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

Last evening in my speech in the second reading debate on the Anti-People Smuggling and Other Measures Bill 2010 I was referring to claims by the shadow minister in relation to his view that the crisis in Sri Lanka is just about over and that the crisis in Afghanistan is disappearing et cetera. Quite frankly, I am more prepared to listen to the Auburn Tamil seniors group that I met on the weekend at a Seniors Week event than the shadow minister. I think details around the world tend to reinforce their view rather than his. It is interesting to note that the Immigration and Refugee Board of Canada as late as January this year pointed out that there are 100,000 Tamils in the Indian state of Tamil Nadu alone, 27,000 of those being prepared to live even outside refugee camps.

We are in a situation where the opposition candidate in the general elections, General Fonseka, has been court-martialled and placed under house arrest during this period. Indisputably, even if people were very critical—(Quorum formed) As indicated, I would have more faith in the Tamil seniors group in my electorate than in the shadow minister for their view and knowledge of the situation in Sri Lanka. I was making the remark that the situation there at the moment has involved the arrest and court-martialling of the presidential candidate. It is a situation where a recent vote by British Tamils found 99 per cent support for an independent state in Sri Lanka. What those figures and the number of people in camps in India say to me is that there is still a very serious human rights issue in Sri Lanka which would lead to people seeking refugee status, whether it is in India, Europe or Australia.

The Indonesians, of course, are acting with regard to people smuggling, with regard to the formation of a task force and in cooperation with the AFP, because, unlike those opposite, they understand the practical circumstances that are the push factors leading to refugee claims in our region. It is very clear that there is very confused thinking amongst those opposite. There is very grave opportunism. The joint committee on migration matters last year came down with a number of recommendations which they would now say are advertisements for refugees to come to this country. We had a unanimous report from this committee last year which says that after three months every person whose security and health situation has not been finalised should be subject to a departmental review, after six months be referred to the ombudsman and, after a year, be given judicial review. These are the people who once the boats start coming start throwing up their hands and saying it is because of government liberalisation in this area, and yet when many of the measures were adopted by this government they sat on their hands and failed to oppose, most particularly with regard to temporary protection visas.

It is interesting to note the record, in which they say that we can overcome this. They say that if we detain children for an average of a year and eight months, as they did; if we have large numbers of temporary protection visas, where people are insecure about what is going to happen to them, not knowing the future; and if we detain women then somehow people will not come by boat. It is interesting to note that, despite the millions of dollars of taxpayer money that was expended with regard to people on temporary protection visas, the situation was that the overwhelming majority of them stayed here in the end anyway. They might have been uncertain about their future, they might have been unclear about when and where they were going to get permanent residence but the truth is they virtually all stayed here. As we know, some of the figures indicate that amongst the highest years of boat arrivals were ones after the introduction of some of the opposition’s draconian policies. There is no clear, emphatic correlation between the number of boats coming to a country and the internal policies with regard to how the country processes claimants.

Andrew Laming (Bowman, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

It went from 40 to zero.

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

Well how did it get to 40? Was that because of the policies you had in for those two years? Were you reprehensible? Were you incompetent? Were you not watching the ball when they did increase to that level? Is that what you are trying to say? The minister was not handling the problem? The truth of the matter is that refugee claims around the world are substantially about what is happening in home countries. People do not, in general, flee because they do not have a problem. What we have had in our region is, as I said, the end of the civil war in Sri Lanka which lasted for decades—

Andrew Robb (Goldstein, Liberal Party, Chairman of the Coalition Policy Development Committee) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

There are 20 million people on the move. Come on, Laurie.

Bruce Scott (Maranoa, National Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The parliamentary secretary will not respond to interjections.

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

There are 20 million around the world, but the situation in our region is that we have two very fundamental realities. We have the situation in Sri Lanka with the end of the civil war and the incarceration of hundreds of thousands of people, many of whom have now been released but most of whom can have no great faith in their future in Sri Lanka. They cannot be certain that they are not going to be discriminated against. They cannot be certain that they are not going to be subject to extrajudicial murder. As I noted earlier, the situation in Afghanistan is lamentable. That is why the Americans are increasing the number of forces there. That is why there is talk of negotiating with the more moderate elements of the Taliban. That is why there is a debate between NATO and America over the degree to which there can be negotiations with the Taliban. (Time expired)

Andrew Laming (Bowman, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The year 2010 will be remembered as the year when Australians listening to this debate on the Anti-People Smuggling and Other Measures Bill 2010, either in the gallery or over the media, witnessed the disintegration of Australia’s border protection. It does not matter how much the story is twisted, about there being tough times in various countries in various states of decay or struggle, the absolute reality is that over the last decade or two there have been around 20 million displaced people. If we look in the UK and acknowledge the number of applications from asylum seekers, those numbers are simply not rising, as this government would put to you.

What we have on the other side is a massive scotoma of monumental proportions. When it comes to border control simply nothing is going to be done about it. We can see that. We can see a government so busy giving themselves gold stars that they are not even looking for a solution. I know that when one slinks, as a member of this place, back to local electorates, those on the other side steer well away from talkback radio, the pubs, the clubs and the shopping centre car parks because the conversations there are nothing like what they say here.

This government have become almost professionalised in the world of spin—of saying one thing here and doing something completely different back in their electorates. It has almost become pathological, so I know they do not even realise they are doing it anymore, but it has become almost impossible for this government to rescue themselves from this diabolical death dive that they are in over this policy.

Let us go back to some facts. Back in the days of Kevin 07, and we all remember the little flags on cars, it was a time when you picked out three or four policy issues—and wasn’t government going to be easy? Twelve years in opposition is plenty of time to come up with some decent policy but, by the time you got there, all you did as a government was to institute reviews. When it came to border protection it was easy to be ‘Howard lite’ during an election campaign but as soon as the hands got onto the reins and levers of government, suddenly it was all about unpicking for your special interest groups: unpicking the TPV, unpicking the 45-day rule, unpicking detention debt, and unpicking and rolling back any of that commitment you pretended to have while you were in opposition.

It was out on the media airwaves while they were in opposition that we heard them say, ‘We’ll turn those boats back’. Everyone in the gallery and in the media heard those words. How close is Prime Minister Rudd to any of that rhetoric that we heard before he was elected? Let us go to the data. All we have from this prime minister is reading out figures from before the Howard government instituted a series of reforms that made an enormous difference to this disgraceful, transnational, criminal activity called people smuggling. It has been acknowledged the world over. All that this new government had to do was not play with it and not fiddle with the knobs, but it was too much of a temptation, wasn’t it? Bill after bill came through this place and they thought they would just gradually drop down the modulation.

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

You voted for most of them.

Andrew Laming (Bowman, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Your own government will see what the results are of those actions. They speak for themselves. Let us go to the record: 2002-03, zero arrivals; 2003-04, three arrivals; 2004-05, zero arrivals; and then eight arrivals, four arrivals, three arrivals. But by that time this government just could not resist the temptation, could they? In they went with their legislative unpicking and what do we have to speak of right now? Let us look at the figures: 1,100 arrivals this year alone, 42 boats this year alone, and 92 since those policies were unpicked and unravelled.

These are enormous influxes of individuals hopeful for the sugar that this government provides. Exactly how does that translate in a country like Pakistan, where Afghans have been living there for a generation? It translates like this: people talk. They talk about the easiest way in and they say the soft touch is Kevin Rudd. They say: ‘Get those boats out and put up a Kevin 07 flag. Fly them under that flag and you’ll be okay’. That is the message that goes through those camps on the Afghan-Pakistan border.

You have not been there. Have any of you members been to those border camps? Have you travelled up the Khyber Pass? Have you actually seen those populations in the eastern parts of Afghanistan whose only hope is to find a country that will potentially take them? More often than not it is becoming a flight to Indonesia and then a boat trip across, and this government is simply tempting this all along.

I just make a quite simple point, as a humble opposition MP, that we almost have a situation where the language was tough but compassionate and hardline—all of this kind of language was spoken out of two sides of the mouth, depending on who was listening. The Australian people are waking up to that. I am sure you realise that is happening as well, when you pour over the polls and what language will resonate and what will not. The government can see it.

What really annoys me is that we have had a debate for the last 12 months on denial. We know what policy I am talking about. The other side’s definition of denial is when there is vigorous debate on this side of the chamber, just as there is in the community. That is called denial. Of course, there is scepticism throughout the world of science and one can be called a sceptic. But do I not see true denial over there? There is no debate over the data. There is no debate over the arrivals. There is no great scientific debate going on about what has happened to these legislative provisions—all of them broken down by this government—and the direct cause and effect. Just how blind does one have to be to not see a cause and effect between unravelling the laws and a veritable armada of boats heading in this direction?

How much do this prime minister and this government plan to spend on this problem? Was it $654 million over six years? Is it now closer to a billion? I think listeners have a right to ask the question: how much is this going to cost? How much does it cost to incarcerate, to hold, to promise, to judge, to do all of the research and offer all of the appeals? It amounts to close to a billion dollars. We know already that if you break those costs up you get $81,000 per person and $26,000 per person for customs and border protection. That is not even mentioning the threat, the danger and the risk that this prime minister is placing our border protection personnel in.

I do not think that they need to be doing this kind of work if a simple legislative solution was proven to work four or five years ago. But they do. They do it because they serve Australia. They do it because that is their role, their job, their training and they are proud of doing it. But this is something that one individual on the other side could fix with some decent laws. That is all we are asking for here today. That is why we on this side are supporting this bill today. Of course we are going to support the empowerment of ASIO to obtain, correlate and evaluate intelligence and enable them to be even more front-footed when it comes to identifying individuals who not are only people-smuggling but are actually supporting the practice of people smuggling. There will be no arguments here.

But I think what has been completely missed is that we have a government which really have no heart in this issue. You can see that they are soft and spongy and moist. There is no commitment to this whatsoever. They walk on both sides of the street saying one thing on one side to appease the special interest groups and then doing their very, very best to keep it off talkback radio on the other. You can dither, you can deny, you can delay—all those options are open to this government, but I am simply giving a very humble and understated warning that this one ain’t going to go away. This one simply is not going to vanish. You are not going to wake up one morning and find that someone else is going to come up with a solution, because this lot hold the reins of government. An entire nation turns to Prime Minister Rudd for some evidence that there will be some kind of solution, but they will not be able to keep papering over it—and all his speakers who are going to follow.

There will be range of arguments here, such as: ‘Oh, there’s all these push factors,’ ‘Things are terrible in Sri Lanka at the moment,’ and ‘Things are hotting up a little bit in Afghanistan.’ But this is a criminal trade; it is all entirely funded by people looking to take advantage of the desperate. Never forget that. Never forget what happens on those boats—the appalling treatment—and then we have a Prime Minister who actually has the hide to crow about disrupting some of this trade in Indonesia and in the nations to the north. I simply ask the question: what do you do when you disrupt a boat that departs? Do these people find their way back home? No. Do they get any processing in Australia? No. Those who are disrupted in Indonesia simply stay in Indonesia and have another crack—they just have to find another $5,000. That is not humane, but that is not even acknowledged on the other side of the chamber. There is no long-term solution; there is just disruption—making it someone else’s problem, hoping the Indonesian President will not speak out about it and then trying to do some kind of deal to keep the whole thing quiet. But there is no long-term solution.

Where are the discussions with the Afghan and the Pakistani governments? Where is the action and the bipartisan, bilateral approach with Sri Lanka? That is not happening at all. It is all Indonesia’s problem, and then the government simply hopes that the next boat does not come. But we have got to the point where we need an update—not every day; it is getting to an update every session—to try to work out when the next one is coming. Control has been lost. There is absolutely no plan, except to keep moving things around—What is it; the pea and the shell game, where you just keep moving things around?—and hoping for a solution from somebody else. What is the latest proposal now? Christmas Island is overflowing. Potentially another 600 people are on the high seas right now. And the plan? We will take the low-risk males and move them to Darwin, and when Darwin is overrun we will take more high-risk males and move them to Curtin over in WA and then move someone else into Darwin. This is just calculated, cowardly retreat in a policy sense. It is nothing else.

Let us go back to a bit of history, because often what Mr Rudd tends to do is to blithely read out figures from before the Howard government brought in the solution and say that things were actually worse then. Well, let’s remember what the Deputy Prime Minister actually said in some press releases when she said: ‘Boat’—singular—‘proves government has no solutions’. Don’t these things come round to haunt you if you live long enough? What was the second one in 2003? ‘Another boat; another failure.’ I would like to know whether the now Deputy Prime Minister ever had a press release that had anything in the plural. They were jumping up and down at the sight of a boat, singular, because they were lucky to see three a year. What we are looking at now is an order of magnitude greater. One would have thought any responsible Australian government would have said, ‘We need a legislative solution,’ but, instead, what we have is legislative retreat to the point of desperation and breakdown.

We have heard all that doublespeak, and when one goes back to the pubs such as the ones in my electorate—the Alex, the Sands, the Capalaba Tavern, the Cleveland Tavern, the Railway Tavern, the Grand View, the Vicky Point Tavern and all those—and speak at the public bar—

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

You had to read them all out.

Andrew Laming (Bowman, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

they are all saying the same thing about this Prime Minister and his government. I do not need to kick that one along. That one is happening—absolutely. I will make sure that I have got every pub too and every public bar, because in those places that is where you divine the true passionate feeling about this issue. We have a government that is trying to keep two constituencies happy and a price is being paid.

We have heard everything about global trends, and we have heard everything about moving people between different islands, but we know one thing for sure: we are seeing the end of that commitment to overseas processing. It was the one thing, the one signal that we sent very, very clearly: if you paid these criminals to throw you in a boat, the one thing you were not going to get was to be processed in Australia and get an easy option and access to the legal appeals process. For those who do not know, predominantly the burden of proof is on the Commonwealth to prove that an individual is not a refugee, and that is not too easy to do when they have absolutely no way of identifying these people whatsoever. This is tough, but of course it is not that tough for this Prime Minister, is it? It is not too tough for Prime Minister Rudd, because when he was embarrassed with the Oceanic Viking situation—there were 76 people on board and it went on for a few days—instead of hiding under the desk he came out and said, ‘We’ve got to cut a deal; just make sure it’s a deal that I don’t know about.’ Wasn’t that the most extraordinarily superficial and thin-skinned solution: ‘Talk to my security advisers but just make sure that I’m not informed’? This is the greatest megalomaniac, centrist Prime Minister we have ever known, but he knew nothing about that solution.

And what was the solution? To those 76 people, he said, ‘I beg you; please leave the Oceanic Viking and I’ll do you any deal you want.’ That was the fast-track, wasn’t it? No ASIO checks—nothing to check if anyone had any serious crimes on their records. No. It was the fast-track, and what happened? We certainly discovered that four people did fail ASIO checks, but there was nothing that could be done. I recall a certain member here raising the possibility that somebody on the Oceanic Viking might have had an irregular past, and I remember the howls of condemnation from the government benches. Sure enough, he prevailed and he was proven right. I just make a small point that we should never, ever sacrifice the very important border protection and controls that Australia is very proud of for anything. We certainly do not deal it away in a cheap face-saving solution over the Oceanic Viking. But Australians know that is exactly what happened, and that proof of the past is the best evidence of what we can look forward to in the future: more of those deal-cutting, face-saving, spin-making agreements, anything to do this Prime Minister out of the absolute barefaced embarrassment that he feels about the breakdown of border protection.

It is very, very hard sometimes to actually work out what this Prime Minister stands for. It is very, very hard, because basically it is driven by a daily spin assessment. When you really know the chips are down, when there comes an opportunity to develop some real legislative solutions to this, we have seen almost nothing. I just wonder where the heart is to find a solution. I wonder where the heart is to get these people out of these boats and to find solutions for those who are stuck in Indonesia, to do something truly different and revolutionary and game changing. But it is not going to come from this Prime Minister, because his heart is not in a solution.

Right now we have our Customs and Border Protection Services, ASIO and AFP working harder than they ever should have to work because they have been legislatively let down. We see massive expenses facing the Commonwealth. I think $3.6 million is the latest figure per boat, for every one that comes over the horizon. Could anyone in the gallery or anyone listening find a more efficient way to solve that problem? A taxi driver on the way to the airport said to me, ‘What about the Hercules solution?’; for every boat there is a Herculesyou fly them back to where they came from, sign them in with the UN and start processing them fairly because, as this taxi driver knows, there are plenty of people in the home country who would love the opportunity to apply. There are plenty of people waiting in a queue hoping for a chance of a better life. There are plenty of people who are physically threatened, whose property is threatened, who are politically threatened and who never have this opportunity. But it is being dished out under the flag of Kevin 07 to those who can pay for an airfare to fly to Indonesia first. That great injustice is not going to be addressed and we have the best evidence of all, that we have had six consecutive legislative unpickings of what was a perfectly functioning system.

I want to finish on some reflections on Afghanistan. I will never pretend that I have any sort of personal experience that in any way should be regarded as superior to anyone else’s, but I did work with Afghans who were trying to work their way back to their home country, trying to de-mine many towns and villages and allow those families to come back. When the conditions are right, like all people they want to get back to their land. There was no greater sight than these beautifully and ornately decorated trucks full of camels, mules and personal possessions, and the whole family jumping in and heading back home. Let us never forget that in the end these people would love to be able to go back to a peaceful Afghanistan. I commend, in this case, both sides of the chamber for that commitment to the Afghanistan effort, as I do all of those in the international partnership.

Let us remember that, even in the processing of these unfortunate people who are stuck in Pakistan and unable to go back for a range of reasons, they deserve a fair go. Most Australians would appreciate that, and if we are serious about helping this part of the world it is not to keep turning a blind eye to people smuggling or to unravel all of the laws that gave us the integrity in the first place. It is also not to start making trite comparisons with what happened in 1999 and 2000, before Mr Howard’s reforms, as some evidence that we were worse at it than you. It is not about that. We are talking about a direct cause and effect between the laws that were eroded in 2008 under this government. This was a time when they had plenty of time to get it right—hardly a crowded legislative agenda—but they deliberately and methodically, step by step, broke down the very thing that was actually working for this country.

I think there is an enormous amount to answer for here. Without being a little bit uncertain, I do not see any evidence that under the current administration there will be any change. I do not think someone is going to wake up in the morning, tap this PM on the shoulder and say, ‘Maybe we can come up with a solution.’ I think effectively we have legislative rigor mortis; there are just no new ideas coming through. I think that is a great shame for a lot of Australians, because when you speak to them they say, ‘I am genuinely concerned about that and I want to see some evidence of action.’ I believe that that will not be forthcoming. I think people smuggling will continue, that industry will continue and, despite the great work fighting terrorism by the TNI, the Indonesian police and others, it is simply too much to ask that the Indonesian nation can fix this problem for us.

The Indonesians counted on us to do our part of the deal. We had a role, as they often referred to, ‘We had to address the sugar’, but we have not—we have just dished more out. The great tragedy is that Indonesia can now not only throw its hands up in dismay but it also wears 90 per cent of the problem. Make no mistake, we are not being a precious wealthy country unwilling to take our share or commit what we should to humanitarian efforts. We do more than our fair share, but we should be doing much more to stop people smuggling. This will be the great tragedy of 2010—it is emerging, it is evolving. I say as you go back to local communities in Australia this is the great legislative, political and policy tragedy of 2010 and the Rudd administration. (Time expired)

Shayne Neumann (Blair, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I speak in support of the Anti-People Smuggling and Other Measures Bill 2010. I was only elected to this place in November 2007, and that was truly one of the most odd and strange speeches I have heard since my election. The evidence was simply not proffered for the assertions which were made. No evidence was given in relation to funding. The speaker tritely dismissed the evidence of the UNHCR, tritely dismissed the facts and the global pressures, tritely dismissed the fact that the bill that is before the House was never even contemplated by the Howard coalition government when it was in office. He said, ‘We will support this piece of legislation, but the Rudd government has legislative rigor mortis’. Then why support this legislation? He did not speak to the bill, but will support it and did not acknowledge the fact that the legislation strengthens what we are doing in relation to people smuggling and does not acknowledge at all that we have put huge amounts of resources into combating people smuggling. He asked, ‘Have you ever been there?’ Yes, I have been to Indonesia and spoken to the Australian Federal Police there. During a parliamentary delegation I spoke to the Minister of Defence, the Minister for Foreign Affairs, the President of Indonesia and the Indonesian authorities—the military and security over there—and they are working in close cooperation with the Australian government. The two governments are working in tandem to eradicate this pernicious trade in humanity.

People smuggling is wicked. It preys on the vulnerabilities of people. What we will do is criminalise behaviour which the previous government never thought of doing. We are backing up what we are doing with real money—it is budgeted and on the table. We have done that. We are taking steps with Indonesians through the Lombok Treaty and other arrangements with the Indonesian authorities. The previous government claims we are doing nothing: it is nonsense. What they are saying in relation to this is absolute rubbish.

Did the previous government, as this legislation does, establish a new offence of providing support for people smuggling in the Migration Act 1958 and the Criminal Code? The answer is no; they did not do it at all. (Quorum formed) Did the previous coalition government harmonise people-smuggling offences between the Migration Act and the Criminal Code to strengthen the criminal framework? The answer is no. Did they extend the mandatory minimum penalties in the Migration Act to the new aggravated offence involving exploitation or danger of death or serious harm and to offenders convicted of multiple offences? The answer is no. Did they make associated changes to the Surveillance Devices Act and the Telecommunications (Interception and Access) Act to enable law enforcement and security agencies to have consistent access under both acts to the appropriate investigative tools? The answer is no. Did they amend the ASIO Act to enable ASIO to perform a greater role in relation to people smuggling and other serious threats to Australia’s territorial and border integrity? The answer is no. Consistently they did not. So it is all rhetoric over there, not backed up by a legislative framework. The only thing they thought they might do was to do a bit of excision and put a Pacific solution there, a complete and utter failure—$289 million worth of failure. That is the reality.

What did we do? For the benefit of the member for Bowman—who needs to go into those pubs again, have a bit of a chat and get a bit of evidence—I am going to give him a few facts. I will just talk about what we are doing, because he thinks we are doing nothing in Sri Lanka and in those areas and are not working with the Sri Lankans, the Malaysians and the Indonesians. We have provided $35 million in development assistance to Sri Lanka in the last year. We have provided $5 million to support resettlement of internally displaced persons and $2.3 million for demining in the former conflict areas. I do not know whether the member for Bowman knew at all, but there was a civil war over there in places like that. With respect to resettlement of international displaced persons, I would just like him to be aware of the fact that, according to the United Nations, we have tens of millions of people who are displaced throughout the world. Those are the consequences of wars and conflicts in the Middle East and in Asia, including South-East Asia. I do not know where he thinks it is.

For the tories over there, it is always about fear and not about facts. That is what they live and breathe and exist on: fear. That is the way they campaign, that is the way they legislate and that is the way they speak in this House: ‘Don’t give them the facts; don’t give us the facts; don’t give the Australian public the facts. Just campaign, assert and allege fear. Induce it, thrive on it and actually cultivate it.’ That is what they are about.

Let me give the member for Bowman a few facts—through you, Madam Deputy Speaker. We have established a dedicated border protection committee of cabinet. Did those opposite do it? No. We have increased maritime surveillance and patrols by the Border Protection Command. Did they do it? The answer is no. We have committed $654 million to a strategy to combat people smuggling, far more than the coalition ever put in. Did they match it when they were in power? The answer is no. That is part, of course, of a $1.3 billion strategy to strengthen our national security and border protection. They did not commit $63 million to aerial surveillance at all. We have increased the funding. We have also increased funding to the Australian Federal Police—$42 million—and we have increased our cooperation with the Indonesian police in relation to investigation and dismantling of the people-smuggling syndicates.

The coalition members can come in here, rant and rave on these matters and allege all kinds of things, but how about a bit of honesty and truth? How about a bit of reality about what is really happening across the world and acknowledgement that we are doing things? On 4 December, 2008—I do not know where the member for Bowman was—the Prime Minister, the Hon. Kevin Rudd, delivered the government’s first national security statement to parliament, setting out the national security reform agenda. I would recommend—through you, Madam Deputy Speaker—that the member for Bowman go and have a look at that speech, because I was very impressed by what the government was proposing to do in that regard: strengthening border protection and increasing coordination between government agencies. It is extremely important that we support the AFP and the People Smuggling Strike Team that we have established. We have allocated more money and more resources—we did this in the 2009-10 budget—to combat people smuggling and strengthen border protection than any government previously.

We have heard the mythology from those opposite. They talk about what is happening around the world and how it was all to do with the fact that, all around Asia and the Middle East, people were focusing on that prime ministerial suite and the Hon. John Howard. In that suite down the corridor, there he was and they were all looking at him. When he decided, ‘We’re going to toughen our border protection policies,’ they all magically, mysteriously and mystically bowed down at his feet and said: ‘Oh, John. Prime Minister Howard, we are not going to do that because we fear you. We are going to stay away.’ That is just nonsense—absolute arrant nonsense.

The UNHCR has said it. There are 42 million displaced people around the world. That is why they were, and are, coming to these shores and who would not want to come to the best country in the world? If you were in despair and homeless, with war, pestilence and disease around you, why would you not want to come to a western country, a great country like Australia? If you are desperate, you will do anything. You will pay the criminal syndicates anything you can to get there. What we have to do is give resources at the source, as we are doing and as we did in the last budget, as I said. We are working with the Malaysian government, the Indonesian government and the Sri Lankan government.

According to the UNHCR, of the 42 million who are currently displaced around the world, 16 million are refugees and asylum seekers. Anyone with an ounce of compassion would have their heart bleeding for these people, given what they are going through. We are so fortunate in this country, with roofs over our heads, food in our bellies, employment for most Australians and a way of life which is the envy of the world. There are 26 million people displaced within their own countries, according to the UNHCR. They are the facts. That is what is happening—it is the push factors throughout the world. It is not because of legislative changes here. We are toughening up our border protection with legislative changes. We are putting real money on the table, putting real police on the beat. We are working with our partners. Those are the facts.

We hear the mythology from those opposite, who come into this place time and again, and talk about their ‘Pacific solution’ and how it caused a decrease in boat arrivals. It is not true. It is simply not true. Their immigration policy did not result in what they claim. The truth is that we saw an abatement of refugees and asylum seekers around the world in those times. The facts are quite clear. It is like the issue of the temporary protection visas. My understanding is that the opposition supported what we were doing initially but then, for political reasons—campaigning once again on fear—they decided that they would do a backflip. They had a road to Damascus conversion and went back to their old ways.

When we announced the abolition of temporary protection visas for asylum seekers on 13 May 2008, as part of the 2008-09 budget, I was pleased. I thought it was the right thing to do. The coalition has come up with all kinds of mealy-mouthed words about what they will do if they get in, but the TPVs did not stop the boats coming here. In the four years from December 1997 to November 2001, there were a total of 12,651 unauthorised boat arrivals. The Prime Minister, in question time today, set out that the highest number of boats which came to Australia in the last decade or so, and the highest number of asylum seekers, was on the previous government’s watch.

And what happened when the people came to this country? By the time that TPVs were abolished last year, nearly 90 per cent of the people initially granted a TPV had been granted a permanent protection visa or another visa to remain in Australia. There were 11,206 people granted TPVs and, of these, 9,841 had already been granted a permanent protection visa or another visa. The previous government’s policy simply failed. It failed outright. What is their solution? Do they really want to go back to putting women and children behind barbed wire again? Is that what they want to do? What sort of decent, humane country does that? That is not the solution. The solution is to work with our neighbours across Asia. The solution is to beef up our border protection with cops on the beat. The solution is to put real money on the table to support our position. That is what the solution is—not to campaign on fear and not to campaign the way the opposition are campaigning.

I support this legislation. I think it will make a difference. It is something that the Howard government did not have the wit or wisdom to do when they were in power. It is not legislative rigor mortis; it is real reform. It is a real attempt to make the situation better and I commend the legislation to the House and I commend the Prime Minister’s national security speech to the member for Bowman.

Bob Baldwin (Paterson, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Defence Science and Personnel) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

This morning I received my Daily Telegraph and there, on the front page, it said, ‘Refugees moved to Darwin as more boats arrive: PM’s Tampa crisis’. When I look at the page 4 description, I want to go through each of the arrival occurrences since 3 January, because this analysis is very strong: on 3 January, three nautical miles north of Christmas Island, 76 asylum seekers on board; on 3 January, 29 miles south of Cartier Island, 30 people on board; on 8 January, 12 nautical miles north-west of Ashmore Reef, 27 on board; on 10 January, 4.8 nautical miles north of Christmas Island, 14 on board; on 13 January, five nautical miles north of Christmas Island, 42 on board; on January 22, near West Islet at Ashmore Reef, 29 on board; on 23 January, one nautical mile north of Christmas Island, 38 on board; and on 26 January, 12 nautical miles north-east of Ashmore Reef, 48 people on board. That is eight vessels in January.

The arrivals continue: on 1 February, in the vicinity of Christmas Island, 181 on board; on 4 February 4, 11 nautical miles north of Ashmore Reef, 89 on board; on 6 February, 91 nautical miles south-south-west of Christmas Island, 45 on board; on 12 February, 25 nautical miles south of West Islet, Ashmore Reef, 48 on board; on 18 February, 22 nautical miles north-west of Ashmore Reef, 41 on board; on 20 February, 16 nautical miles north of Ashmore Reef, 10 on board; on 24 February, near West Islet, Ashmore Reef, 43 on board; on 25 February, five nautical miles west of Christmas Island, 45 on board; and on 28 February, 13 nautical miles south-west of Christmas Island, 57 on board. That is nine vessels during February.

It goes on: 3 March, north of Ashmore Reef, 47 on board; from 4 March to 6 March, Indonesian police arrest 63 Afghan migrants on Lombok Island as they plan to head for Australia—well done; 6 March, east of Christmas Island, 80 on board; 7 March, north-west of Adele Island, 28 on board; 10 March, north of Ashmore Reef, 46 on board; 11 March, Border Protection Command provides assistance to a vessel 118 nautical miles north-west of the Tiwi Islands, 24 on board; 11 March, Border Protection Command provides assistance to a vessel 200 nautical miles west of the Tiwi Islands, eight on board; and 13 March, north-west of Christmas Island, 35 on board. That is 1,194 people over 25 vessels.

I say to the Prime Minister that, for all his rhetoric about who did what and where in the past, these numbers do not lie. These are incidents where intervention has been required and people have been taken to Christmas Island. As to what the major concern is now, I quote a section of the report by Ian McPhedran and Steve Lewis on page 4 of today’s Daily Telegraph:

Darwin’s immigration detention centre has been on alert for the arrival of several hundred asylum seekers from Christmas Island, which is close to overflowing.

“If one of the big boats arrives, then Christmas Island will be blown out of the water,” a well-placed source said.

The article goes on to say:

This year alone, almost 1200 boat people have arrived on 24 vessels—nearly half the number who arrived in all of 2009.

It also reports:

According to intelligence reports the illegal vessels, carrying several hundred people each, are expected to make for the Ashmore Reef area rather than Christmas Island.

The Customs vessel Oceanic Viking and charter aircraft are on stand-by to transfer more than 300 people to Darwin within 72 hours. If both vessels make it to Australia then up to 600 people will be relocated to the mainland.

That is an area of concern.

The difference between this Prime Minister and former Prime Minister Howard is that Prime Minister Howard was tough on illegal immigration. Prime Minister Howard was tough on those who sought to earn an income on people smuggling. He provided direct intervention, direct action, on illegal boat arrivals and he said, ‘It will be us and us alone who determine who comes to Australia’. This Prime Minister, Kevin Rudd, seems to have an open door policy, an open door policy that has led to thousands of people arriving in this country illegally. One of the sad aspects of that is that those people displace other people who have been waiting properly on a queue for assessment for admission to Australia.

What I also find amazing are statements by members opposite who talk about the urgency of these people being resettled in Australia. When I think about the numbers that were on the Oceanic Viking and the media reports that some of these people had been living in Indonesia for five to eight years without a threat to their physical environment, I think that they wanted to come to Australia more for economic opportunity rather than personal safety factors. I then think about those who have been left in a country where indeed they are facing danger to their safety and the fact that they have now been pushed to the back of the queue.

Through the period of this government, 92 boats and over 4,100 people cannot be wrong. They have seen a crack in the armour of this government, an opportunity. Those who traffick in people have seen an income and so the boats have continued merrily down the coast towards Australia. This is a government who have failed, and failed miserably, in keeping illegal people out of Australia. This is a Prime Minister who cut a deal with those on the Oceanic Viking, instead of standing firm, and offered them the world to save a bit of public face. You do not discourage people from coming to Australia illegally by opening up all sorts of corridors of guaranteed access and the benefits that being in Australia provide. The proof of that is that since the Oceanic Viking we have seen an acceleration in the numbers of people who have come to Australia.

We hear members opposite talk about, ‘Well, back in 2001 and 2002.’ Can I say to members opposite that we need to think back, and think back well, because there was a period under the Howard government where vessels did not come—where people understood that if you made your way to Australia illegally that you were going to be processed offshore, that there was no automatic right to the legal system in Australia and that there was no automatic right to be considered as an Australian citizen. In fact, there were just four vessels that arrived from July 2006, eight in 2005 and zero in 2004, as against eight in January this year, nine in February and eight so far in March.

So I say to members opposite that your policies are failing and failing miserably. They are failing because what you have created is an unreal expectation for those poor people who pay the people smugglers enormous amounts of money for a free trip to Australia—or, what they consider free access to Australia; the trip is not free because it could be $10,000 or $20,000. That says two things to me. If those people have been living in Indonesia for three, five or eight years and if they have $10,000 or $20,000, it is not their personal security that is under threat because they have been living in an environment where they have not had a personal security threat. It cannot just be an economic issue because they had $10,000 or $20,000 to pay the people smugglers. What it is is that these people just want to jump the queue. They want to jump the queue and push more-deserving people to the back of the list, and I think that is what is wrong.

Our Australian Federal Police understand the issue. In fact, on their website, they state:

People smugglers are individuals or groups who assist others to illegally enter a country. In the case of Australia, people smugglers provide air or sea access.

People smuggling is a major threat to all Australians because:

• there are serious security and criminal concerns when people arriving in Australia are not properly identified
• there are major quarantine and health risks involved in people bypassing normal immigration channels
• processing illegal immigrants creates significant logistical problems and costs, and
• it infringes Australia’s sovereignty, giving us less control over our borders.

If we consider that the cost of housing these illegal immigrants on Christmas Island and soon Darwin is expensive, I want the House to consider what the cost is to our defence forces—the people who sign up to serve and protect our nation—who are used to pick up these vessels and bring them to Australia. It is not exactly what they joined the military for but they are engaged in it. At a time of an operational tempo in areas where our troops are doing an outstanding job, we are stretching our defence forces even further.

The cost of housing people in detention is very expensive. Estimates are somewhere between $150 and $250 per day. In fact, I had a look around to see what other affordable options could be, given the cost of the Prime Minister having the Oceanic Viking go up and house 76 illegal immigrants who refused to get off the vessel. They sat in the harbour in Indonesia on an Australian vessel and just refused to get off the boat until the Prime Minister caved in and gave them what they wanted. So perhaps the Prime Minister could save Australia a lot of money and provide accommodation.

I am always looking through travel magazines these days and planning a family holiday in the near future. I looked at some of the cruise ships. Did you know that you can get the Pacific Dawn, which will hold 2,020 passengers, at $118 a night? Then we would not have to use our Navy. The Prime Minister could run his own cruise line. By God, he is letting enough people in here, he could fill a couple of these vessels a year, and probably do it for substantially less than the $10,000 or $20,000 that these people pay. He could do it with far more safety and bring them directly into Australia. That is how ridiculous the situation has become. This Prime Minister has become so lax with standards, rules and enforcement that he is encouraging illegal trade in people. And the numbers do not lie. Do not worry about 10, 15 or three years ago, worry about the escalating numbers since the Rudd government has been in power—the 1,200 since Christmas.

Julie Owens (Parramatta, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Ms Owens interjecting

Bob Baldwin (Paterson, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Defence Science and Personnel) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The member for Parramatta objects. That is 1,200 people in less than three months.

Julie Owens (Parramatta, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Ms Owens interjecting

Bob Baldwin (Paterson, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Defence Science and Personnel) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I am not ignorant. I am looking at the numbers and I have already read the review. If you had been in the chamber, member for Parramatta, you would have heard a line-by-line description of the boat and where they came to and the numbers that were contained. The problem is that you are blind and your party is blind to reality.

Sharon Bird (Cunningham, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The member will address his comments through the chair.

Bob Baldwin (Paterson, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Defence Science and Personnel) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Sorry, Madam Deputy Speaker. The Labor Party and members opposite are blind to reality. The reality is that boats continue to come and are increasingly going to arrive in Australia. Why? Because it is easy access—and they have achieved the one thing that they always wanted. By ramping up the numbers of people coming down to Christmas Island and Ashmore, the government is now going to be forced to move people to Darwin. Once they are in Darwin, it will only further exacerbate the problem of more and more and more boats coming to Australia.

Members opposite would say the coalition have concerns because they are heartless people. I say to you, Madam Deputy Speaker, that that is not the truth. The truth is that we are compassionate people, but we believe in supporting those who take their rightful place on a queue to come in—not those who have the financial ability, who have not been living under a threatened environment, who simply want to jump the queue. So what this Prime Minister and members opposite need to do is explain in detail and perhaps put some ads in the papers in Afghanistan and Sri Lanka and in those camps where refugees are housed and say, ‘I am sorry, you can’t come to Australia because we are letting people queue jump; we are encouraging queuejumpers.’ I think that that is an absolute disgrace.

This bill and these measures provide a small change and simply do not go far enough. What this government needs to do is toughen up. It needs to toughen up and make sure that actions are taken to reduce, restrict and stop illegal people coming into this country. I am quite often quoted to by members opposite about our obligations under refugee conventions of the United Nations. I say to you: that applies when people are living under threat. Somebody living in Indonesia for three, five or eight years and earning an income there is not what I would exactly call living in a threat environment. The only person who is in cloud-cuckoo-land, my friend, is you. It is you because you refuse to see the facts. You sit there blindly—

Ms Anna Burke (Chisholm, Deputy-Speaker) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Again, the member will not reflect on the chair.

Bob Baldwin (Paterson, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Defence Science and Personnel) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Sorry, the member opposite is out of his seat, but be that as it may—

Jon Sullivan (Longman, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Mr Sullivan interjecting

Bob Baldwin (Paterson, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Defence Science and Personnel) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The member for Longman, who is making gestures—

Ms Anna Burke (Chisholm, Deputy-Speaker) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The member for Paterson is correct. The member for Longman will not interject while not in his seat.

Bob Baldwin (Paterson, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Defence Science and Personnel) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I am just going to finalise and say this: the day that this government gets serious and stamps its authority on the illegal trade of people into this nation and does everything that it can to promote the proper process whereby genuine refugees are not pushed to the back of a queue for those who have taken a financial opportunity to come to this country, is the day that the government can stand here and lecture me on the issues in relation to settling refugees in this country. But while ever the government takes the stance that it takes now, while ever it takes the soft option—and that is what it is, the soft option—what we will see is a continual arrival of illegal boat people.

It will not be long before Villawood becomes the first port of call for people coming in illegally. They will pick them up off the boat and whack them straight down to Villawood or other migrant settlement areas, and that will again exacerbate the problem. We need to see tough measures and we need to see that those measures are enforced. We cannot ever again let people on an Australian vessel in a foreign country dictate to our Prime Minister the terms on which they will get off that vessel. Sovereignty is important and it is absolute. We must make sure that we protect Australia’s interests as well as the interests of those who are truly disadvantaged, not those who are opportunistic.

Julie Owens (Parramatta, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I am pleased to rise to speak on the Anti-People Smuggling and Other Measures Bill 2010. This bill will strengthen the Commonwealth’s anti-people-smuggling legislative framework, supporting the government’s ongoing work to combat people-smuggling. I am particularly pleased to speak on the bill because, by strengthening action against people-smuggling, we work to protect an incredibly important refugee settlement program in this country, a longstanding settlement program which in fact started in 1959 with 10,000 refugees from Europe after the Second World War. We have in fact been doing it at roughly the same number for a very long time and our program plays a very important part in the world resettlement of refugees.

The bill creates a new offence of providing support for people-smuggling, an offence that did not exist in Australian law. It harmonises people-smuggling offences under the Migration Act and Criminal Code to strengthen our criminal framework. Importantly, it extends mandatory minimum penalties for people-smuggling. In a very real way it increases our capacity to deal with people who smuggle people and those who assist people smugglers. I am proud to stand to support this bill, because we must fight to stamp out the organised crime of people-smuggling to reduce risk to the victims of the smugglers and because people-smuggling and the response to it in Australia weaken public support for Australia’s very important refugee program.

I am very proud of the role that Australia plays in the international refugee crisis. It is a special role and one played by very few countries. We as a nation take refugees for resettlement through the UN process, and that is very rare in the world. A tiny fraction of refugees are resettled in third countries. The UN estimated that the number of people forcibly uprooted by conflict and persecution worldwide at the end of 2008 was 42 million: around 16 million refugees and asylum seekers and 26 million internally displaced people uprooted within their own countries. The UNHCR estimates that some 5.7 million refugees are living in a situation of protracted displacement, having spent five years or more in exile. Only 121,000 refugees were proposed for resettlement to third countries in 2008. That is less than one per cent of the world’s 16 million refugees and less than 0.3 per cent of the total number of 42 million displaced people.

Resettlement is very rare and Australia is one of a relatively small number of countries with longstanding resettlement programs. As I said earlier, we have a very long history in this, and we should be proud of that. There are other countries that do it also. Canada, New Zealand, the Netherlands, Denmark, Finland, Norway, Sweden, the United States and a small number of very small countries—around 12 in all around the world—have longstanding resettlement programs. Recently some new countries have joined: Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Iceland, Ireland and the UK, on quite a small scale. On the resettlement program in 2008 the United States took 56,700 refugees; Australia and Canada, around 6½ thousand; Sweden, 1,900; and the other countries, between 500 and 1,200—very small numbers from a very small selection of countries.

It is quite a dilemma that countries like ours find themselves in. We have longstanding resettlement programs but we do not have what the rest of the world would see as refugee problems. Most of the countries with strong resettlement programs like ours have something in common, but essentially we do not share borders with strife torn regions. People do not flock across our borders in large numbers and our borders are not easily crossed. Most of us are separated from war torn areas by miles of ocean or miles of land. It is perhaps easier for countries such as ours to sign refugee conventions and to accept resettlement than it is for countries that see thousands of refugees fleeing neighbouring countries and crossing their borders.

Sections of our community respond with such fear at a few hundred people on boats, but how would we react to the circumstances that Pakistan finds itself in? At the end of 2008 Pakistan hosted the largest number of refugees in the world, with 1.8 million refugees, mostly from Afghanistan. Now that is a refugee problem. In the same year Syria was host to 1.1 million Iraqi refugees, making it the second-largest refugee-hosting country in the world. Iran hosted 980,000; Jordan, 500,000; Chad, 330,000; Tanzania, 321,000; and 320,000 refugees flocked across Kenya’s borders. The economic and social load from hosting refugees is overwhelmingly carried by developing countries, who hosted nearly 8½ million refugees, or 80 per cent of the global refugee population. Forty-nine of the least developed countries in the world provide asylum to 18 per cent of the world’s refugees. In our region, the Asia-Pacific hosts around one-third of all refugees in the world.

Some of the most important refugee-hosting countries in the world are developing countries that host hundreds of thousands of refugees that flee into their countries from neighbouring conflict zones or from neighbouring countries that will not accept them as refugees. They cross porous borders made up of coast land and land borders. We, who handle, in slow years, a few hundred and, in more difficult years like this one, a few thousand, ask those countries to help us stop people-smuggling. Over the last decade, through the previous government and through the Rudd government, those countries have helped and we have made substantial progress. This bill moves us further along the process of working with our neighbours to stop the pernicious trade of people-smuggling, which risks the lives of refugees on a daily basis.

Some will say, and they have in this debate, that the numbers of people attempting to come to Australia is a factor of Australian immigration law. People-smuggling is a crime. It is committed by people with little regard for the safety of its victims, little regard for the future of the people they prey on and, I suspect, very little regard for the quality of the service. The boats are leaky and I doubt that any sensible person would believe that people smugglers were sitting down every day and studying the immigration law of countries around the world to pick the best country of destination for their victims; they do not even put them on boats that stay afloat. I honestly think that the idea of criminals actually sitting down and studying changes in immigration law is nonsense. The loud statements from the opposition about being soft on people smugglers are far more visible to people smugglers than the legislation.

I also do not believe that asylum seekers are sitting around studying immigration law. I do not believe that is actually about our law. It is about where people are seeking to flee from and the numbers in which they are fleeing. As the number of people fleeing rises, so does the number of people seeking to get on boats. They do, generally, seek out resettlement countries among others. They do seek out the US to a far greater extent than they seek out Australia. Canada receives 10 times the number of unauthorised asylum seekers as Australia. The Scandinavian countries receive far more than us. France receives many more than us. Europe receives many more than us.

The idea that world refugees are all looking towards Australia is simply false. The number of refugees that arrive unauthorised in Australia is very, very small relative to those arriving in other countries around the world. The increases in Australia are smaller than they are in the rest of the world. For example, in Europe there were 290,000 claims in 2008. That was a 13 per cent increase from the 256,000 claims in 2007. In Canada and the United States there were 86,000 claims, nine per cent more than in 2007. But even then, the overall increase in the number of claims was still half of that in 2001, where 150,000 applications were lodged in both countries. It is worth talking about that because we have heard the opposition say that the change in the number of refugees seeking asylum in Australia was something to do with our laws. Australia had very high numbers of what we now call unauthorised arrivals in 2000 and in 2001, with 13,000 claims in 2000 and 12½ thousand claims in 2001. This matched the dramatic increase in Canada and the US for the same years.

The UN reported that the number of refugees around the world declined dramatically by 2005 to 8.4 million. That is half the number that they say we have around the world now. There was a dramatic decline in the number of refugees moving around the world in 2005 and there was a dramatic decline in the number of refugees coming to Australia by boat. Then it started to rise. It rose to almost 10 million by 2006 which was the highest since 2001. The numbers started to increase for Australia. They also dramatically increased around the world. They continued to increase around the world and they continued to increase in Australia. It is illogical to suggest that the increases in Canada or the US had anything to do with Australian law, yet the numbers increased there at the same or greater extent than they increased in Australia.

If you think this is a major problem for Australia, consider Yemen, which had 74,000 Africans arrive by boat in 2009. This was a 50 per cent increase on the 50,000 the year before—a record for that year. There are other countries in the world that have substantial refugee problems, yet we in Australia respond with such incredible fear to the relatively small number of people who arrive on our shores by boat. In spite of that, it is incredibly important that we do protect the Australian community’s perceptions of our resettlement program because it plays such an important role.

I want to talk about a couple of refugees that I know. I live in the incredibly diverse community of Parramatta where over 40 per cent of the population is born overseas. I doubt whether most Australians would be able to recognise refugees, even if they had refugees among their friends, because quite often refugees do not talk about their stories; they deliberately do not. Sometimes it is years before they even tell you about their background or what they went through. Many Australians would not personally know the stories of refugees. I do. I want to talk about a couple of these stories.

There is one young man in my electorate—and I will not tell you his name or where he comes from because he is very well-known. He arrived in Australia from Africa as a refugee at the age of 20 with his four younger brothers and sisters. He studied English when he got here; he later enrolled in law and is now in his final year. Two of his younger brothers and sisters, who he raised, are now at university as well and the other two are still in high school. If you ask him whether his parents are here—I have heard other people ask him that, as have I—he evades that question. I honestly do not know where his parents are and I do not know the fate of his parents. But I do know that this young man came to Australia after many years in a camp with his four younger brothers and sisters and he has raised them incredibly well. That is as much as you can possibly ask of an Australian. He is an extraordinary young man and we are very, very lucky to have him.

I met a young woman and her husband the other day that had a beautiful little baby with them. I call her the beautiful little chocolate baby because she is an African baby and she is just the most gorgeous little thing. I talked to them and they told me they had been in a camp for five years. Before the woman fled her homeland, she was a law student. But now in Australia, she is struggling to learn English, though she is doing incredibly well. I asked her whether the child was her first child and the answer was no. The couple were separated from their four-year-old daughter when they were displaced between two refugee camps. They have no idea where their four-year-old daughter is.

These are horrendous stories. People find themselves in a camp and there is no way out. I hear a lack of compassion on the other side of this House for the circumstances that these people are in. I hear the idea that there is an ordered queue somewhere and you can stand in it waiting to get to the front. The people who fled Vietnam all those years ago were in the front of the queue for awhile until war broke out elsewhere, and then another group was moved to the front of the queue. There are still Vietnamese refugees living in countries in the world who do not have the rights of a citizen. So many years later, they are still living with uncertainty because they were moved from the front of the queue when war broke out elsewhere. When war broke out in so many African countries, those countries were moved further up the queue. The queue moves depending on where the conflict is.

If there actually were an ordered queue that 42 million people could stand in and someone with godlike powers could say, ‘If you stay there for three years, you’ll be able to go home,’ if it were actually possible to do that, then we would be having a different discussion here. But the notion that there is an ordered queue, that people in fear of their lives—people who are facing illness, death, no life for their children, no future for their children, people who have already lost family members, who are already traumatised—rationally would say, ‘I’d better just sit here and wait for someone to come along and tell me where the queue is,’ is nonsense. The lack of compassion that I hear from the other side just beggars belief.

It is because of the stories of these people that the Australian resettlement program is so very important and we need to defend it. We should all be defending it. We should all be standing up today in this House talking about how important this refugee resettlement program is. Rather than demonising people who are desperately trying to seek a new life for themselves, we should be talking proudly about what we have done and what else we can do to assist.

Australia assists in a number of ways, but I will tell you what we cannot do again. I know people in my electorate who spent years in detention centres—five, six years. I know one man who spent seven years in a detention centre. He is half my age; he is in his early 20s. He was in a detention centre for seven years. The Howard government actually started a funding program to assist people who had been in detention centres and needed assistance in resettling, having spent so many years in trauma. We cannot go back to that. I know people who spent years on temporary protection visas and I know what that did to them and their families. They and their children had no security. We cannot go back to that.

There are people in my community—and I despair at these people—who, when the opposition starts to spread this fear, come out with lines like, ‘We should just push the boats back and let them drown.’ We should not accept that. We should not accept those statements and we should not be stirring up that kind of attitude in our community. Yet every time we have this sort of fear campaign on the other side, this demonising of these desperate people, I get that kind of response from some members of my community. I get other members of my community saying, ‘Send them back to where they came from.’ When I say, ‘When they arrive, they might get shot,’ I get the reply: ‘Not my problem.’ I do not think we should be accepting that attitude either and I do not think we should be stirring that up in our community.

We should be talking proudly about the way this country has resettled so many refugees over so many years. We have done it incredibly well. We should be proud of it. We should be talking it up. We should be talking about the contribution these people have made. Does anybody now look back on the Vietnamese boat people—the term ‘boat people’ was coined for them—and not think, ‘What a great contribution this group of people has made to this country’?

Australia contributes to addressing the world refugee dilemma in a number of ways. I will briefly outline some of those now for the people out there who do not know just what Australia does. There are essentially four parts. Firstly, we provide assistance and aid to countries of origin, to stabilise situations and assist people who are able to return safely to their home in time. That is very important. We actually take relatively small numbers. We do not have people flooding across our borders. But we use some of our capacity to assist countries that do have large numbers of refugees to house those refugees and to assist them to return safely when their homelands are safe. That is a very important thing that we do.

Secondly, we support asylum seekers in neighbouring countries as close as possible to their country of origin. We do that in Indonesia, for example. (Quorum formed) (Time expired)

Kelly O'Dwyer (Higgins, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise to speak on the government’s Anti-People Smuggling and Other Measures Bill 2010. Before I commence my speech, I would like to address some comments that were made by the member for Parramatta in her speech. She ascribed comments to those here on this side of the chamber that we had suggested turning the boats back and letting them drown. I categorically reject that. That is certainly not the view of those on this side of the chamber.

Julie Owens (Parramatta, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I did not make that comment—you misheard.

Sharon Bird (Cunningham, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Order! There will be no interjections. There are other forums in which to correct comments that are made. The member for Higgins has the call.

Kelly O'Dwyer (Higgins, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

While I speak in favour of this bill, a bill that contains sensible measures to target criminals who engage in the highly lucrative and illegal activity of people smuggling, it is important to note that this bill is an expression of the Rudd government’s failed policy on border protection, a failure to stop the illegal boat arrivals and to keep our borders secure. There is no question that new criminal offences for people who support people smuggling, as well as increased penalties for people smugglers, is a step in the right direction to deter human trafficking networks in the Middle East, Africa and elsewhere from their potentially deadly operations, just as there is no question that increasing the investigative capacity of Australian government agencies will equip them to better target, disrupt and prosecute such networks—a good thing. However, this bill does not go far enough. It does not address the substantive issue at the heart of what has become an ever-escalating problem, and that issue is the Rudd government’s softening of their border protection policy.

Prior to the 2007 election, Kevin Rudd promised to keep our borders secure. He said that he would turn back the illegal boats. In August 2008, far from sending the signal that Australia was closed to people smugglers and criminal networks, he made significant changes to our border protection scheme. These changes included the dismantling of temporary protection visas, the closure of offshore processing centres and, more recently, the establishment of special deals for certain illegal arrivals, such as those on Oceanic Viking. The Rudd government claimed that these changes made our border protection policy more humane and would not compromise the security of our borders. This was a false claim on both counts: first, because anything that encourages an increase in human trafficking cannot possibly be considered humane; and, second, because the security of our borders has been compromised.

I will start by talking to the first point. Those who run people-smuggling operations in places like Iraq, Afghanistan and parts of Africa, and closer to home, do not adhere to any moral imperatives; their only concern is to profit from the desperation of others. They do not have any concern for the welfare of their hapless clients. There are no occupational health and safety laws to concern them, there are no regulations and there are no consumer protection laws. They put desperate people on a boat, they get paid and whatever happens from then on is of no concern to them. This is as far from humanitarian practice as you can get. It is deceptive and potentially deadly. In fact, we know of a recent tragic case, in October of last year, where 105 Afghans set out from Indonesia and have not been heard of since. And then there are all of those stories that remain untold.

The second point is that you only need to look at the number of illegal arrivals since August 2008 to see just how much of a green light the Rudd government has given to people smugglers: at current count, 92 boats and more than 4,100 people have arrived illegally here in Australia. In 2010 alone, we have had 24 boats and almost 1,200 people arrive illegally in just 10 weeks. Since 2001, we have gone from an average under the coalition government of three illegal boat arrivals per year to two boats every week under the Rudd government. This is the highest rate on record.

Let us look at the coalition’s record. While illegal boat arrivals surged in 2000 and 2001, after the Tampa the coalition brought into effect strong border protection measures. It was the combination of these measures that sent a clear signal to people smugglers that Australia was not open for human trafficking. The results are a testament to the effectiveness of the policy, and it is worth reflecting on this. In 2002-03, there were no illegal boat arrivals. In 2003-04, there were three illegal boat arrivals and 82 people. In 2004-05, again there were no illegal boat arrivals. In 2005-06, there were eight illegal boat arrivals, 61 people. In 2006-07, there were four illegal boat arrivals, 133 people. In 2007-08, there were three illegal boat arrivals, 25 people. And then we see a change: in 2008-09, there were 24 illegal boat arrivals, 1,039 people. In 2009-10, there have so far been 92 illegal boat arrivals and over 4,100 people. This is a significant shift.

The Rudd government would like the Australian public to believe that this is a result of push factors, that international conflicts beyond their control have led to this increase. Yet the evidence does not support this. Only last week, the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees reported that in Sri Lanka and Afghanistan—two countries repeatedly cited by the government as being most significantly affected by these push factors—the situation has significantly improved. Despite this, arrivals still increase.

Given the Rudd government’s justifications, given they say that it is due to push factors, it is curious indeed that asylum applications around the world today are 40 per cent lower than what they were when the coalition was confronting this issue 10 years ago. Despite all of the spin, there can be no doubt that pull factors have been a powerful force behind the dramatic escalation in illegal boat arrivals. People smugglers have heard the siren call. The Rudd government’s loosening of arrangements to allow people to settle permanently in Australia is a powerful incentive—one that sees people risk their lives on boats and pay up to $20,000 to people smugglers for the dangerous fare. The increased ability for illegal arrivals to gain permanent settlement is a product that sells itself and makes Australia a key target for criminal networks.

It is reported today in the papers that there are two more vessels on the way, with hundreds on board. Christmas Island has the capacity to hold 2,040 asylum seekers, but the facility cannot cope with the numbers that are arriving. Tents have had to be erected to cope with the numbers. But the Rudd government have got another plan. Today the Daily Telegraph exposed that plan. Their plan is to shift hundreds of asylum seekers to the mainland where they will be processed onshore at the Berrimah facility in Darwin. This will become a new holding centre. This is the start of onshore processing. This will mean that people smugglers will have an even more powerful product to sell. Far from decreasing the illegal boat arrivals, we will see the large number of arrivals sustained and potentially increase.

We must not ignore the terrible cost of people smuggling—both the financial cost and the human cost. Already we know that there has been a $132 million blow-out in the cost of processing illegal arrivals on Christmas Island this year. If these boat arrivals continue at the current rate, we estimate that the Australian taxpayer is looking at increased costs of around $300 million a year. That is over $1 billion of additional immigration costs over four years, including 2009-10. On average for each person who turns up on Christmas Island the Australian government spends around $80,000. It is clear that this problem is not only a humanitarian problem but an economic problem as well. Increased numbers means increased costs. Increased costs lead to further spending and budget blow-outs. The Rudd government, through their bungled Home Insulation Program with its $1 billion blow-out and now this latest blow-out in border protection, continue to demonstrate that they are absolute failures when it comes to strong economic management.

While on the matter of funding, it is unclear whether as a result of this bill the government will provide ASIO with further funding to deal with their increased responsibilities to target people smugglers. If no additional funding is available, we have to consider whether ASIO will be diverted from other important agency functions. I hope that during the course of the government speeches we will be enlightened on this point.

But let us not forget the human cost. While those opposite ascribe base motives to our strong view on this side of the chamber that it is critical to stop illegal boat arrivals, there is a very simple explanation. We do not like people risking their lives. We do not like enriching criminals. We do not want to outsource our refugee settlement program to people smugglers.

Globally, Australia has one of the strongest records when it comes to the settlement of refugees. In per capita terms, Australia ranks first for refugee resettlement. But, when you consider the statistics, less than one per cent of the world’s refugees will be granted permanent settlement in one of 16 countries, including Australia. That is why it is so important that we conduct the process in a fair and compassionate manner. There are many refugees who would love to come to this country. Some in refugee camps are now second and third generation refugees. They have waited patiently, unlike those who wear their humanitarian credentials on their sleeves. I do not understand how it is more humane to allow people smugglers to determine who gets processed for resettlement here in Australia ahead of the UNHCR in these camps. It is not defensible and it is another example of the Rudd government failing to take responsibility, failing to tackle the big issues. They are more concerned with spin than substance.

There is no question that we need to work constructively with our neighbours to tackle this issue. We welcome the announcement by the Indonesian President on his recent visit here to Australia that Indonesia is making people smuggling a criminal offence in Indonesia. But the reality is that, unless the Rudd government sends a clear signal to people smugglers, such actions, while worthy, will not stop the arrival of the boats. Through its failed border protection policy the Rudd government has given the people smugglers what they need to convince their customers that getting on a dilapidated and unseaworthy vessel and being stuck on the high seas is a worthwhile endeavour. Anything we can do to prevent this from occurring will be beneficial to both Australia and the people whose lives are spared from such a dangerous journey. These provisions are a small first step and long overdue.

Kevin Rudd must level with the Australian people. He broke his promise that he would turn back the boats. He must acknowledge that his policy changes have led to this surge in illegal boat arrivals. If he does not acknowledge the problem and does not fix it by sending a clear and unambiguous signal on border protection, the only winners will be the people smugglers—and that would be the real tragedy.