Harry Jenkins (Speaker) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I have received a letter from the honourable member for Cook proposing that a definite matter of public importance be submitted to the House for discussion, namely:

The failure of the government to implement effective border protection policies.

I call upon those members who approve of the proposed discussion to rise in their places.

More than the number of members required by the standing orders having risen in their places—

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

I rise on this matter of public importance, particularly following the very sombre presentations that we have just been witness to. The issues are not, of course, unrelated. The Prime Minister today in question time talked about what she believes is just a slogan on behalf of the coalition, which is ‘Stop the boats’. These are three words that those on the other side in this chamber do not like to hear. They do not like to hear the words ‘stop the boats’, because when we talk about stopping the boats it reminds the government of their pathetic failure in the realm of border protection, in the realm of immigration policy and in the realm of their own resolve to address these issues rather than just be passive receptors of what has come our way and what they have drawn to our shores by their own policies. It reminds them also of the success of the coalition government. We implemented measures that did indeed stop the boats—not a slogan but a result.

So, when the government stand in this place and accuse the coalition of sloganeering on the issue of stopping the boats, they need to remind themselves that the boats did indeed stop under our government, and, secondly, that under their government the boats have started to come again. This is why we find that the government never, ever like to hear the three words ‘stop the boats’—because they represent policy success for the coalition and policy failure for the government.

Since the border protection regime was softened by this government when it came to government in 2007 and dismantled the strong regime that was put forward by the coalition and operated throughout the years we were in government, this is what has been removed. Permanent residency for those who seek to come to Australia illegally by boat is back on the table as a major incentive and a major outcome being sought by those who come and, more importantly, by the people smugglers who sell this product, literally, and, we estimate, made at least $25 million from that business last financial year.

Universal offshore processing is no more in this country, and certainly third-country processing is in no way near ever being achieved by the government. Boats are no longer returned where the circumstances permit. Special deals are done with asylum seekers. We had the Oceanic Viking at around this time last year. This government did a special deal which we are still seeing the results of today, with 17 of those who were on the Oceanic Viking now in a centre in Romania. It was confirmed in Senate estimates today that a number of those have been rejected by Canada and the United States. Yet this government has a deal that will see them brought to this country, no doubt, by the end of this year if the resettlement outcome is not found. The reason they will be here is that the government will not commit to reassessing their refugee status, even though it put in place an asylum freeze which said that conditions in Sri Lanka had changed. More than a year later it is not prepared to reassess their claim. It is going to ensure that these people are resettled in Australia for no more reason than that they had a special deal with Kevin Rudd.

We have seen the absurd proposals like the asylum freeze used as an election fix in an attempt to provide a substitute for genuine and proven policy. The result of all this is that 174 boats have arrived, with 8,295 people on those boats. In this calendar year alone there have been 106 boats, with 5,260 people—that is more than 500 a month. Since the election we have had 20 boats, no less—946 people. We have seen now more than 5,000 people in an overworked, overstressed and falling apart detention network. We have seen riots, we have seen demonstrations and we have had instances of self-harm. We have seen only 75 people—we believe from the Senate estimates process—repatriated to their home country having failed the refugee status assessment.

More than 700 children are being detained, and I will come back to that matter in a moment. More than 5,000 people are in detention today. This is the record that the government must be held to account for. If they believe that their policies are more humanitarian, more compassionate, then they must justify why they think so, with 174 boats and almost 8,300 people getting on those boats and risking their lives. We believe around 175 have tried and failed and perished at sea. They must justify the more than 700 children being detained and the average stay in detention today: 71 per cent of those in detention are staying more than three months, compared with around 30 per cent just six months ago. The government must explain to the Australian people how that is a better way, particularly when you compare it against what they inherited: only 21 children being detained, none of whom arrived by boat; 449 people in detention, only four of whom had arrived by boat. We had a situation where only nine boats in total arrived between 2002 and 2007, with fewer than 300 people on those boats. That is an average of fewer than 50 per year, and at the moment we have an average of more than 500 per month.

This is the comparison that the government need to justify to the people of Australia. Prior to the election the government awoke to a political crisis, but they did not awake to their policy crisis. ‘Commander’ Bradbury, the member for Lindsay, was dispatched to Darwin for a photo opportunity with the Prime Minister. The member for the landlocked—apart from the Nepean River; it does extend all the way along the Hawkesbury and eventually gets to the sea—Commander Bradbury went to Darwin for the photo op. That was policy action No. 1 as the government would describe it. The East Timor plan was cobbled together. A night phone call was made to East Timor and announced at the Lowy Institute the next day as an election fix. Labor, for a short while—while the election was underway—stopped implying that people who had views about strong border protection were racists, but we saw that same commentary start to emerge from those opposite as we got to the other side of the election. They were happy to go back to the implications and the impositions of motives of people on this side of the House, but during the election they were quite happy to make sure they were saying something quite different.

We also had significant denials from those on the other side of the House during the campaign on the expansion of the onshore detention network. On the other side of the election this has been the policy response from the government: another 3,000-plus beds announced for onshore expansion in this country, on the mainland. There is still no proposal for an East Timor processing centre, let alone an opening date. And, as I said, 20 boats have arrived, with 946 people on them. The detention population has increased to over 5,000. More beds, as the opposition leader said yesterday and as I said yesterday, will not stop more boats. The government understand that. They understand that, because they have tapped the mat when it comes to dealing with the issue of stopping the boats, as I said in my opening statement. The government have basically said: ‘What we will do is open more beds and let more people out, because more people are going to come.’ That is the response of the government.

Let us consider what they have done in Curtin, for example, in managing these issues. A master plan was developed in July for 1,800 people. It was first developed on 27 July or thereabouts by the department for 1,800 people. It was drawn up by the department. The Prime Minister denied the very existence of this master plan during the election—the same master plan that is now being implemented. I show you here the plan, which is noted as revision C. Department officials confirmed to me when I was at the Curtin detention centre last week that this was a bona fide master plan of the government that was developed. The departmental officials were also very helpful because they showed me the most recent revision of that plan. And guess what? Both plans accommodated 1,800 people. They both accommodated three stages: stage 1, stage 2 and stage 3. But, if we go to what the Prime Minister said during the election, she said, in an article in the Canberra Times on 19 August:

No work is planned at Curtin other than the work which is underway now and which has already been publicly disclosed, publicly released and talked about.

So what work was underway? Well, an immigration department official was very helpful, because she said to the West Australian on the 18th, the previous day:

There is currently no construction under way beyond the existing stage—

stage 1—

which can accommodate about 600 detainees.

So there was nothing going on beyond the work for those 600 places. I was confused very much then when I got to the Prime Minister’s statements yesterday, when she said:

The federal budget of 2010 funded a detention centre at Curtin with a capacity of 1,200 places. Less than 1,200 persons were initially moved in there. However, of course the relevant department took the prudent steps in designing the centre and putting the infrastructure in place …

I went to the budget, and on page 326 of the budget, about capital allocation, there was no mention of the Curtin detention centre at all. So I thought maybe it was in the July economic statement, where a further $98 million was produced. It was not there either. There was no mention, prior to the election, of the Curtin detention centre having a capacity of 1,200 people. There was nothing going on there, apparently, at the time of the election, other than for 600 detainees.

Yesterday the government announced a series of measures to expand our detention network, taking it to over 3,000. I noticed that Curtin was not in that announcement for the expansion. So you can imagine my surprise when I went to Curtin detention centre and visited stage 3 of the centre with the Deputy Secretary of the Department of Immigration and Citizenship, Mr Bob Correll. I took this photo. It shows the services works having been installed and constructed for stage 3. So a further 600 beds have had already installed, in stage 3, services, electrical works, plumbing, drainage and sewerage. All of this has been put into stage 3, and indeed you can still see the grader and the dump truck—

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

The member has exceeded—thank you.

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

You can see that this had been done just the day before I arrived. So there we have it. We have stage 3 works underway. They are not stage 2 works; they are stage 3 works.

The Minister for Immigration and Citizenship, who is at the table, yesterday told Sky News that he was being upfront, he was putting all the things out there that they were going to develop—and Curtin stage 3 was not on the list. Now the minister has to explain why he has wasted hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of dollars on works that he is never going to proceed with. This may be a minister who decides not to build a house but to level the site and put all the services in. He may be that sort of a minister and be happy to waste public money. Maybe he should be put in charge of the BER project, given his success with GroceryWatch and other things. Maybe he should try that, because he is clearly happy to put in place stage 3 works and pretend to the Australian people and either not proceed or waste money.

This is a government that was quite happy to mislead the Australian people on these things before the election. It was happy to give the implication that East Timor was going to happen and that there was going to be no expansion of the onshore detention network—and all the while you were squirrelling away and putting these things in place. Why didn’t you have the guts to tell the Australian people that you were going to expand the onshore detention network and that East Timor was never going to happen in this term of parliament? You still refuse to do that.

On East Timor, in the time available, I make simply these points. There is no proposal. That was confirmed by the Indonesians just recently when the minister was there. Three months later, nothing has happened. There is not even a proposal. They do not know how many people it has to accommodate, who can come, whether families will be involved, what the cost is, who pays and how long people can stay. And what guarantees has this government given to the President of East Timor that those who are staying any more than three years under this proposal—just as Australia did the special deal for the Oceanic Vikingwill not be given a guarantee of resettlement here in this country?

By contrast, we have policies that have been proven to work. We have policies that have shown that we can once again restore the protection and integrity of Australia’s borders and our immigration system. We had policies in place when we were in government which dealt with the issues of children in detention which the Prime Minister today and yesterday shamelessly tried to appropriate to her own actions. They used the very provisions we put into the act and then tried to pretend there were currently children behind razor wire, which the minister knows has not been the case since 2005. The Prime Minister knows that. If she did not want to be disingenuous, there was no need to mention razor wire. This coalition has a policy that is proven and has worked. We will restore offshore processing in Nauru if we are able to form government. We will take the sugar off the table with permanent protection visas. We will turn boats back where the circumstances permit. We have the resolve to do that. We will tighten up the assessment process to ensure that those who get rid of their documentation are not going to get refugee status. We have the resolve to follow this through, because we have the resolve to stop the boats, unlike this government. (Time expired)

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

I remind the House that clapping is not appropriate in the chamber.

Chris Bowen (McMahon, Australian Labor Party, Minister for Immigration and Citizenship) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I welcome this MPI. When I saw that the member for Cook had lodged this MPI, I thought: ‘That’s a very good thing, because the shadow minister gets 15 minutes to talk and we might actually hear something of substance from the shadow minister. We might actually hear more than the facile sophistry that he normally provides in his sound grabs.’ I thought that in 15 minutes he would have to give us more than, ‘We’d turn the boats back,’ more than, ‘Nauru,’ and more than—my personal favourite and one of the great own goals of the last election campaign—‘We’d have a boat phone.’ I thought we might actually hear more from the shadow minister for immigration and it would make a very good change. But, alas, I was disappointed. Alas, we got 15 minutes of sound bites from the shadow minister for immigration. We got the normal shrillness. We got the normal lightweight performance.

We heard a lot from the member for Cook about the record of the Howard government. He has put the record of the Howard government on the table for analysis, so it is appropriate that I respond. They stopped the boats, he said. They had a strong regime, he said, and they took permanent residency off the table. They took permanent residency off the table, the member for Cook argued, by using temporary protection visas. The member for Cook has got himself a little stuck on this in recent times, as recently as today. He says that temporary protection visas were so important in stopping the flow of people into this country. He says that they worked—and he said it just now in the chamber today. Let us have a look at this. Temporary protection visas were introduced in October 1999. There were 3,722 unauthorised arrivals in 1999.

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

How many boats?

Chris Bowen (McMahon, Australian Labor Party, Minister for Immigration and Citizenship) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Here we go again. So it is boats that count, not people, apparently. That is the argument from the member for Cook: ‘It doesn’t matter how many people come, as long as they come on big boats; we want big boats, not little boats.’ That is the Morrison plan: big boats. Now we have it: it does not matter how many people come. In 1999, we had 3,722 unauthorised arrivals. Over the next two years, we had 8,459 unauthorised arrivals. That is the story from the member for Cook. So in 1999 we had 3,721 and in 2001 we had 5,516. We had 3,721 in 1999, 2,939 in 2000 and then 5,516 in 2001. So temporary protection visas were introduced and more than 8,000 people came over the next two years. And the member for Cook says, ‘But there were fewer boats.’ Well done: we got bigger boats and more people. I am not sure how temporary protection visas brought that result about.

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

Mr Morrison interjecting

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

The member for Cook was warned during question time. It still stands.

Chris Bowen (McMahon, Australian Labor Party, Minister for Immigration and Citizenship) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The member for Cook said that permanent residency was taken off the table by the Howard government through the use of temporary protection visas. The member for Cook might want to check the record. He might want to check and see what proportion of people were granted permanent residency at the end of their temporary protection visa period.

Craig Emerson (Rankin, Australian Labor Party, Minister for Trade) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

It was pretty high, I think.

Chris Bowen (McMahon, Australian Labor Party, Minister for Immigration and Citizenship) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The Minister for Trade is right. It was pretty high: 90 per cent. Ninety per cent of people on temporary protection visas were granted permanent residency, so I am not sure that permanent residency was taken off the table as the member for Cook would have us believe.

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

It was when they arrived.

Chris Bowen (McMahon, Australian Labor Party, Minister for Immigration and Citizenship) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

So it was temporarily taken off the table. Maybe that is why they came on bigger boats—the member for Cook’s grand plan. The member for Cook was caught out in his little tricky game this morning on the ABC. He was trying to claim that temporary protection visas reduced the number of people arriving in Australia by boat. He was caught out in this claim, and he had to admit that the number of people went up in 2001. He had to admit that, and now he admits it again today.

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

The number of boats fell.

Chris Bowen (McMahon, Australian Labor Party, Minister for Immigration and Citizenship) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I am more than happy to happy to concede to the member for Cook that the number of boats fell. But what actually counts is the number of people arriving. I do not really mind whether they come in big boats or little boats. The member for Cook tends to get caught up in these things.

I now want to move to the next matter regarding temporary protection visas, which is the number of women and children coming by boat. This has been a matter of some legitimate public discussion over recent days for obvious reasons. One of the several harsh elements of temporary protection visas was that they did not allow family reunions. What did that mean? That meant that more women and children got on boats and came to Australia. That was the result of the temporary protection regime. Between 1999 and 2001, the proportion of women and children among Iraqi and Afghan unauthorised boat arrivals more than tripled.

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

How many in 2002?

Chris Bowen (McMahon, Australian Labor Party, Minister for Immigration and Citizenship) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Now he moves to 2002. Temporary protection visas were introduced in 1999 and the result was that women and children on boats more than tripled.

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

Mr Morrison interjecting

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

The member for Cook is warned again and is skating on thin ice!

Chris Bowen (McMahon, Australian Labor Party, Minister for Immigration and Citizenship) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

In 1999, 13 per cent of protection visa applications lodged by Iraqi and Afghan unauthorised boat arrivals were from women and children. By 2001, this had increased to 48.1 per cent. So the member for Cook should not lecture me or anybody else in this chamber about women and children on boats when the policies which he still advocates for, more than 10 years after the Howard government introduced them, caused more women and children to get on boats and come to Australia. Perhaps that is why the opposition did not oppose the abolition of temporary protection visas when this government abolished them. Maybe that is why: they had actually worked out that this was a policy that had adverse impacts. The member for Cook seems to deny that they did not oppose the abolition of temporary protection visas. He might want to remind the House when they voted against that abolition; he might want to show us in the Hansard.

The other answer that the member for Cook has to everything is Nauru. If you ask the member for Cook what the meaning of life is, he says, ‘Nauru.’ If you ask the member for Cook whether families and children should be put in community detention, he says, ‘Nauru.’ If a bell rings, he says, ‘Nauru.’ The member for Cook’s answer to everything is Nauru. If the member for Cook were now in my place as the minister for immigration, he says that the Nauru detention centre would be up and running.

There are a few little problems with the member for Cook’s little analysis. As the member acknowledged to me yesterday across the chamber—I would say that it is not reflected in Hansard because it was an aside—the Nauru detention centre is now largely a school. I asked him what he would do about the school that is now being run at the detention centre. He said, ‘We’ll build another one.’ So not only would he have opened a detention centre at Nauru by now but he would have apparently built a school in the last few weeks for the people of Nauru, which would be a remarkable achievement. I wonder how much it would cost to build a school in Nauru as well as open a detention centre. I thought that I might go back and have a look at the costings and see how much they built in for the school. But there were no coalition costings for a detention centre at Nauru released during the election campaign. The official audit might not have picked that up.

So we have more little tricky problems for the opposition—apart from the fact that Nauru does not have a functioning government; it has been in caretaker mode since last April. I wonder whether the shadow minister for immigration on his trip to Nauru had a talk to the International Organisation for Migration, which ran the centre on Nauru, and asked them whether they would be willing to do so again. I suggest that he might want to do that or maybe talk to the UNHCR about how they feel about a centre at Nauru to see whether they think it would be a viable option going forward.

I wonder if the member for Cook will consider a further point. His answer to everything is Nauru. At its peak, Nauru detention centre had 1,200 people. If you ask him what he would do about detention in Australia, he says, ‘Nauru.’ But it would only cater for 1,200 people unless the member for Cook is proposing a significant expansion.

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

We might actually stop the boats.

Chris Bowen (McMahon, Australian Labor Party, Minister for Immigration and Citizenship) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Now the member for Stirling comes in to say that they would stop the boats. The sophistry extends widely over there. Nauru is the opposition’s Fantasy Island. It is their answer to everything. You get your wishes granted if you go to Nauru. The member for Cook would like to be Mr Roarke, granting everybody’s wishes. Maybe the member for Stirling could be Tattoo, saying, ‘Here come the boats; here come the planes.’ For them, everything would be okay if they only had Nauru.

In these debates you have a choice about how you handle these issues. On the one hand you can go down the road of shrill press releases, slogans and empty promises about turning the boats back. You can go down that road, or you can go down the road of engaging with the Australian people and saying, ‘We are engaging in a set of complex interactions in our region about a regional problem.’ You can say, ‘We have a regional and international enduring problem which needs a regional and international enduring solution,’ or you can go down the road of the opposition. We think it does need an enduring international and regional solution, and I suspect that deep down the opposition agree. They would not be so keen to wreck it otherwise. They would not be so frustrated that the government are actually making progress in developing a regional framework. Their press releases get more shrill every day as we go down this road. They get more shrill about the matters of regional frameworks.

The member for Cook and the member for Stirling, the great duo over there, put out joint press releases all the time with their simple answers and their facile solutions. What we say is this: countries around the world are managing an increase in asylum seekers and Australia is no different. In 2009 Australia had an increase in asylum seekers of 29 per cent over that calendar year. Other countries have had an increase of over 50 per cent. All countries have experienced these issues. But I think there is something else going on here. I think there is something else going on here because over the last 24 hours the slip-sliding of the shadow minister has reached new levels.

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

Mr Keenan interjecting

Chris Bowen (McMahon, Australian Labor Party, Minister for Immigration and Citizenship) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

It is a big call; I agree with the member for Stirling. It is a big call, but it is an accurate call, I think. Yesterday I announced that I would be using my existing powers—as I said at the press conference, they would be powers that are already in the act—to move many more children and families into community detention. This is because I think that in the vast majority of cases there is a better way of dealing with families and children in detention.

The member for Cook is the alternative minister for immigration. If there were a change in government he would be in my place as the minister for immigration. So I think the Australian people have a right to know whether he would use those powers or not. He has been asked, on my last count, about 30 times over the last 24 hours what he would do. Would he use those powers? When he started off, his answer was: ‘Nauru. We would have Nauru, so I would not need to use the powers.’ That did not really work. Then he decided to say: ‘This is just a Greens policy. The government has adopted the Greens policy. It is clearly the Greens policy.’ That did not really work, so now he is saying: ‘They have adopted the Liberal policy. It is really John Howard’s policy.’ It was actually that well-known greenie John Howard’s policy! It cannot be both, as the Prime Minister said in question time today.

Maybe the shadow minister could just settle on a better answer and maybe that better answer would be the truth about what the shadow minister would do if he were in my place. Would he use those powers or not? Would he release more children and families into the community or not? But that would take a straight answer and that would take a bit of thought, something that the shadow minister has not shown much proclivity to bring to this debate. He brings the sound grabs and he brings the cheap lines, but he does not bring much well-considered policy development. Sound grabs come easy, but sound policy is what is actually more important.

I have said in the month or so that I have been Minister for Immigration and Citizenship that our detention system is under pressure.

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

Why?

Chris Bowen (McMahon, Australian Labor Party, Minister for Immigration and Citizenship) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The shadow minister says, ‘Why?’ I know it is hard being a shadow minister. I have been a shadow minister. Here is a little tip. It is a good idea to read the transcripts of the minister that you shadow. I have said why several times. I have said that the reasons leading to detention pressures on our system are the number of arrivals and the increased rejection rates. Rejection rates of asylum seekers have gone up. That is a key point because, in the end, the best deterrent for people coming to Australia is to know that their claims are vigorously and rigorously assessed and that people who do not have a valid claim for protection will have that claim rejected. That is why I make no apologies for pointing out for an audience which is as international as it is domestic that the rejection rate for claims for asylum from Afghan asylum seekers has increased in recent times to 50 per cent. That is an important message. I know some people will criticise me for saying that, but that is the fact and it is important that that message be told. I have also said that elements like the High Court case and the pause in asylum processing for various countries have added to that pressure on our detention system. I have said that from the beginning. I have said that there are steps that need to be taken to expand our detention centres. I made further announcements about that.

The shadow minister has made all sorts of outrageous claims. He said there were going to be 3,000 people at Curtin. He said that during the election campaign. He said there was a secret plan. I invite the member for Cook to ask me a question in question time about whether the government has any plans to move to 3,000 people at Curtin.

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

Mr Morrison interjecting

Chris Bowen (McMahon, Australian Labor Party, Minister for Immigration and Citizenship) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

No, you said 3,000. On the day I made the announcement I said that we were moving more people— (Time expired)

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

The member’s time has mercifully expired. I have had the misfortune to listen to the Minister for Immigration and Citizenship on this and other occasions and his favourite word—in fact, I do not think he has ever made a speech without using it—is ‘sophistry’. I think he uses it because he thinks it makes him sound intelligent. Funnily enough, it is one of these things where you are just projecting, because the Minister for Immigration and Citizenship never has anything available to him but rhetoric. That was clear today from that contribution.

He mentioned the Howard government’s record and he mentioned the coalition plan. I just want to dwell for a second on the Howard government’s record whilst we were in office, because we faced a very similar circumstance where we had an onslaught of illegal arrivals in the late 1990s. What happened was that the government decided that enough was enough and that they were not going to accept that people smugglers were going to be the ones bringing people to Australia and deciding who came to Australia. So they decided that they would take tough but decisive action to drive those people smugglers from business. Subsequently, they did drive those people smugglers from business and their trade in bringing people down to Australia illegally ceased.

From the year 2001 onwards we had an average of three illegal boats arrive in Australia per year. I just want to go through on a yearly basis what happened once the government decided that enough was enough and that they were going to take tough and decisive action. In 2002 there was one boat arrival, in 2003 there were three boat arrivals, in 2004 there were no boat arrivals, in 2005 there were eight boat arrivals, in 2006 there were four boat arrivals and in 2007, up to the point where there was a change of government, there were three illegal boat arrivals to Australia. That is the Howard government record, which stacks up against the record of this government—a government that inherited a basically solved problem when it came to people smuggling. The resolve of the Howard government had driven the people smugglers from their trade. The detention centres were emptying because there were no new arrivals. Very importantly, there were only 21 children being detained at that time—something the government is apparently now terribly worried about.

Nowhere has the government’s failure been more apparent than just in looking at the raw figures for what happened after the Rudd-Gillard government came to office. They inherited a situation where the boats had stopped and they decided that it was all right for them to make changes to the robust system of border protection that had been put in place by the previous government. In August 2008 they made those changes, which weakened the border protection system, and of course that gave a green light for the people smugglers to go back into their trade. Almost immediately, the results of that were apparent. The people smugglers smuggled people at an increasing rate, to the point where we now have over 5,000 people smuggled illegally into Australia this year alone, and 106 boats arriving illegally on our shores.

When the government changed there were 449 people in detention and, as the shadow minister was saying, only 21 children, none of whom had arrived by boat. There are now over 5,200 people in detention, including over 700 children. Australian taxpayers are out of pocket to the tune of $1.1 billion, and let me assure you that that is a conservative figure. If you want to break that down per head of population, it means that every Australian man, woman and child—every single Australian—is up for $500 because of Labor’s failure to control our immigration system and protect our borders. This is money that the Australian people owe directly as a result of Labor’s failure, and that failure has ramifications for every single Australian.

We have just had an election in this country which returned the Labor Party to office, although, as we have seen, it did not return them to power. During the election campaign, Labor perpetrated a very serious deceit on the Australian people. They pretended that they had a solution to this border protection crisis and they pretended that they were going to do something to stop the flow of illegal arrivals. Every Australian will now understand that they were wilfully misled by the Labor Party during the election campaign.

The Labor Party have known for months that Christmas Island has been full to overflowing and that the onshore detention centres are full beyond capacity, yet they waited until after the election to announce that they were going to massively expand our onshore detention network. This backflip was outrageously justified by the Prime Minister yesterday in her saying that she wanted to take children out from behind razor wire. This is the Prime Minister of an administration under which, when they came to office, there were 21 children held in detention, and of course none of them were being held behind razor wire. The Prime Minister fully knows this, and she understands that these changes were made by the previous government in 2005. It is a complete distortion and fabrication, which again shows that there is no untruth that is beneath this Prime Minister if she senses political advantage.

It also begs the question why—if the Prime Minister and her minister feel so strongly about children in detention—it has taken them three years to do anything about it. We had the minister running around yesterday saying that he was very happy to have this debate, that he was very happy to talk about children in detention. Of course, there is absolutely no evidence that for his three years as part of the previous government he ever raised concerns about children in detention, as the failed border protection policies of the government resulted in 700 children being detained.

We all know that this change in policy, this backflip yesterday, is not about some well-hidden and suppressed belief about the welfare of children. It is because the government has failed so comprehensively that our detention centres are now full beyond capacity and they need to do something to alleviate those pressures. Why is it that those detention centres are full? Why is it that we have been inundated with this surge of illegal arrivals since August 2008 onwards? We just heard it again from the minister and we always hear it from this government when there are questions about this issue—that is, international factors that are beyond their control have resulted in this influx of illegal arrivals. I have never heard one shred of evidence that justifies this. Of course, there is absolutely no evidence that the international environment has changed significantly since 2007. We live in a turbulent world now and we lived in a turbulent world before.

During the second half of the Howard government when we drove the people smugglers from their business, from 2001 onwards, there was a war in Afghanistan, there was an ongoing and vicious civil war in Sri Lanka and there was an existing conflict in Iraq. Yet during that time, because of the tough and decisive policies of the Howard government, they managed within the framework of a turbulent international situation to say to the people smugglers that Australia was closed for business.

Labor talk about international factors as justification for their failure, but there is not one shred of evidence to justify that proposition. They ignore what the rest of us know and what the rest of Australia knows, and that is that the latest influx of arrivals—the tsunami of illegal boats that we are experiencing in Australia—is a direct result of the weakening of our border protection system in August 2008.

This government has failed in what is one of the most basic duties of a Commonwealth government—that is, to control our immigration system and protect our borders. Because of that failure they are exposing the vulnerable victims of this insidious trade to the great danger of making this journey across the sea. The shadow minister referred to the loss of life that we know of, and there is anecdotal evidence that a lot more vessels have been lost making this perilous journey. Those lives are lost because they are encouraged to make this perilous journey by the weakness of this government and the inability of this government to do something serious to drive the people smugglers from this trade.

If you are a people smuggler you rely on your ability to sell a product, and that product is permanent residence in Australia. You also rely on the confidence of would-be customers for that product in your ability to get them to Australia. When the government in Canberra shows resolve and says, ‘No, enough is enough; we’re not going to accept that we don’t control our immigration system,’ the people smugglers, who are very sophisticated criminal networks, will understand that Australia is no longer a soft touch and that they can no longer ply their trade, and pretty soon they will be forced out of business. The government in Canberra could do this if it were prepared to follow the policy prescription that we have been advocating in opposition and that we will pursue when we are returned to government. It is a policy prescription that has been used in the past to address this issue: a return to a form of temporary protection visa and the resumption of offshore processing. Of course, we have a willing candidate within our region, Nauru, which would be happy to host immigration detainees within the facility that already exists on Nauru. The coalition would also turn the boats back as appropriate. I see that the government ridicules this suggestion. (Time expired)

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

I find this matter of public importance debate rather sad, I have to say.

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

Do you? What a shame!

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

Yes, I do. I live in an area of great diversity and I know a number of people—

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

Mr Keenan interjecting

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

The member for Stirling might get to go and talk to some of his constituents very soon if he is not careful.

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

who over the last 30 years have come here as refugees, many of them on boats. I know families who have been separated from their two-year-old child by armed men and do not know where she is. They now live in Australia, and they do not know where she is. I know a man who, along with his four brothers and sisters, was granted refugee status. They are all now citizens, but they are citizens of five different countries—they have not been together as a family for over 10 years. I know a man who had to pick up the body of his 17-year-old sister, and the description of her injuries should not even be in a person’s mind as a description, let alone as a memory. We are, of course, talking about people here. We are well and truly talking about people, and as we talk about boats and snipe at each other I think it is worth remembering that.

I think it is also worth remembering that, in spite of the differences in the way each side of politics has approached the issue of refugees and in spite of the bad record at times of both sides of politics over the last 20 years, as a nation we subscribe to the UN convention and that nobody is suggesting that we reduce the number of people we ultimately accept under the humanitarian program. We have been accepting around 12,000 people—give or take a few—for quite a few decades, and we have done it well. As I understand it, neither side is talking at this point about reducing the number; we are simply sniping at each other about how the people got here. So I think we should just take a step back and recognise that the things we agree on are essentially the key issues here and that we do actually agree on a great deal.

We as a nation have had had moments of great nobility in this debate as well as some terrible moments. We have had times when the greater characteristics of humanity have won the day and times when our less noble characteristics have won the day. There was a time during World War II when we, like many countries in the world, turned back boatloads of Jews; we told them to go back to Germany. We all did that, and after that time we—along with many nations—decided that we would never let that happen again. We were one of the nations that fought hard to establish the UN Convention. It was established in 1951, and we took 12,000 refugees from Eastern Europe quite soon afterwards.

Then there was the time in the 1970s under the leadership of Malcolm Fraser. He is not a person I have a great regard for in many areas, but I have a great regard for him in this area. He was the person who led Australia through a time when we received one boat from Vietnam every eight days for over a year and a half. Malcolm Fraser led this nation by saying, ‘We will not fear this; we will accept this and we will handle this,’ and we did and we did it well. The Vietnamese refugees who live in my community and no doubt in yours are great Australians, and they were our first boat people.

There have of course been times when we have not been as noble as that. Again, we on both sides of politics have had moments when we have not been as compassionate and generous as we could have been. I believe that we can afford to be generous in this. I believe that we can afford to allow our more noble characteristics to surface in this argument, because I know, as you know, that the number of refugees Australia takes every year is achievable and supportable and that we have been doing it for a long time. We have been taking around 12,000 refugees on the humanitarian visa, and relative to the rest of the rest of the world the number of refugees is actually very, very small. When people who are broken as a result of war, of violence, of torture and of fear have fled their country and sought another place and arrived on our shores by plane or by boat or via resettlement, decent people have put out their hand out to help.

I believe we can afford to be decent, because the number of people coming to our shores is actually relatively small. There are 45 million displaced people in the world at the moment, and about 15 million of those are refugees. Less than one per cent of those will be resettled in Third World countries, and Australia is one of a handful of countries that allow the resettlement of people from a third country. By the way, my calculation of that figure of 15 million refugees is that, for every 2,500 of them, one tries to get to Australia by boat in our heaviest year—one in 2,500 tries to get to Australia.

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

And they take the place of somebody who could have come here legally.

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

The member for Stirling has had his turn.

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

We have had surges and drops in the number of people coming to Australia by boat for as long as we can remember. We had a surge in the 1970s with the Vietnamese, we had a surge in the 1980s, and then it dropped again. Then we had a surge in the 1990s, when there was a war in Iraq and people fleeing the Taliban, and then we had a drop again. We have a surge again now because of conflict in Afghanistan and Sri Lanka. The key thing that drives people fleeing to somewhere is that they are fleeing from somewhere. When there is a war, people flee; when peace breaks out, they stop fleeing. So when war breaks out there is a surge in people moving around the world. There is a surge in people moving around the world everywhere, by the way—it is not just here. This notion that the 45 million displaced people in the world are all looking to come to Australia is just not accurate. As I said, of 2,500 people who qualify as refugees, one seeks to come to Australia by boat in our heaviest year.

Imagine if we hosted the number that Pakistan hosts: 1.8 million refugees fled across the border from Afghanistan into Pakistan—1.8 million. Now that is a refugee problem. Mind you, it is a bigger problem for the refugees who have lost their families and their homes and are living with grief and unbearable loss and sometimes physical trauma as well. Syria has 1.1 million Iraqi refugees, making it the second largest refugee-hosting country in the world. Iran has 980,000 and there have been times when Iran has hosted over three million Afghanis. Jordan has 500,000, Chad 330,000, and Tanzania 321,000, and 320,000 refugees flocked across Kenya’s border. The load from hosting these refugees, and again members opposite know this as well as we do, is overwhelmingly carried by developing nations—not by Australia by any means but by developing countries, who hosted nearly 80 per cent of the global refugee population last year. Forty-nine of the least developed countries in the world host nearly one-fifth of the world’s refugees.

We play a very important role as one of about a dozen countries that accept refugees from Third World countries, and it is in the nation’s interest and in our best behaviour to ensure that the Australian people understand and respect the value of that refugee program. The behaviour today and these motions that stir up fear, suspicion and hate do not serve our interests well.

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

What rubbish! Where do you get your moral superiority from?

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

The member for Stirling is warned!

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

In 2009 we received 6,170 applications, which is 1.6 per cent of the 370,000 applications received across the industrialised nations. We were ranked 16th and 21st overall.

There are some great myths about how policy influences the number of boat arrivals, and the minister dealt with some of them. But the last time that Afghanistan was at the top of the list of refugee source countries was in 2001, when we also had a surge here. Afghans lodged asylum claims in 39 of the 44 industrialised countries last year. It is incredibly common. Worldwide there were 380,000 asylum claims lodged in industrialised countries. The United States received 50,000 applications, Canada 30,000, the European Union 250,000, and France over 40,000 asylum claims. The UK and Germany had 30,000 claims each. Other EU countries received more than 10,000 asylum claims each and Australia received 6,000 claims. The increase in the number of claims occurred all around the world. Virtually every industrialised country had an increase in claims in the same way that Australia did. It is just common sense. People flee to somewhere when they flee from somewhere, and they flee to other industrialised countries in far, far greater numbers than they flee to Australia. Again I would like to remind the House that we generally agree on the numbers of refugees that we should be accepting and that we are today talking about some of the most disadvantaged and broken people that you can imagine, and I would ask us to respect that. (Time expired)

Jamie Briggs (Mayo, Liberal Party, Chairman of the Scrutiny of Government Waste Committee) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Madam Deputy Speaker Burke, it is a real pleasure to see you back in the chair and in that role, a role you undertook very well in the last parliament, if I may say so. I rise to speak today on this MPI, the terms of which are ‘the failure of the government to implement effective border protection policies’. Nowhere has this been felt more than in my Adelaide Hills community when the bombshell hit yesterday. There was an announcement by the Prime Minister and the Minister for Immigration and Citizenship, without any consultation whatsoever, of a plan to build an immigration detention centre at the current defence housing at Inverbrackie, near the Woodside army barracks in the Adelaide Hills. It will now be used by the immigration department as a new detention centre, highlighting very much the failure of this government’s management of Australia’s borders.

From the scant information available, it seems that the properties at Inverbrackie, of which there are 90, will be used for up to 400 people consisting of family units, as described by the Prime Minister in her press conference yesterday. That is about as much information as we have on the public record, other than the fact that the Adelaide ABC was told yesterday afternoon by an immigration official from South Australia that the approximate cost of the upgrade would be $10 million. We do not know what that will pay for. We know they have to improve the houses, because defence has said in the last five or so years that those houses are unfit for defence personnel. Presumably it will pay for some security arrangements because currently the village at Inverbrackie has open access and so forth. So we know nothing about the details other than that by December this year, a mere six weeks away, there will be 400 people moving into the current houses there.

That shows that this is a government who has completely lost control of this issue, and the people who will feel this the most are those who live in my community. It appears to be an emergency measure taken with no plans for the future. This is, of course, an unfortunate and inevitable result of Labor’s mismanagement of Australia’s border protection. But the most outrageous aspect of this decision and the announcement yesterday was the total lack of consultation with the community and people concerned. My office was inundated yesterday afternoon, this morning and this afternoon with concerned constituents wanting to get some detail about how this is going to affect our area. But what chance do they have when the Labor Premier of the state, a man who used to be best mates with the former Prime Minister, was not even told until the last minute? Labor Premier Mike Rann this morning told ABC radio that he had received a phone call from the minister an hour before the announcement, telling him what has happened. There was no choice, no discussion, no opportunity to consult—just an instruction from the minister. Premier Rann said:

I got a phone call … about an hour before the announcement was made by Julia Gillard essentially telling us what was going to happen. We just want to know what it actually means in terms of the impact on the local community, the impact on police, teachers, schools and health facilities …

So do I, Premier Rann, and so does my community. Not even the Labor Premier was able to ask important questions like: how will the local primary school cope? What about the already stretched health services in the Adelaide Hills? What about the law enforcement services? What other impacts on community services will there be? There is no indication from the government on how long they intend to operate this facility or at what cost. I suspect the government actually has not got a clue.

The reality is that this will put additional pressure on already stretched services in the Adelaide Hills. The federal government is obviously in such a panic that it appears not to have considered at all how the community will cope. So blatant was the snub by the Prime Minister that even when she was in the Adelaide Hills on Sunday, appearing in Aldgate at the CFS to get a nice photo opportunity, she did not utter a word of this decision. She was 17 kilometres from Inverbrackie on Sunday and she could not be bothered—she did not have the balls or the ability—to tell the Adelaide people what she was planning to do.

It appears that the Adelaide Hills is good enough for the Prime Minister to have a photo opportunity but is not good enough for her to ask the community what they think of having 400 asylum seekers placed into detention in the middle of the community. Maybe it should not surprise South Australians, because this Prime Minister has decided that South Australia is expendable to her political needs. No-one should ever forget that this Prime Minister walked into South Australia in the middle of the election campaign and promised to do whatever it took to fix the Murray-Darling Basin. She said she would implement every last finding of the basin plan, yet last Sunday she walked away from that promise. So the fact that the Prime Minister, after playing on the fears of South Australians when it came to water during the election and is now walking away from that, would decide without consultation to build a new detention centre in the Adelaide Hills should come as no surprise. This Labor government is rotten to the core and has lost complete control of Australia’s borders.

It is actually worth asking every South Australian member and senator what they are doing to stand up for South Australia on these issues. Where is the Minister for Finance and Deregulation? She let South Australia down in the last term of government on the water issue. Where does she stand on this issue? Where is the Minister for Mental Health and Ageing? He is a new appointment but is not standing up on this issue. Where is the most famous minister, the member for Adelaide? I noticed a hard-hitting interview with her in the Adelaide Independent today, but where does she stand on these issues? The famous faceless man Senator Farrell has been appointed the Parliamentary Secretary for Sustainability and Urban Water but has not said anything about it yet. Maybe he has been busy looking after some state Labor matters which are taking up a bit of time at the moment. There has been nothing either from my good friend the member for Kingston or her counterpart and sidekick, the member for Wakefield.

The problem that these members have is that they are led by a Prime Minister who has given up representing South Australia and our interests. There are some in my community who have very strong views from both perspectives on this issue—and that is understandable. My personal view on the issue is, as it has always been, that people who get onto these boats are not to blame. I would prefer a situation where these people never got on the boats in the first place. However, we must have a strong border protection regime that ensures an orderly process is in place to manage our refugee intake. That is why I very much support our shadow minister’s approach on this issue. I thought he gave an outstanding speech earlier in this debate.

Australia needs a border protection system that ensures this issue is managed efficiently and effectively. This government has failed to do so and my community has to deal with that failure. My dispute is not with the people who get on these boats. My dispute is with the Labor government over its mismanagement of this issue. This, of course, is the government that promised during the election to create a solution to fix this issue, led by the Prime Minister and her sidekick, Commander Bradbury. However, since that ill-fated visit to the Darwin customs command centre—the member for Lindsay, from Western Sydney and with no responsibilities on the issue, went up there to get a political kick out of it—we have seen nothing but further failure and backing away from the promises that they did make. I wonder whether the member for Lindsay will highlight to his constituents in his first post-election newsletter exactly what the new policy of the Labor Party is on this issue.

There are some in this parliament—we just heard a speech along with these lines—who like to claim moral superiority on this issue. However, this does not sway us, and nor should it, from the belief that we should stop people getting on these boats as much as we can in the first place. That is a much more humane way of dealing with this very difficult issue. Weakening our border protection laws and encouraging people smugglers back into business is not the most humane way to deal with the issue. Australia should continue its proud history of accepting genuine refugees, but the issue must be managed in an efficient and effective manner, as it was under the Howard government and as it has not been during the first three years of the Rudd-Gillard government. Spending another $10 million on a short-term solution in my community without consultation with the state Labor government, the local council or the community is not the answer. Making a major decision without consulting the community on the effects on their schools, health services, law enforcement and transport needs is also not the answer, but it is of course the modern Labor way. This government stands condemned for its complete mismanagement of Australia’s borders and the effect it is having not only on the people who are in these detention centres but on the broader Australian public. This detention centre should not proceed.

Amanda Rishworth (Kingston, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

In response to the member for Mayo, while this side of the House is clearly talking about going forward on important reform in the Murray-Darling Basin, I wish him the best of luck in his party room as he tries to get results for his electorate. I think he will have a very hard road to travel. I wish him the best of luck and I hope he is able to get the coalition parties, both the National Party and the Liberal Party, on the same side, but I think it will be very difficult for him. Let us talk about the matter of public importance on border protection that is before the House today. I always enjoy these debates when those on the other side are in denial and say that this is not a global problem or a regional problem but just a problem for Australia. The member for Stirling said there was no evidence and wanted evidence. I will provide him with some evidence.

First of all, Afghanistan is the source country for most irregular maritime arrivals to Australia and, according to the UNHCR, in 2009 Afghanistan became the main country of origin for asylum seekers in industrialised countries worldwide. The last time Afghanistan was at the top of this list was in 2001, when there was a surge of boat arrivals under the Howard government. Afghans lodged asylum claims in 39 out of 44 industrialised countries worldwide, and Afghanistan was in the top five source countries in 17 of 27 European Union states last year.

That is just a little bit of evidence that suggests that this is not just a problem in Australia; indeed, that this is a global problem. While the opposition denies this and continues to make out that this is a government problem and a failure of policy, the government, on this side of the House, is getting down to the business of actually looking at this problem both internationally and in a regional way. The opposition is not interested in this. We saw this during the election. They do not let facts get in the way of a good slogan, or indeed a good boat phone—or bat phone. During the campaign I always imagined there would be a big red phone, similar to the one that Commissioner Gordon used in the early series of Batman, and Tony Abbott would sit on the other end of this phone and when a boat came near our shores the commander or someone on the boat would ring him, and Tony Abbott would answer and make a decision on his bat phone.

So the opposition had this big thought-through policy for the election, and even in this new parliament they have failed to really look at this problem in a considered way; in a way that considers both regional and international aspects. In sharp contrast, the government is looking at this in a very serious way. I commend the new Minister for Immigration and Citizenship, Minister Bowen, who has held talks already with senior officials of the Malaysian government and has had some very constructive meetings in East Timor. Those on the other side feign interest by saying they do not want people to get on boats, and that is exactly what we on this side of the House also do not want. We do not want people smugglers to profit from innocent people, and we do not want people smugglers to make profit from desperate situations. So what are we doing? We are looking at a regional framework. We are working with our regional partners and looking at how we might disrupt this people smuggling and take away this very dangerous route to Australia.

The opposition are not so interested in these people. They have made it quite clear that they want to turn the boats around and that, in doing so, it will not endanger the lives of any of the refugees on the boats and it will not endanger any of our personnel! Of course it will not do that, say the opposition. But we know that it will. Turning boats around has serious consequences. In fact, if the opposition were truthful about this issue they would recognise that, while the Howard government pretended to be strong on this, it did not turn any boats around after 2003. But this continues to be their simplistic solution. They are not looking at this as either a regional or a global problem.

This government is working with its neighbours to establish a regional protection framework, including a regional processing centre, because we believe it is the most effective and sustainable way for our region to remove the incentive for people to undertake the dangerous sea voyages to Australia that put their lives at risk. A regional processing centre will serve to deter irregular movements to Australia by sea, dealing a serious blow to people smuggling. This is part of our policy but we are also, as announced by the minister yesterday, looking at ensuring that children are not kept in detention. We have seen a bit of hypocrisy from the other side. In question time today we saw the opposition trying to spin by on the one hand saying they are not happy with this announcement that Minister Bowen has made, not happy that unaccompanied minors and young children are being moved out of detention, but on the other hand trying to get credit for the fact that it was a Howard government policy that the minister acknowledges he utilised.

There does seem to me to be an awful lot of opposition spin and hypocrisy in this issue. There is no thought-out, considered policy, and instead we see recycled policies that supposedly worked before, such as temporary protection visas. As the minister pointed out, under the temporary protection visas, which were supposed to send so many refugees back home, 90 per cent of people stayed in Australia on a long-term basis. We have not really seen a deterrent. We have seen the Nauru solution, which gets peddled out time and time again, and once again this is a simple catchphrase from the opposition to disguise the fact that they do not have a policy—not a long-term policy that will actually go to solving this issue; not a long-term engagement with how we can actually stop this dangerous irregular travel.

The opposition, instead of engaging with our regional neighbours, want to go it alone when it comes to offshore processing. Unlike the opposition, Labor is committed to getting the right regional centre established, with the cooperation of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees, in a country that is a signatory to the refugee convention. This is really important because we on this side of the House will not shirk our international obligations, and we will ensure that people are treated decently.

We do want to interrupt people smuggling. That is our main aim: to make sure that women, children and families do not get on boats and make this dangerous voyage. But, if families and children do get here, then we will ensure—and I thought this was a bipartisan agreement, but I am sure we will see from the shadow minister, as the days unfold, a lot of ducking and weaving when it comes to this issue, as we saw in question time today—that they are not kept in detention.

Let us be clear on this issue: we do have strong border protection. In fact, the measures announced in the 2010-11 budget build upon a $654 million border protection and anti-people-smuggling package announced in the 2009-10 budget. The government has established a dedicated Border Protection Committee of cabinet to drive a whole-of-government strategy to combat people smuggling.

The government has also created a single point of accountability for matters to relating to the prevention of maritime smuggling, with the Australian Customs and Border Protection Service. As a government we are taking this issue incredibly seriously. We are looking at long-term solutions, not short-term slogans; and we are certainly not looking for a big red boat-phone— (Time expired)