue, in the changes to the way the government is addressing this issue.

There is probably no greater example of this than the Oceanic Viking. Since the Oceanic Viking debacle, we have had more than 40 boats arrive. So almost half the boats that have arrived since the changes to policy that began back in August 2008 have arrived since the Prime Minister entered into his special deal with those on the Oceanic Viking, because people smugglers not only look to see what your policies are—and they do—when framing the product they wish to sell; they also look for a test of your resolve. What we see with this government is no clear resolve.

The previous speaker chastised the opposition for our view that we would return to a policy, where the circumstances allow, of turning back boats. Apparently this was a heinous policy. Well, it was a heinous policy announced by the current Prime Minister of this country the day before the last election. Maybe the previous speaker should share that with his leader, but it was a promise made by the Prime Minister before the last election that he would turn back boats. He has not done so. He has changed the policy. He has not said when he changed the policy, but it is clear from the inquiry into the SIEV 36 explosion that the policy had been changed. The promise has been overturned. The Prime Minister wished to talk tough on these issues when he was the Leader of the Opposition, but he has not had the resolve to follow through. Like so many other promises, this one went by the wayside, and we have seen the consequences of that decision before us as boats arrive. In the last eight days, we have had six.

The coalition’s policies on this issue were well articulated when we were in government, and the record of those policies is understood by the Australian people. The government may want to argue the toss, some in the media may want to argue the toss and there will be other academics out there who may want to argue the toss, but the simple fact is that, following the turning back of the Tampa and the introduction of the measures that were introduced in 2001, in a year when global asylum applications remained at over 600,000—exactly the same as the year before, more or less—the number of boats fell from over 40 to one. That is the message that resolve and a clear purpose will send to those who are in this insidious business.

Those who oppose the coalition’s policies like to engage in some sort of false moral debate and declare their own virtue in contending with the coalition’s lack of humanity on these issues. When they want to put forward a policy that works, we will support it. In this bill, we are supporting a policy that we believe will help and will add. But, largely, it is not the issue. Regional cooperation is no substitute for strong domestic policies. The people-smuggling laws that have been introduced will not make up for soft policies when it comes to the immigration settings this government has put in place, which are acting as a magnet for people smugglers and are drawing people here at historic levels. This government needs to wake up to the reality of what is occurring up in our northern oceans almost on a daily basis, and it needs to take action and stop talking. (Time expired)

Craig Thomson (Dobell, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise to support the Anti-People Smuggling and Other Measures Bill 2010. Protecting Australia’s national security and the integrity of our borders is the highest responsibility of the Australian government. In representing a coastal based seat that already has sizeable gaps in employment and infrastructure, I feel a very strong community expectation that I rise to support any government bill that will strengthen the integrity of Australia’s borders. We are privileged to live in Australia. My constituents are even more privileged than most to live on the beautiful Central Coast. We have a robust democracy and a free market based economy with a strong safety net for those who fall on hard times. We offer the greatest lifestyle the world has to offer. It is no surprise that people beyond our shores aspire to become Australians.

People smuggling refers to the organised illegal movement of groups or individuals across international borders, usually on a payment-for-service basis. The International Organisation for Migration estimates that about 4 million people are moved illegally each year. There is a supply and demand system at work in the people-smuggling business. You have people who are desperate to get into Australia by any means possible and then the people smugglers who will risk these people’s lives to get them here. It has to be entirely clear, both from Australia and internationally, that people smuggling is not an acceptable form of commerce. It must be clear that Australia will not tolerate a soft approach to people smuggling.

People smuggling endangers vulnerable lives and endangers our security. Our nation has a duty to protect the integrity of our borders and immigration systems. There are a number of strategies that successive governments have built upon to stop people smuggling. This bill is amongst many bills that have been introduced into successive parliaments to combat smuggling.

Australian agencies and overseas missions work closely to ensure a coordinated approach to prevent people smuggling. The Department of Immigration and Citizenship and all Australian agencies at posts maintain close ties with local counterparts in South-East Asia to prevent people-smuggling activities and to support displaced populations. The Department of Immigration and Citizenship works closely with the Australian Federal Police to prosecute people smugglers.

In the national security statement on 4 December 2008, the Prime Minister appointed the Australian Customs and Border Protection Service as the single point of accountability for matters relating to the prevention of maritime people smuggling. The collocation of agencies and capabilities in this way is a concept strongly supported by the Homeland and Border Security Review. The government has reinvigorated efforts to work closely with regional countries to prevent and deter people smuggling and prevent attempts at dangerous sea journeys by people seeking to enter Australia unlawfully. The government is looking to extend assistance to those countries to develop their capacity and enhance projects in home and transit countries to assist people displaced by conflict who may be vulnerable targets of people smugglers and traffickers.

If Australia does not have community confidence in border protection and immigration systems, we run the risk of the emergence of extreme parties and policies. Without decisive action and community confidence we give those with divisive barrows to push a free run. We have seen both here and abroad the emergence of a far right political group with a race based agenda. The integrity of our borders is not an issue of race or fear of what is foreign. What is at issue is the nation’s ability to control the rate of immigration based on a national need. It is about our nation’s ability to control what comes into our country in terms of going around our vigorous Customs and quarantine systems. It is about controlling the risks individuals have to our national security. The integrity of Australia’s borders is synonymous with the integrity of our national security. People smugglers are a direct affront to our ability to control immigration intake, and are a direct affront to our way of life. They put desperate people’s lives at risk through their grubby trade. People smuggling is an illegitimate industry that has no place in our region.

The purpose of the Anti-People Smuggling and Other Measures Bill 2010 is to strengthen the Commonwealth’s anti-people-smuggling legislative framework by putting in place laws that further criminalise people-smuggling activity to enable prosecution of a broad range of conduct, including the consequences of that activity. One action that we are taking through this bill is the introduction of a new offence to those providing material support and resources towards a people-smuggling venture. The offence will apply to a person who provides material support or resources to another person or organisation where the provision of the support or resources aids, or there is a risk that the provision of the support or resources will aid, the commission of an offence of people smuggling.

The maximum penalty for this offence will be imprisonment for 20 years, or 2,000 penalty points or both. Prescribing a maximum penalty still allows judicial discretion to take account of the circumstances of the case. The penalty sits appropriately alongside penalties for comparable financing related offences such as the offence of providing support to a terrorist organisation, which holds a maximum penalty of 25 years. It is about time the federal government extended the reach of our powers to extend severe punishment to those who want to perpetuate this vile industry.

The Migration Act currently contains mandatory minimum penalties for the aggravated offences of people smuggling—a five-year sentence with three years non-parole, or an eight-year sentence with five years non-parole for repeat offenders. The bill extends the application of the mandatory minimum penalty to the new offences of people smuggling involving death, people smuggling involving exploitation or danger of death or serious harm and providing support or resources for people-smuggling activities.

We have seen some terrible examples in recent history of people smugglers’ lack of respect for human lives. We have seen the complete lack of appreciation for the lives of children, many from desperate situations. The higher mandatory minimum sentence of eight years and the non-parole period of five years will automatically apply to the offences of people smuggling resulting in death and exploitation or danger of death or serious harm, irrespective of whether it was a repeat offence. This is to reflect the serious nature of these offences.

The bill will also extend the higher mandatory minimum sentence and non-parole period to people-smuggling offences involving children and to a person being convicted of multiple people-smuggling offences. The measures will also improve whole-of-government efforts to combat people smuggling, including ensuring appropriate investigative tools are available to law enforcement and national security agencies and providing greater flexibility for Australia’s national security agencies to support anti-people-smuggling activities.

The act will also harmonise people-smuggling offences between the Migration Act and the Criminal Code to strengthen the criminal framework for greater consistency. The legislative framework for criminalising people smuggling is contained in the Migration Act and the Criminal Code. Together, the legislation covers ventures entering Australia—in the Migration Act—and ventures entering foreign countries, including those that transit to Australia—in the Criminal Code. The bill inserts into the Migration Act the aggravated offence of people smuggling involving exploitation or danger of death or serious harm. This aggravated offence is currently contained in the Criminal Code.

However, the Migration Act does not provide for these aggravated circumstances involved in people smuggling, and therefore the provision does not apply to ventures seeking to enter Australia. Inserting this offence into the Migration Act will ensure that this aggravated offence consistently applies to all people-smuggling ventures. The bill will also make a number of amendments to provide for greater harmonisation between the people-smuggling offences in the Criminal Code and those in the Migration Act, such as standardising language and the description of offences. People smuggling is a serious and organised crime that involves organised criminal syndicates which depend on enablers and facilitators. Targeting the organisers and financers of people smuggling operations is an important element of a strong anti-people-smuggling framework.

The bill will also provide a greater capacity for the Australian government agencies to investigate and disrupt people-smuggling networks. The bill will make associated changes to the Surveillance Devices Act 2004 and TIA Act to enable law enforcement agencies and security agencies to have consistent access under both acts to the appropriate investigative tools in relation to the existing people-smuggling offences, which are serious offences under the TIA Act and the new offences in this bill.

The bill will also amend the ASIO Act to enable ASIO to use its intelligence capabilities to respond to people smuggling and other serious threats to Australia’s territorial and border integrity. This will enable ASIO to play a greater role where appropriate in support of whole-of-government efforts to combat people smuggling and other serious threats to Australia’s territorial and border integrity. The bill will also align the definition of foreign intelligence in the TIA Act more closely with the Intelligence Service Act 2001. We have an opportunity to effectively deal with people smuggling in our region in a way that was not possible for many years. It was very heartening to hear the Indonesian President last week give the commitment that they will criminalise people smuggling in Indonesia. This is a major breakthrough: the Indonesian President was the first leader of that country to address our parliament and only the fifth foreign leader to address a joint sitting of parliament. This demonstrates how important Indonesia is to Australia. Our region’s future will depend largely on the cooperation between states not only in trade but also in defeating causes of common problems. It is in both Australia’s and Indonesia’s interests that we beat people smugglers.

Australia is an active participant in a number of international programs that work to combat people smuggling. These include the Inter-Governmental Consultations on Asylum, Refugee and Migration Policies in Europe, North America and Australia; the Asia-Pacific Consultations on Refugees, Displaced Persons and Migrants; the Bali Ministerial Regional Conference on People Smuggling, Trafficking in Persons and Related Transnational Crime; and the Pacific Rim Immigration Intelligence Officers Conference. The Bali Ministerial Regional Conference on People Smuggling, Trafficking in Persons and Related Transnational Crime is a multinational initiative launched in 2002 aimed at combating people smuggling, trafficking and related transnational crime in the Middle East, Asia and Pacific regions. While the Bali process built on existing bilateral cooperation, its success is due to the active involvement of ministers and law enforcement agencies from 42 countries. As a consequence of initiatives from the Bali process, regional countries have been active in preventing and deterring the activities of people smugglers and the movement of potential illegal immigrants towards Australia. A number of other initiatives were also pursued which limited the capacity of people smugglers to successfully undertake their activities. Nonetheless, people smugglers remain active in the region and in source countries and continue to target vulnerable people for possible movement to Australia.

The Rudd government is determined to make the investments needed to protect our borders and strengthen Australia’s national security. Passage of the legislation through both houses in the 2010 autumn sittings is important. This is to ensure strong deterrence measures are in place and to maximise Australian government agency efforts to investigate and disrupt people-smuggling networks. Internationally we must ensure that people smuggling is not a lucrative, low-risk activity for people smugglers; it must be a crime that attracts great penalties. People smugglers must know that if they continue their trade that risks children’s lives, the book will be thrown at them and they will spend a great deal of their lives in jail. That is why this bill is so important. I commend the bill to the House.

Nola Marino (Forrest, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise to speak on the Anti-People Smuggling and Other Measures Bill 2010, which aims to deter people smuggling, to expand ASIO’s charter to include border security issues and to make related amendments to the Telecommunications Intercept and Access Act 1979. I must say at the outset that it is patently clear that the need to engage ASIO to combat people smuggling comes as a direct result of the Rudd government’s weakening of Australia’s border protection laws. The explanatory memorandum of the bill notes:

The Bill will put in place laws to provide greater deterrence of people smuggling activity and to address the serious consequences of such activity. The Bill will also provide greater capacity for Australian Government agencies to investigate and disrupt people smuggling networks.

This need, as I said, has been created by the Labor government’s changes to border protection laws and by policy failures. The scrapping of offshore processing at Nauru, the scrapping of temporary visas and the abandoning of the practice of getting the Australian Navy to tow boats back to Indonesia before they arrived in Australian territorial waters, unfortunately, all sent a very clear message to human traffickers: they were well and truly back in business in Australia. Clearly there is a belief that the chances of successful entry to Australia are high; otherwise, we would not see those seeking illegal entry arriving almost on a daily, if not weekly, basis now.

People in my electorate of Forrest are very well aware of the direct connection between the Labor government’s softening of Australia’s border protection laws in August 2008 and the surge of people-smuggling activity. I have two constituents of mine in my office as we speak; I acknowledge Adele and Murray and welcome them to Parliament House. My constituents and many other Australians are angry that the Labor government’s weakened border protection has destroyed Australia’s international reputation for strong border protection, seriously compromised immigration control and created possible quarantine and biosecurity issues. I know these are of concern in my electorate because of issues such as the potential for foot-and-mouth disease, typhoid and tuberculosis.

Increasing numbers of my constituents contact my office, and they are very concerned about the Labor government’s inaction on people smuggling. If the government decides to transfer detainees from Christmas Island to Darwin and the processing of people to mainland Australia, I am concerned that this will simply encourage more boat arrivals and make my constituents even angrier. My constituents, like most other Australians, have an expectation of strong border security from all Australian governments—the very type of strong border security and border control that was provided by the coalition government during its time in office. We had the problem under control.

We have seen a constant stream of boat arrivals since the changes to the legislation. As I said, it is now almost becoming a daily, if not weekly, event. From August 2008 to date, 92 boats carrying over 4,000 passengers and crew members have arrived on Australian shores—many off the Western Australian coast. In this year alone we have had 24 boats with almost 2,100 people illegally arrive in just 10 weeks, at a rate of nine boats per month. These figures clearly indicate that the Labor government has totally lost control of Australia’s borders and asylum seeker intake.

Whilst in government, as I said, the coalition had virtually eliminated the people-smuggling trade—and this is a deadly trade. There were years when no boats arrived on our shores. Between 2004 and 2007, just 12 unauthorised boats carrying 194 people arrived on Australian shores. There were 194 unauthorised people under the Liberal government compared to the over 4,000 we have under the Labor government, with over 3,086 of those arriving on board 67 boats in the last financial year alone. These figures speak for themselves. When will the Labor government accept responsibility and admit that they have actively encouraged people smugglers through their changes to border protection laws? It appears that perhaps this bill is just the first forced admission that their policies have in fact encouraged this people-smuggling activity. When the coalition was in government we had a relationship with Indonesia which enabled us to deal with the boats as they arrived and, as I said, return them to Indonesia before they reached Australia. On at least four occasions, boats were returned to within close range of the Indonesian coast.

The Labor government abolished this provision and their current policy actively encourages people to risk their lives during dangerous sea voyages in unseaworthy boats, while making people smugglers very rich from their trade. The human traffickers are organised. They have obviously been rubbing their hands as the money has rolled in since the changes to border protection. They are delivering a product which is, in effect, informal immigration to Australia.

What about the human toll? Will we ever actually know just how many desperate people have lost their lives attempting to illegally enter Australia in those leaking and unseaworthy boats? We have seen repeatedly where passengers on board such boats have literally had to be rescued and those who were sent on the final leg of their journey without experienced crew. We have seen report after report of those who have died trying to get to Australia. We have seen asylum seekers who have set their boats on fire or sabotaged their boats, and this has also put our Navy personnel at serious risk. Unfortunately, by the very law of averages, the more boats that set out, the more fatalities there will be.

We know that Australia has one of the most generous programs of refugee and humanitarian settlement in the world. Humanitarian cases admitted to Australia under the coalition government were the highest of any government in our postwar history and we continue to have one of the highest numbers of residents in this country who were born overseas. But we have seen the Department of Immigration and Citizenship being constrained by budget cuts as well during this time and the government is now also facing the challenge of finding more beds in facilities to house the record numbers of unauthorised arrivals. This is in spite of the Christmas Island facility being labelled as a white elephant by members of the government. It has since become a tent city as well as that white elephant. Quite simply, Australia’s border and immigration control is in crisis as a direct result of Labor’s policy changes.

We have heard much about push factors. I note that asylum seeker applications in the UK, Canada and the US have declined, but in Australia they have increased by 30 per cent at the same time as the UK declined by 30 per cent. In an Australian Financial Review article on 8 March 2010, the Western Australian Liberal Premier criticised the federal government’s handling of asylum seekers, saying that it needed to toughen its approach. Premier Barnett said:

It (concerns me) and I think it concerns all Australians that we are seeing increasing numbers of boat people coming at great risk to themselves and it is putting pressure on our security.

This is the same Premier who was roundly condemned when he exposed the risk to Australian Navy personnel. As I said previously, instead of dealing with the failure of policy it appears the government is implementing plans to begin transferring detainees from Christmas Island to Darwin before asylum claims have been assessed, effectively ending universal offshore processing. If previous changes to border protection gave a clear green light—and perhaps green dollar signs—to human traffickers, then onshore processing will really be a dead-set, gold-lettered priority invitation to come directly into Australia that people smugglers can sell to their clients.

It will also raise legal issues, potential endless appeals and serious additional costs for Australian taxpayers. I note that the Refugee Review Tribunal reported an increase of 11 per cent in its case load for 2008-09. The appeals process is of course used by asylum seekers who wish to appeal against a decision by the immigration department. Trends in those figures will become apparent when the ever-growing number of asylum seekers becomes a formal part of the system and when they are processed on Australian soil—simply reinforcing why it is so important that refugee status claims are made offshore. I note that the coalition believes further transfers are imminent, and this will continuously erode our border security.

As I said earlier, people smugglers would have an even more attractive selling tool, and they would be actively marketing. We heard from the previous speaker about organised crime involved in this field. They will be marketing the fact that their clients could get all the way to the Australian mainland. I can only imagine how that would increase their profits but also increase the risk for the people involved.

Offshore processing was one of the key factors which led to bringing illegal boat numbers down to zero under the previous coalition government. In the May budget the Rudd government allocated $125 million for offshore processing. However, the government is now spending an additional estimated $132 million for this work, an increase of over 100 per cent. Should this surge in numbers continue, taxpayers will continue to pay for this process. As well, under this bill ASIO will be required to have additional funding to expand its operational jurisdiction to include border security. No doubt Senate estimates will actually detail this as an additional budget requirement in the next session.

The government’s special treatment of asylum seekers on the Oceanic Viking also sent very attractive signals to people smugglers. We have seen that proven, because over 40 boats have arrived since the Oceanic Viking’s special deal of resettlement within four to six weeks as well as a range of other concessions, all of which the Prime Minister failed to admit were part of what really was a special deal.

This legislation will make a number of amendments, such as increasing the sanctions applicable to people-smuggling, including the protection of Australia’s territorial and border integrity from serious threats within ASIO’s statutory charter and including people-smuggling within the definition of a serious offence, thus permitting the use of these tools to investigate allegations of people smuggling and aligning the definition of foreign intelligence in the T(IA) Act with the definition in the Intelligence Services Act 2001.

The coalition considered it extremely sensible to include threats to Australia’s border integrity within the ASIO charter. The increased penalties and expanded security agency power, however, have been made necessary because of the changes to policy that created a renewed market and an opportunity for people-smuggling. People smugglers, human traffickers, knew and know that the Labor government softened Australia’s border protection laws and have taken and are taking full advantage of that situation, which compromises Australia’s reputation for strong border protection and immigration control, as well as potentially compromising the fairness and integrity of our immigration and refugee programs.

We take approximately 13½ thousand refugees on this type of program. Therefore, everyone who arrives illegally by boat takes the place of someone with a genuine need, genuine refugees in a waiting line who are applying through the processes of the government and the United Nations. Given this, the coalition is supportive of this legislation and its aims to deter people-smuggling, to expand ASIO’s charter and to make related amendments to the Telecommunications (Interception and Access) Act 1979. I support this legislation.

Laurie Ferguson (Reid, Australian Labor Party, Parliamentary Secretary for Multicultural Affairs and Settlement Services) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

As previous speakers have detailed, theAnti-People Smuggling and Other Measures Bill 2010 has a number of ingredients. It seeks to enhance ASIO powers of activity in this area. It creates a new offence of providing material support and resources towards people-smuggling in the Migration Act and the Criminal Code. In that context it is important to note that it covers those people who are reckless as to whether money and resources that they provide could be used to assist such ventures. The maximum penalty in that case will be imprisonment for 10 years or 1,000 penalty units—that is, $110,000—or both. It also harmonises people-smuggling offences between the Migration Act and the Criminal Code to strengthen the criminal framework and to provide greater consistency. It also extends minimum penalties to the Migration Act. That has been detailed by a variety of other speakers.

Indisputably, this is a very complex and difficult area of public policy. On the weekend—I know I will be attacked by some journalists who are opposed by foreign films—I saw the French film Welcome, by Philippe Lioret, at the French film festival in Sydney. It was an interesting detail of the situation of, in particular, Kurdish refugees in France attempting to enter Britain. It had all the ingredients that are in some ways part of this legislation. It had the reality of people smugglers, the people who exploit this need; the desperate situation of people living in Calais in northern France who have come all away from the Kurdish part of Iraq; the conditions they live under; the French government’s attempts to dissuade people from taking that course; and the support by people in that town for refugees. All of those ingredients were there.

No doubt, there is a very great degree of difficulty in this policy area. Anyone who follows it knows that a reality in this country is that neither Labor nor Liberal is in the immediate future going to increase the intake of humanitarian refugees to basically make provision for those people who enter by boat or, for that matter, plane. In reality, the nature of the intake by boat will have a decided eventual impact on us seeking a diverse intake, because we aspire to have people who are refugees from many lands coming here. It is in the nation’s interest that we have diverse settlement. We do not essentially want to have refugees from only one country or one part of the world. The previous government had a new focus towards Africa which the current government has supported.

Unless we can have a degree of control over the intake we cannot do things such as, for the first time, join the UNHCR in settling the Nepalese minority from Bhutan. They were in camps for 17 years after facing harassment in Bhutan, and they are proving to be extremely model citizens in this country. You cannot denigrate others—there is a danger in saying that one group of refugees is better than others—but throughout their 17 years in the camps they were taught English. When they come here we do not have to spend much time on migrant English. In actual fact, they are the only ethnic group I have run across in the migration intake who, when I saw them in Adelaide, said: ‘Please, Laurie, stop giving us English. We want to get out and go to TAFE. We want to go to university. We want to go on to employment.’ Unless we can have some control over the nature of the intake, we cannot go out and take those people—and we are taking thousands of them over a five-year period—if all the places are going to be taken up by boat people. So there are difficulties here, indisputably.

But where the opposition really goes off the track is in trying to connect in some way all of our current boat arrivals to an alleged softening of policy here, saying that we are a magnet and that essentially we are encouraging the people smugglers by these soft policies. In actual fact, as Professor Mary Crock said at a debate recently—I was there with the member for Cook—if anyone is promoting the image of Australia as being in any manner an El Dorado or nirvana for people smuggling and for refugee claims, it is the opposition. They are getting up on tables with megaphones and telling the world that in their view the country is a soft touch.

I heard the figures from the member for Cook and his analogy about Britain’s situation now and Australia’s and the decrease in certain European countries et cetera. There are a multitude of reasons why countries have a level of intake or not. There is no doubt that measures in a country can, in some way, affect demand. They can discourage people from coming to that land. There are questions of transportation patterns of the smugglers et cetera. There is the question of whether a country on the way through suddenly gets strong on its borders et cetera. There is the question of employment patterns in countries—whether people feel that going to Poland or France this week is actually a better bet than going to another country where unemployment has worsened. This kind of analogy and the idea that all of a sudden the boats have come because the Labor government have brought in more humane measures and because we got rid of temporary protection visas and therefore people suddenly decide that this is the place they have got to go—particularly those fleeing Iraq, the Tamils from Sri Lanka and the Hazaras from Afghanistan—is pretty preposterous.

When the opposition starts talking about a cost, it is equally questionable. Let’s look at the outcome of the TPV ‘solution’. Virtually all these people eventually came here, they are moving towards citizenship and they have been accepted as genuine refugees. That was also a great cost to Australia and it was a great cost to those individuals, with that degree of insecurity for all those years for people who the determination process finally decided were refugees. We turn to some of the specific situations that are really causing this. I heard the views from the member for Cook. I prefer an article by Ahmed Rashid that I happened to be reading during his contribution. It is in the current edition of The New York Review of Books. It says:

According to the UN, in 2009 there were an average of 1,200 attacks a month by Taliban or other insurgent groups—a 65 percent increase from the previous year. Over the twelve-month period, 2,412 Afghan civilians were killed, an increase of 14 percent; of those, two thirds were killed by the Taliban, a 40 percent increase. In addition, US and NATO combat deaths rose 76 percent, from 295 in 2008 to 520 in 2009.

               …            …            …

According to Major General Michael Flynn, the NATO military chief of intelligence in Afghanistan, the Taliban now have shadow governors in thirty-three out of thirty-four provinces—they serve to organize the movement at a provincial level and disrupt government initiatives in their area—and the movement “can sustain itself indefinitely.” Flynn has described US intelligence in Afghanistan as “clueless” and “ignorant.”

The article further made the point:

… it has been difficult to recruit Pashtuns for the Afghan army and police from the southern Pashtun provinces that are largely controlled by the Taliban …

The reality is that the situation in Afghanistan has deteriorated. That is why there has been a debate in the US about a surge. That is why the United States has decided to do so. To pretend that there is no connection between this deterioration of the allied situation and the push factor of refugee claims in this country is preposterous.

I heard the member claim that there are a million Hazaras in Kabul. Firstly, I think the figures are questionable. The total population of the country is about 28 million and Kabul is about three million plus. Any growth in Hazara numbers in Kabul is related to the harassment they suffer in parts of their historic homeland. I have had Hazaras come to me about the fact that Pashtun nomadic groups have basically, through military force, forced them from part of their ancestral homelands. Yes, there was a return to Afghanistan at an earlier stage. There were millions of people who went back from India, Pakistan and Iran because they thought the country was getting more secure. But the reality now is that Hazaras, despite a few ministers in the government, despite the allegedly democratic process in the country, are still gravely harassed. That is why we are having increased numbers of Hazara claims in this country. That is why our population of Afghans is 90 per cent Hazara whereas they are only, at a maximum, 10 per cent in Afghanistan.

I have a close relationship with the Hazara community in Sydney and they have been to my office. They say two things to me. To be brutally honest, they say that this country has to be vigilant about some of the people coming on the boats because they, the Hazaras in Australia, believe that they are from Quetta in Pakistan and a number of them lived there for a hundred years. But at the same time they say that there are manifestly grave dangers to Hazaras in Afghanistan.

The member for Cook briefly made some references to the Tamil situation and to people leaving camps. Anyone who is following the situation in Sri Lanka knows the level of harassment of Tamils at the recent elections there. The reality is that thousands upon tens of thousands of them are still in camps. The world has been trying to force, pressure, cajole and persuade the Sri Lankan government to treat the Tamils better after the civil war outcome. The UNHCR is apparently looking at the situation and seeing whether they will adapt their list. But to say that there is no push factor for Tamils at the moment is, once again, ridiculous—and this was not the situation during many of the years in which—

Arch Bevis (Brisbane, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Order! The time allotted for this debate has expired. The debate is adjourned. The resumption of the debate will be made an order of the day for the next sitting and the member will have leave to continue speaking when the debate is resumed.