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 take real action to address the historic level of irregular maritime arrivals to Australia.

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

This is a government that has lost its way again. As long as Labor has lost its way on border protection, the people smugglers will continue to find their way to Australia—and they do, in ever-increasing numbers: 9,188 people have arrived in 190 boats. It is clear that the people smugglers will continue to make hay while the Gillard sun of failed policy continues to shine on their activities. This year we have had an all-time record of 122 boats and counting—double last year’s number—and this continues to fill the Gillard government’s trophy cabinet of policy failures: most boats in a month, most boats in a financial year, most boats in a calendar year.

But that is not all. Beyond that there is the record of budget deficits and debt and the record of the pink batts fiasco and the record house fires that resulted from that. There is GroceryWatch, which the minister would be familiar with, Fuelwatch, which he would also be familiar with, and the school hall rip-offs and rorts. But I suspect that the trophy cabinet is not full yet because there is one big one yet to come, and that is the $43 billion NBN, which will make a strong challenge soon to enter that trophy cabinet of policy failures.

Contrast Labor’s failed record on border protection over the last three years of 190 boats with just 10 boats in six years under the last coalition government. Fewer than 250 people came during that time, after the full suite of measures were introduced. That is less than half the number of people that now normally turn up in a regular month under this government. It is worth noting that, between 2002 and 2007, the average number of asylum applications received in industrialised countries was just over 410,000. It peaked in that period, in 2002, at 609,000. That was the year that we had zero boat arrivals in this country. Last year there were just under 365,000 asylum applications. I think that puts paid to the government’s claims about soaring levels of push factors, because what is clear in this debate is that it is the government’s policy failures that are in error in this issue.

Where did it all go wrong? We got a very good indication of that this morning when we read in the Herald Sun that Ben Packham—after 18 months of a long wait, I note—was finally able to get the return on his freedom of information application. There is only one paragraph in the section that I have here but there are plenty of other blank pages that I noticed and that I cannot really read because they have all been taken out. One point that was made in this section makes it very clear. It says:

… a range of risk mitigation strategies—

This is what was said on 25 February 2008, just weeks after the government took up the Treasury benches opposite. The department said:

… a range of risk mitigation strategies have prevented significant boat arrivals in recent years,

That was the advice of the department to the government after they took office. In other words, the system was working. In addition to that, it said:

… current intelligence on issues including the closure of Nauru suggest the possibility of increased people smuggling efforts.

This was a clear warning that their early decision to close Nauru had sent a message to people smugglers and that, even more significantly, there were further risks that lay ahead. Instead of seeking to shore up our border protection regime, having heard this advice in the face of these threats, this government did the opposite. They followed through with the closure of Nauru. They abolished temporary protection visas. They gave people smugglers back a product to sell. The policy of turning boats back, promised by this government prior to 2007, they reversed and the long-held universal offshore processing regime soon became a thing of the past. Like the homeowner being told by the police that there was a burglar about, what this government did was the policy equivalent of opening the windows, leaving the back door unlocked and leaving the house unattended. That is what they did in policy terms when they received this advice.

This is a government that knowingly and willingly dismantled a successful policy regime it inherited from the coalition. They had the issue under control and, in the face of advice that risks were increasing, they chose to touch it and fiddle around with it. As with so many issues, everything this government touches turns to mush. Three years ago today you could count the number of people in the immigration detention network who had arrived in this country illegally by boat literally on fewer than the fingers on one hand. There were four. One, two, three, four—that is all. Three years later, we have in our detention network more than 5,100 people who have arrived in this country illegally by boat. If that does not wake this government up to its policy failures, then, frankly, I have no idea what will. There is no sign of a return from their slumber.

This is another record the government has set, with the blow-out in the population of our detention network. The Minister for Immigration and Citizenship claimed today, in his defence of the increasingly indefensible in his portfolio, that the success of the coalition policies cannot be borne out by analysis of the documents released today. If the minister is struggling with his comprehension, let me remind him of the words of his own leader in terms of the success of the Howard government policies versus those of his own: another boat arrival, another policy failure. That means 190 policy failures under his government: 36 since the election and 28 on his own watch. Part of the problem, I think, is that Labor is unclear as to what the job of the minister for immigration is when it comes to illegal boat arrivals. The minister’s predecessor, Senator Chris Evans, when he thought he was in a club at the University of New South Wales, speaking to academics, said: ‘My biggest failure as minister for immigration is not that I reversed a system that was working. It was not that I had allowed so many boats to arrive through my own failed decisions as a minister.’ His great failing was that he had failed to control the debate. That is what it is to this government. It is all about the talk; it is all about the spin; it is all about controlling the debate.

The new minister, who I understand was speaking in one of his local papers, thought that his job was to elevate the debate. The job of the minister for immigration is not to stop the boats; it is to elevate the debate. My tip for the minister for immigration—passed on to me by the Leader of the Opposition—is that the job of the minister for immigration, when you have such an unprecedented crisis of this nature, is to stop the boats. We are not auditioning here to be talk show hosts. We can leave that to Tony Jones. We are here to develop and implement policies that protect the integrity of our immigration program, and that means implementing policies that stop the boats.

The government’s answer has been repeated failure. We have had the Oceanic Viking debacle, the discriminatory asylum freeze and the never, never solution for East Timor, and who can forget the Sea Patrol audition by ‘Commander’ Bradbury and the Prime Minister in Darwin. That has been the response of this government. The other response has been to simply open more beds. Something else this government can put in its trophy cabinet is that it has set the record in net terms for opening more beds in detention centres than in public hospitals. Maybe the Prime Minister should make Minister Bowen the minister for health. He could open ‘Bed Watch’ or something like that. Since the government were elected three years ago, they have announced the opening of an additional 6,000 places in our detention network, more than 3,000 of these onshore since the election, contrary to what they led the Australian people to believe during the election.

During the election, the government held out regional processing centres as their only policy to address the unprecedented rate of illegal boat arrivals. Even ‘Citizen Richo’, as he was described in this place, has described this proposal as ‘increasingly ridiculous’. Those in the region have been even more acute in their observations because they have described it as ‘an asylum magnet’. The Prime Minister of East Timor is still waiting for a proposal after almost five months since this thought-bubble bubbled to the surface. The Secretary of the Department of Immigration and Citizenship envisaged that this centre would accommodate 2,000 people. The Prime Minister cannot tell us that; we have to get that information from the secretary—the only person who seems to have thought about these issues. What we learn from this is that, since the thought was first bubbled by the Prime Minister, 2,424 people have arrived illegally by boat in Australia. So the government had better get a wriggle on because the capacity of this centre has already been exceeded by those who have arrived while the Prime Minister continues to think about her idea and not actually put one in place. There is no timetable; there is no budget—nothing is budgeted for this in MYEFO; there is no plan; there is no support for the proposal; and, as a result, the Prime Minister should frankly end the charade of this ‘increasingly ridiculous’ proposal, as described by the good ‘Citizen Richo’.

The costs of these failed policies are significant in both economic and human terms. Our detention centres continue to breach capacity. There are around 3,000 people on Christmas Island in facilities that can cope with a maximum of 2,500 and that were originally built for just 800 people. The budget has blown out by more than $1 billion, with annual costs in this output class rising from $111.5 million in 2008-09 to what is more than half a billion dollars this year. The full costs have still not been brought to book by the Treasurer, who claims that next year there will be a 50 per cent reduction in offshore asylum costs for this government. If the Treasurer is going to rely on that assumption for his budget surplus in the years to come, I think he should think again and I think the Australian people should think again. In fact, as Darryl Kerrigan would say: ‘Tell him he’s dreaming.’ Seventy per cent of the people in the network have been there for more than three months, compared to 30 per cent earlier this year. The government’s answer to all of this has been one of repeated failure.

We stress that it is about time that the Minister for Immigration and Citizenship and the government came up with some real policies to address the deteriorating and rolling crisis in the detention network. Self-harm, protests, riots and brawls are once again regular features of our detention network. This is the inevitable consequence of Labor’s failed policies. This behaviour cannot be condoned, it cannot be rewarded in the assessment process and nor should it intimidate this government into further policy weakness. There is also the denial of a place, which we need to understand as a result of these policy failures, to those who are seeking our Special Humanitarian Program support as offshore applicants. Other speakers will also speak to that matter. The costs of this matter go beyond the financial costs. They go to the integrity of our refugee and humanitarian program as a whole. This is a mess of the government’s own creation. The way out is the same as last time, and that is to have policies that stop the boats.

The coalition has a clear and proven policy to stop the boats. We need to reinstate temporary protection visas and deny the people smugglers a product to sell. We need to reopen the Australian taxpayer funded third-country processing centre in Nauru—the closure of which started this fiasco. Unlike East Timor, they are ready, willing and able to go—the government just needs to pick up the phone. We need to demonstrate the government’s resolve by restoring the policy to turn back boats where the circumstances allow. We cannot and should not be intimidated by the threats and actions of people smugglers. We need to tighten the appeal system and use the UNHCR model for a review by a single case officer. This model is practised by them around the world and would end the process of taxpayer funded endless appeals. We need to end Labor’s no-doc entry process for illegal boat arrivals where fewer than one in five has documentation and they are ultimately given the benefit of the doubt. We need to do this by using the powers under the act to provide a presumption against refugee status where it is reasonably believed that those making claims have discarded or destroyed their documentation as recommended by people smugglers. We need to implement a fair dinkum returns policy to ensure those whose asylum claims have failed go back to their home country.

These boats have been turning up for two years, if not longer, and we are still waiting on a returns policy of this government that can address those failures. We cannot run a Hotel California policy on asylum seekers here. We cannot run a policy which says that, even when you check out, you never leave—because that is what is happening under the policies of this government. We need to quarantine the integrity of our Special Humanitarian Program by ensuring that the number of visas available to offshore special humanitarian visa applicants are quarantined and are given priority processing. They are the ones who should not be waiting longer because of this government’s failures. We need to give them priority processing over illegal boat arrivals and other onshore applicants who do not face the same risks as those who sit in our detention network.

These are real policies. Here is a seven-point plan that this government could pick up today, but instead we are stuck with more beds and more talk. That is where this government has left us. Their only response is more beds and more talk. They have got to stop pretending to be talk show hosts and focus on the debate. They need to focus on stopping the boats. That is the job of this minister who sits opposite me today. That is his job. He needs to take it up as his job and he needs to implement policies that stop the boats. (Time expired)

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

The member for Cook had an opportunity to bring some honesty to this debate on behalf of his party. He had an opportunity to come clean on his policies, but instead we had a reprise of the election campaign—a call for real action. I am more than happy to go through the charade of real action that the Leader of the Opposition and the shadow minister present as their policy. The shadow minister put forward his plan, he called it a seven-point plan today of so-called real action. I am more than happy to go through it, point by point, with the shadow minister, with him having taken the opportunity to raise it in the House.

What a charade it is. We have, first, temporary protection visas. The shadow minister is very proud of temporary protection visas. He seems very proud of the fact that the number of people who came to Australia by boat after the introduction of temporary protection visas went up. He points to the fact that the number of boats went down, as if that was a great achievement, but singularly ignores the fact that the number of boats went up. Even more tellingly—

Andrew Laming (Bowman, Liberal Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Regional Health Services and Indigenous Health) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

So what!

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

‘So what!’ he says. The number of people went up and the member for Bowman in a brilliant interjection, which must be recorded in Hansard, says, ‘So what!’ A policy was introduced which was designed to reduce the number of people coming to Australia and it increased the number of people coming to Australia. My honourable friend, the genius from Bowman, says, ‘So what!’ What it means is that it was a failed policy and it was failed in more than one respect.

The shadow minister takes great delight in lecturing us about encouraging people to come to Australia by boat. He lectures us that domestic policies can encourage people to get on a boat and come to Australia. He would know, because the temporary protection visas encouraged women and children to get on boats and come to Australia. In 1999, 13 per cent of asylum seekers from Afghanistan and Iraq were women and children who arrived by boat and, by 2001, the two years of the protection visas had increased that to 48 per cent. Maybe the member for Bowman would say, ‘So what!’ about that, but he has gone quiet all of a sudden because not even he would say, ‘So what!’, not even the member for Cook would say, ‘So what!’, not even the Leader of the Opposition would say, ‘So what!’ because they would acknowledge—I would think—that it is a bad thing that a policy would encourage women and children to get on a boat.

Then we have stage 2 of the real action charade—and this is turning the boats around. I was very encouraged to hear the shadow minister for immigration on radio 5AA recently accept that it was a very limited set of circumstances where you could turn the boats around.

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

Mr Morrison interjecting

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

The member for Cook will contain himself.

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

The member for Cook could have taken the opportunity in his MPI contribution to tell us what those limited circumstances are. I think the Australian people have the right to know what he as the alternative minister thinks those limited circumstances are. The member for Berowra has indicated publicly in the past that we are right when we point out that you cannot turn the boats around.

The member for Cook might want to indicate where he is going to turn them around to, given that Indonesia will not accept them. He might want to indicate to the naval personnel in Australia’s north in what circumstances he would ask them to risk lives by turning boats around, risking that they would be sunk. The member for Cook might have taken the opportunity to let our naval personnel know when he would ask them to risk their lives. He still has the opportunity at any time of his choosing, but he has not taken it in this debate. At least we know it is a very limited set of circumstances.  That is a relief. The alternative Prime Minister sitting in Kirribilli on the boat phone would not need to do it very often, because we know that they would say it is a very limited set of circumstances but we do not know what it is.

Then we have had the reopening of Nauru—the third stage of the real action charade. We had the shadow minister for immigration in his Jessica Fletcher moment on the doors waving documents, saying he had a smoking gun, he had found the weapon. But he did not repeat different parts of the information released in relation to the same FOI request. He could have quoted this document, which said:

… results of the previous government’s policy of excision as part of the suite of broader measures are unclear.

Or he could have quoted this one:

The vast majority of those who arrived at excise offshore places and who were found to be refugees were settled in Australia and New Zealand.

He chose not to quote that. We closed Nauru because it was the right thing to do. The shadow minister lectures us about the length of time that people are in detention. What did we find when we came to office? The average length of stay for people on Nauru was 501 days, a year and a third. And the longest wait in Nauru was five and one-third years, and the member for Cook lectures us about the length of time that people are in detention. It was five and one-third years.

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

Mr Morrison interjecting

Philip Ruddock (Berowra, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Mr Ruddock interjecting

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

The member for Cook and the member for Berowra will both cease interjecting now.

Philip Ruddock (Berowra, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Mr Ruddock interjecting

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

The honourable member for Berowra will cease interjecting.

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

I am more than happy for the honourable member for Berowra to keep going, Mr Deputy Speaker.

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

But I am not.

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

It is most enlightening, but I respect your ruling, Mr Deputy Speaker, out of respect for your office. The shadow minister for immigration had the opportunity to be honest about the Nauru policy. He had the opportunity—and he still has it, to be honest—about whether people processed in Nauru did or would have the right of legal appeal to judicial review in Australia. The member for Cook could tell us: has he sought legal advice on whether people processed in Nauru by Australian officials would have the right to appeal? We have seen him slipping and sliding over this, either misunderstanding or misrepresenting the law on appeals from Nauru into Australia. The member for Cook has yet to confirm whether he has received that advice from somebody other than from ‘Lord Brandis of Brisbane’ for a change. That might be nice. But that is part of his charade.

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 will cease interjecting.

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

Of course, we have the minor technical issue—the member for Cook says Nauru would be open by now; it is ready and waiting to go—that there is no centre available in Nauru. It has been converted to a school and it has been converted into government offices.

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

I’ve been there.

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

I warn the honourable member for Cook.

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

and those other parts have been dismantled. So there is that minor technical issue.

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

The member for Cook complains that there is no provision—

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

I remind the member for Cook that he has been warned.

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

in the Mid-Year Economic and Fiscal Outlook for a regional processing centre. The difference is that we have not said that it would be running this month. There is no provision in the opposition costings for a Nauru processing centre either. They went through the whole election campaign. How much was in the costings? A big fat zero.

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

The minister will resume his seat. The honourable member for Cook will absent himself from the chamber under the standing orders.

The member for Cook then left the chamber.

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

It is a shame to see him go, Mr Deputy Speaker, but I do respect your ruling. Of course, we have had the latest chapter in the real action charade and this one even tops the boat phone for wacky ideas. This is one that has come out from the shadow minister in more recent times, the announcement that the first 3,750 boat arrivals in Australia each year would receive a protection visa and others would presumably go into indefinite and arbitrary detention. This is a masterstroke of a policy! So we create a scramble to be one of the first 3,750 people to get to Australia in that period, and if you happen to be the 3,751st you stay in detention indefinitely on an arbitrary basis and your application will not be processed. Once again the member for Cook has the hide to lecture us about the amount of time that people might spend in detention when his policy is mandatory, arbitrary detention.

All of this was put to the House in a motion moved by the member for Cook in recent weeks, that this was the Liberal Party policy and they called on the House to vote for it. The Liberal Party then tried to withdraw that motion in the Selection Committee. I wonder why that could be the case. Perhaps it is because they could not guarantee a unanimous vote on their own policies by their party room. When it did come to a vote, when the Selection Committee had the hide to force them to vote on their own motion, conveniently we found that some members of the opposition were paired so they avoided the embarrassment of having members of their own party vote against their policy, because there are honourable members opposite who know that things like temporary protection visas are a cheap and nasty policy which have no effect.

We have the shadow minister say we need a returns policy, and that is one area where the honourable gentleman and I agree; we do need to see people whose asylum claims have failed returned to their country of origin. Recently, as is on the public record, I have been progressing a returns agreement with Afghanistan. In going through this, I asked my department officials, ‘How many people from Afghanistan who arrived in Australia on an unauthorised boat in the years of the Howard government were returned involuntarily to Afghanistan? Over the 12 years how many were returned?’ Zero, not one—and again we find the member for Cook lecturing us about the need for a returns agreement, lecturing us about the need to return people who are not accepted as genuine refugees in Australia.

This government has been getting on with the job of progressing that, because we believe in taking those sorts of actions whereas the opposition prefer rhetoric. They prefer rhetoric to action. The Leader of the Opposition loves rhetoric like ‘peaceful invasions’ and ‘armadas’. He loves to stoke the issue but he does not want to stoke the policy response. Real action involves breaking the business model of people smugglers. It means engaging with our regional partners to remove the incentive to move from country to country within the Asia-Pacific. But it escapes the wit of the opposition to think of that. It escaped them for 12 years and it escapes them now because it is all too hard.

Instead we see their tired old policies of a bygone era and what we will see is an increasing call for the opposition to come clean and be honest about their policies, not to engage in rhetoric. We saw this again in recent days when the shadow minister was asked this: if the minister for immigration and if the government introduce a package into parliament to deal with the High Court case which opened up judicial appeal for people from offshore areas, what would be your response? He was entitled to say, properly, that they would need to look at it. He was entitled to say they had not yet been briefed by the government, which had not yet reached their position, but they would keep an open mind. That is not what he said. He gave a very clear indication that the Liberal Party would not support it. So it does not matter what the government does in policy terms as the opposition are more interested in scoring points than in coming up with a detailed policy response.

We want some honesty from the opposition. We want some honesty from the opposition about Nauru. We want to know about the legal advice they may have received about whether it would open up channels of appeal into Australia. We want to know how much it would cost. We want some honesty about the farce of turning back boats and about when the shadow minister and the alternative Prime Minister would authorise naval personnel putting their lives at risk to turn back boats as part of their policy stunt. We want some honesty about the latest little farce of a policy, about this scramble and this move to indefinite mandatory detention, this latest symbolic farce in the policy development of the opposition. Some honesty about this from the opposition would go a long way.

We will engage and we have engaged in an honest public policy discussion about these issues. We have said very clearly that these are issues that we are dealing with. We recognise that 6,170 people claimed asylum in Australia in 2009 and that makes us the 16th in the world and the 21st per capita in relation to asylum claims around the world. That compares to 33,250 in Belgium, 41,980 in Canada, the same number in France, 27,650 in Germany, 17,600 in Italy, 17,230 in Norway, 24,190 in Sweden, 14,490 in Switzerland, 29,840 in the United Kingdom and 49,020 in the United States of America. So these are issues, and we will deal with them in an open and honest way, something the opposition have singularly failed to do. They have their cheap policies and they have their sound grabs but what they do not have is sound policy. Sound policy not sound grabs—that is what we want to see from the opposition and perhaps we might hear it from the shadow minister for border protection as we did not hear it from the shadow minister for immigration.

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

I see it is clear that the Minister for Immigration and Citizenship could not even use the 15 minutes that had been allocated to him to defend this government’s failed policy, which is relatively extraordinary I would have thought. But this government is already defined by some very clear characteristics. These characteristics are becoming very obvious to the Australian people. The first characteristic is a complete and utter lack of direction. For a newly elected government it is extraordinary that they have absolutely no agenda. They do not seem to have any idea why they want to be in office. We have a Prime Minister who seems completely incapable of outlining why she sought the prime ministership and, quite frankly, why she still seeks to occupy it. We have never had a re-elected government in this country to be so bereft of new ideas, to be so bereft of anything to do once they have been elected.

The second defining characteristic of the Gillard Labor government is a complete lack of courage. This is not a government that runs away at the first whiff of grapeshot; this is a government that does not even have the courage to start the fight in the first place. Remember the things that they outlined as the policies that they would tackle when they got into government. They were going to tackle the greatest moral challenge of our time. They were going to tackle ‘root and branch’ tax reform as outlined to them in the Henry review.

The third thing that characterises this government is gross incompetence: the pink batts program—they failed to be able to give away free pink batts; the school halls rip-off; ill-considered spending programs; and dangerous new taxes that were drawn up on the back of an envelope.

Finally, the fourth thing that characterises this government is that, as well as having a lack of agenda, a lack of courage and extraordinary incompetence, there is a complete failure to take responsibility. We saw it here today with the minister’s response. The whole point of being a minister is that you make decisions and then you are accountable for them to the Australian public. But ministers in this government never accept the blame for the things that have gone wrong. Nothing is ever their fault. Nowhere is this more apparent than in the situation with the illegal boat arrivals. We heard the minister give the standard response from this government about why it is that our borders are now completely out of control. And that is, it is nothing to do with them; it is all the result of international factors that they cannot control.

Clearly that argument has been blown out of the water today. It has already been assaulted by the region as the minister and the Prime Minister wander around selling their half-baked ideas for how they are going to tackle this problem. Everybody in the region, Malaysia and Indonesia, fully understand that and say publicly that the influx of boat arrivals into Australia is completely the result of Australia’s domestic policies. We have had further evidence of that today. Not only does the region understand it; the Australian Public Service understands it. We saw in the FOI documents that were outlined in the Herald Sun that a confidential briefing was provided to this government when they came to office that the closure of the Nauru detention centre was going to result in a big boost for the people-smuggling trade. This document shows clearly that the government knowingly and willingly dismantled the strong border protection regime that they had inherited despite the fact that even their own Public Service was telling them what was going to happen as a result of dismantling that robust policy system.

We saw it from the minister—it is not his fault, it is all international factors. No-one from the government has ever outlined what actually changed in the international system when Kevin 07 was elected. Kevin 07. Remember him? What changed in Sri Lanka? The civil war was ongoing when the Labor Party was elected. What changed in Afghanistan? The conflict was ongoing.

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

Mr Bowen interjecting

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

The Afghanistan situation had been going on since 2001. What changed in Iran? What changed in Iraq? Absolutely nothing. The whole point is this: what changed was Australia’s domestic policies. The region knows it, your own public servants know it, and the whole of Australia knows it. If you cannot admit it you are never going to be able to tackle this problem. That is the sad thing about Labor’s response. If they cannot identify that they are the cause of this problem then they certainly cannot do anything to fix the mess that they have created.

We have heard also from this minister today about the ongoing comedy that is the regional processing centre for East Timor. Pretending that this is ever going to happen is as unhelpful to this problem as refusing to identify that it is domestic issues that have caused it in the first place. If you pretend that we are going to be able to establish a regional processing centre on East Timor then you cannot look for actual solutions to this problem, such as talking to the government of Nauru, who are willing and able to host this facility if the Labor Party ever asks them to do so. While the government buries its head in the sand and continues this state of denial that we have seen on display again today, people smugglers are more and more emboldened and they send illegal boats at an increasing rate to Australia.

We have just seen another grim milestone passed by this government. The rate of illegal boats coming to Australia was double this year what it was last year. If they do not do anything about this problem, if they refuse to acknowledge that they have this problem in the first place, then we are going to continue to see the collapse of our detention capacity. As the minister wanders around looking for new places to put illegal arrivals, we are going to see emboldened people smugglers increasing the rate that they bring people to Australia illegally. This is going to be our fate if the government refuse to take action on what is a clear and present policy problem for Australia. This failure to take action has ramifications for every single Australian. The cost blow-out of $1.1 billion—and that of course is a very conservative estimate—means that this government’s failures on border protection will cost every single Australian $500.

There are also significant consequences for individual communities who now have to host the consequences of this failure. Inverbrackie in the Adelaide Hills and Northam—and I would like to say a little bit about that later on if time allows me—are facing the consequences of having to host these facilities. They were clearly and consistently misled by the Labor Party in the lead-up to the election. The Labor Party pretended they actually had a plan to do something to stop the flow of illegal boats and they pretended that they actually had any hope of convincing the East Timorese to host this regional processing centre.

While the minister is in the House I want to make reference to an issue that he has not addressed but which I think is very important. Following the overcrowding on Christmas Island and in other detention centres around Australia, there was a riot in November 2001. Some of the people who were involved in that disturbance went through the Western Australian court system in November of this year. What the magistrate had to say when he handed down his judgments on these events was damning on the Labor Party’s administration of the immigration department. He said that the immigration department had effectively sabotaged a police investigation into the incident.

Just to refresh the House’s memory, this was an incident that involved differing racial groups housed at Christmas Island in what are incredibly overcrowded facilities—there are 2,800 people in a detention centre that was originally built to house 800 people. These groups set upon each other with weapons. The result was that the immigration department shipped those people to the mainland within 48 hours of that disturbance. That was described by Magistrate Malley as bizarre. He believed that that showed ‘little or no regard as to whether those they were releasing had committed serious or criminal acts’. He further went on to say that the department had in effect assisted these people to evade prosecution and that the department had shown reckless disregard for the significance of these events. The minister has not commented publicly on these things at all. But he will have the opportunity to do so at some stage later on today. It is very important that he does so.

The former coalition government faced a similar problem to the problem that is facing this current government: a surge in illegal arrivals. The difference is that we did not bury our heads in the sand. We drafted policy prescriptions that had the effect of driving people smugglers from business. The result after those tough but necessary policy prescriptions were taken was that we had a rate of arrival of three arrivals per year from the year 2002 until the year 2008. Three arrivals per year—a weekend’s work for this government under this minister. We took the tough but necessary decisions that worked to drive the people smugglers from business. This government continues to bury its head in the sand and do nothing to protect Australia’s borders.

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

Often when you are in parliament you do feel as though it is groundhog day. The tragedy of this debate is that it is groundhog day. It is not a tragedy—it is saddening and in some respects sickening—that again the opposition has to demonise human beings to score cheap political points. They talk about illegal boat arrivals. The Parliamentary Library has put out a fact sheet about asylum seekers and refugees. They called it ‘What are the facts?’ Yet again, we are not getting the facts. We are getting hysteria and dog whistling. Listen for the whistle; you can hear it.

Are we, in parliament, followers or leaders? Do we follow the public or do we lead them? Should we have debates on the reality of the situation and ask the public to look at things in the light of day and come with us or should we descend into talkback radio farce and go as followers? I say that we should be leaders. The member for Stirling said that we should be leaders. He said that there is a lack of a direction and an agenda. I would say that about the opposition. What is their direction? Where is their agenda? They should talk about that instead of beating up on these people who are seeking asylum on our shores.

We have to remember who we are talking about. Let us look at the UN convention definition of a refugee. It reads:

… owing to well-founded fear of being persecuted for reasons of race, religion, nationality, membership of a particular social group or political opinion, is outside the country of his nationality and is unable or, owing to such fear, is unwilling to avail himself of the protection of that country; or who, not having a nationality and being outside the country of his former habitual residence as a result of such events, is unable or, owing to such fear, is unwilling to return to it.

That is who we are talking about. We are not just talking about boats coming here; we are talking about the people in the boats who come here seeking asylum on our shore. Surely we can raise the level of the debate. The member for Cook demonised the current Minister for Immigration and Citizenship and the previous minister for attempting to be leaders in this debate and not just followers.

The Parliamentary Library’s fact sheet—which they have had to go and produce to take some of the hysteria out of this debate—says:

The magnitude and complexity of the issues arising from the flow of asylum seekers and refugees globally poses huge challenges for the world’s destination countries, including Australia. These countries universally struggle to maintain a balance between controlling national borders and offering protection to millions of displaced people.

When the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) was established in 1951, there were approximately 1.5 million refugees internationally. At the end of 2008 there were an estimated 42 million forcibly displaced people worldwide, including 15.2 million refugees, 827 000 asylum seekers and 26 million internally displaced persons (IDPs). It is estimated that there were an additional 25 million people displaced due to natural disasters.

                   …                   …                   …

Australia has a long history of accepting refugees for resettlement and over 700 000 refugees and displaced persons, including thousands during and immediately after World War II, have settled in Australia since 1945.

We need to put in perspective the burden that we are accepting. It seems like there is this mass coming to our shores, which is just not the case. Let us talk about the facts, not the hysteria. Let us be leaders, not followers.

The number of arrivals to Australia remains low by world standards. The overwhelming majority of asylum seekers still head towards Europe or North America. Worldwide, about 380,000 asylum claims were lodged during 2009. These claims were made in 20 settlement countries. So we have an enormous mass of people, and only 20 countries taking them. The United States was the largest single recipient of asylum claims. It received nearly 50,000. Canada received over 30,000. The European Union received about 250,000 asylum claims in 2009, with France receiving 40,000 and the UK and Germany receiving 30,000. Eight other EU countries received more than 10,000 asylum claims. By way of comparison, Australia received about 6,000 claims. Let us put this into perspective; let us talk about the reality. Let us be leaders, not followers.

Let us look at where the majority of these people come from and how they arrive here. They arrive on planes. The majority of these people arrive on planes. We are talking about this nation of our borders being overrun.

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

Not without a visa or a passport.

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

That is not the case. You can still get on a plane without a valid visa or passport.

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

No you can’t.

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

You can. The estimates vary. But it is likely that between 96 per cent and 99 per cent of asylum seekers arrive by air originally. The majority of asylum seekers who arrive in Australia arrive by air. Let us be leaders and not followers. Let us talk about the actual facts. Let us not whip up the debate yet again. Why do we keep demonising these individuals? The majority of them under the Howard government and the majority under the Labor government have become or will become Australian citizens. The majority have been found or will be found to be refugees and settle in this country.

Does anyone think about the long-term impact that all these debates have on these individuals and how they then settle into our country? Does anyone think about how we then ask them to become model citizens after we have locked them up in Nauru for five years or on Manus Island for seven, while we continually use these debates for cheap political point-scoring? Let us be leaders, not followers.

The other thing we need to remember is that the vast majority of asylum seekers never make it to the developed world. The vast majority of asylum seekers are sitting in Pakistan or other Third World countries as we speak. If we are going to talk about dealing with this issue, why are we not talking about it at an international level? That these people seek to come to Australia is not just our issue; it is a worldwide issue; it is a growing issue and we need to deal with it in a respectful manner. We need to stop being hysterical about it. We need to realise that the vast majority of the asylum seeker population will go to developing countries. They will seek asylum in those developing countries, seeking refuge from even worse circumstances—and we want to beat up on the Australian situation instead of talking about what we are doing about the international problem?

There is also the notion that somehow there is this backdoor approach—that the asylum seekers are coming through the back door. The majority of these people have no other option but to seek to flee by precarious means. The majority of them do not have papers; they are not legally recognised in their country of origin and cannot just rock up to an Australian embassy. It is not possible for them to just go somewhere in their country and line up and form a queue. This ridiculous notion keeps being propagated by the opposition.

The opposition just want to keep talking about how they are going to stop boats and reintroduce TPV’s. As the minister has outlined, neither of these ideas works and neither of them has worked. The member for Berowra, when he was in the chamber before, was screaming, ‘Turn a boat around; turn one around and they will stop.’ They tried that with Tampait did not exactly stop the boats, did it? It has not put people off seeking to come to this country by precarious means.

We do need to stop people getting into leaky boats. I remember SIEVX. People do not talk about that; they do not talk about the hundreds of people who drowned attempting that risky voyage. We do not want people to get on leaky boats. The opposition keeps propagating this view that it is somehow in Labor’s interests to keep going on about encouraging asylum seekers. Well, we do not want people to risk their lives. We do not want to see people put their lives at risk. That is why TPV’s were so notoriously bad—because they encouraged women and children to put their lives at risk. Again, the minister has outlined this situation.

During the period 2005 to 2007, I conducted an inquiry on behalf of the ALP into maritime protection. The then government went on about its great border protection. In fact, the borders were incredibly porous then; there were no controls. We went to community after community in Indigenous areas who were terrified that their livelihoods were being pilfered daily by Indonesian fishermen. There was no consideration about border protection on that issue. Have you gone and looked at the beautiful trochus shells harvested off the coast of WA? The entire harvest of those shells was illegally taken by Indonesians within a short distance of the shore. The Howard government did nothing about that situation; they did nothing to protect our borders against illegal fishermen; they did nothing to protect our borders with respect to gun control. Hopefully, one day the hysteria on the other side—the demonising of people—will end. (Time expired)

Teresa Gambaro (Brisbane, Liberal Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Citizenship and Settlement) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

This government has lost control of our national borders and it has turned our national immigration policy into an international humanitarian crisis. The Prime Minister’s fixation with the 24-hour news cycle and short-term political fixes has destroyed whatever humanity was left in the system, since the Rudd government’s fundamental changes to the system saw large and unsustainable numbers of unauthorised arrivals.

Prime Minister Gillard used to head media releases, when she was the shadow minister for immigration, with ‘Another boat, another policy failure’. Besides the various aspects of the failure of the Labor Party to maintain our borders which some of my colleagues earlier—the member for Cook and the member for Stirling—outlined, there are other issues of dire importance. Those are the issues of offshore refugees.

Offshore applicants for asylum and relocation to Australia are treated like second-class citizens compared to those who come by boat, under Labor’s approach to the special humanitarian program and to aspects of our annual refugee intake. This problem has been caused by the gross increase in the number of illegal boat arrivals which, I might add, only started to become a problem when this government came into power in 2007.

The government’s policy on immigration shows that the government does not care about people stuck in overseas detention camps. These people are trying to escape harsh and unjust treatment by following the UNHCR’s legal processes. This government does not care about people living in tent cities in the Sudan, in Ethiopia or in Kenya, or about those who are fleeing religious, economic or social persecution. The government does not care about refugees on the borders of Burma, Iraq, Bhutan or the Congo who have fled for their lives from oppressive regimes and are trying to settle through the UNHCR and who are doing so through the legal processes of the UNHCR.

This government does not care. Why? Because these refugees are not one of the 9,000 irregular maritime arrivals or other arrivals to Australia since they watered down the policy in 2008—they are out of sight and out of mind. But the people who are in refugee camps on the edges of war-torn regions of the world and those fleeing persecution through the appropriate legal channels are just as worthy of Australia’s protection as those who have come and will continue to come to Australia illegally by boat. A particular visa that I want to speak about—

Michael Danby (Melbourne Ports, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Mr Danby interjecting

Teresa Gambaro (Brisbane, Liberal Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Citizenship and Settlement) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The member opposite is getting very agitated, but he knows full well about subclass 204 visa, known as the ‘women at risk’ category. It is a visa for women and young girls who are at risk and who are of great concern to the UNHCR. Those concerns are well founded, with many of these women and young girls at risk from sexual and physical abuse, victimisation, harassment and human trafficking.

A fact that our Prime Minister ought to understand is that there are women around the world who are facing undue persecution and require humanitarian assistance. The UN Secretary-General, Ban Ki-moon, says that violence against women is the most common but the least punished crime in the world. There are two terrible realisations: first, that women and girls around the world are not receiving the protection that they need; and, second, that here in Australia we can do nothing about it because of the historic level of irregular maritime arrivals caused by the Labor government’s failed policies. The increase in the numbers of onshore applicants to be processed has flowed over to negatively impact on our special humanitarian intake and it prevents women suffering starvation, rape and violence in so-called ‘safe’ camps from being able to apply.

Under the current circumstances, if all or a majority of the 7,750 humanitarian visas are allocated to onshore applicants or their families, too bad if you try to apply offshore because you will be put in the queue; too bad if you are a young woman being trafficked around the world in the sex trade; too bad if you are suffering persecution because you are a woman and you cannot leave your country; too bad if your life is being threatened and you require urgent resettlement, because this Labor government officially has no control over this country’s immigration policy. ‘If you do not come by boat, then you will not be considered’ is the message that this government is sending to refugees, and that is the message that will only make a bad problem worse.

There are genuine refugees who non-government organisations and groups write to me about every day. They are in camps and tent cities, and they deserve to come to Australia. This matter of public importance will ensure that they have the opportunity and the fairness of treatment that they deserve. At the last election the coalition put forward a policy of 1,500 offshore Special Humanitarian Program entrants to be sponsored by church and NGO groups. For example, the Salvation Army, from whom I have received a letter—and I am sure honourable members would have received one recently too—at Hobsons Bay at Altona wrote about this particular issue. They say that Australia has a moral obligation to Australian citizens whose families are being tortured and abused in totalitarian regimes. That is why SHP was designed, with the costs minimised because sponsors are responsible for the cost of travel.

Now we have been told that asylum seekers have basically used all of the visas from the SHP pool and only split families will be given a real chance of receiving a visa. The families that we are assisting have put their applications through the correct channels. They have not sought out people smugglers, but now they are told that they do not have a real chance of obtaining a visa. That is what is happening under this government’s failed immigration policy. People offshore are not being treated fairly. There are some who have called for an increase in the SHP quota as a way to rectify the situation. This is a very short-sighted approach.

The current level of 13,750 persons has bipartisan support. The approach to raise the quota would result in only stretching resources and having a greater impact on the budget. It would also result in the government, which is already struggling to pay its current debt, having to pay more, and that would be irresponsible. Leading organisations will also have increased numbers to deal with. We have the Red Cross, other non-government organisations and church groups already stretched to capacity being stretched even further. We have some of the best resettlement services in the world. These services provided to SHP recipients currently in Australia will be severely compromised. Humanitarian entrants generally have the highest settlement needs due to their experiences. They also have a great deal of access to many services in this country. They have been traumatised by many experiences overseas which have caused them to leave their country. An increase in demand for these services, as people are calling for, would also result in case coordination, information and referrals being scaled back.

It is important that we recognise that there are many applicants offshore who need our services. Our aim is to ensure that individuals arriving here under SHP are given every opportunity to rebuild their lives and to become fully functional members of the Australian community. Among the current humanitarian intake, most entrants have lived in unstable conditions for protracted periods of time and many have also experienced physical violence directed towards themselves or their families. They deserve our support and assistance.

I know that the current settlement services are all working well to ensure resettlement and integration because I speak to many groups. I recently attended an event with the Sudanese community in Brisbane. I was privileged to speak to many members of the community and some who have settled here under the Special Humanitarian Program. They spoke of their wonderful, positive experiences in being settled here. They were grateful for the settlement services that they encountered and they pointed out to me that some of the basic support services that they had received on arrival had helped them with technology, life skills, household and workplace appliances and the many values and practices of the Australian way of life. Now they have jobs as a result of our settlement services. This is the type of positive outcome that would be endangered if we overload our current settlement services. Offshore applicants need to be treated with respect and they need to be welcomed, not scaled back because of this government’s failed immigration policies.

Michael Danby (Melbourne Ports, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Here we are yet again, discussing this issue because the opposition has once again wheeled out its old faithful political weapon—hysteria and exaggerated rhetoric about unauthorised boat arrivals. Debate surrounding unauthorised boat arrivals in this country has had many low points, as I said last night, but some of the lowest occurred during the recent election campaign. We all remember the opposition’s extraordinary ads with red arrows indicating hordes of people coming to our shores from Asia and the Middle East. Who can forget the overblown rhetoric of the member for Warringah, the Leader of the Opposition, that Australia was suffering a ‘passive invasion’? Today, we heard from the member for Cook more exaggerated rhetoric about an ‘unprecedented catastrophe’. Even if, at its worst, we get 6,000 unauthorised arrivals, we are a country of 22 million people so what is he talking about?

The debate descended into the downright bizarre when the member for Warringah, the Leader of the Opposition, suggested that he would establish a ‘boat phone’ to facilitate turning boats back. Of course, he would not do that. We all know that the rhetoric of the member for Warringah is worse than what he would actually do. He would not push women and children back out to sea. Nor would the member for Cook or the member for Stirling—and of course the member for Brisbane, who has spoken here so movingly about refugees—do it either. But slogans and publicity stunts are what we have come to expect of the opposition, rather than measured and sensible responses to this difficult issue facing our country.

The fact that there are boats arriving in Australia in an unauthorised manner is an issue, but it is far from the overblown, hysterical, end-of-days issue painted by the opposition. The reality of the situation can be seen by examining figures on the number of asylum seekers Australia receives and accepts compared to other countries around the world. From July 2008 to 25 October 2010, there were 8,141 unauthorised arrivals, including 443 crew, in 212 vessels intercepted in Australian waters and taken to Christmas Island for initial processing. Many of those people will not be granted a humanitarian visa in Australia, but those who are will become part of Australia’s humanitarian visa quota—just as the member for Brisbane said, perhaps unintentionally, this is because they are equally suitable as refugees as some of the people picked out by our representatives overseas. They are equally suitable because, by the criteria they are judged by, these people are judged to be refugees and therefore Australia has responsibilities to meet.

The quota for our immigration program this year, as it has been for many years, is 13,500 people, and I will say again that the overall number is not altered whether a few thousand people arrive in an unauthorised manner or none at all. That 13,500 is just one very small part of our immigration program, which totals around 180,000 people. In 2009, an estimated 377,200 asylum applications were recorded in the 44 European and non-European countries reported on. This is nearly the same number as in 2008, when there were 377,100 claims. As the Minister for Immigration and Citizenship pointed out, Australia ranks 36th amongst countries accepting refugees from overseas. As for the rhetoric that these people are coming to Australia because Nauru was closed down, Nauru was closed down because of simple economic rationality. It was empty for months, and the Australian government saw no reason to keep it open, particularly when we had, as it appeared at the time, the enormous Christmas Island asylum seeker centre that had no people in it. The government dealt with the Nauru centre quite rationally; it was not done to excite people smugglers.

The number of asylum seekers coming to Australia, substantial though it is, is dwarfed in the context of the 2009 UNHCR report, which said a total of 42 million people were forcibly uprooted by conflict and persecution last year. This worldwide total included 16 million refugees and asylum seekers and 26 million internally displaced people uprooted within their own countries. Eighty per cent of the world’s refugees are in developing countries, as are the vast majority of internally displaced people. Major refugee-hosting countries in 2008 included Pakistan, 1.8 million; Syria, 1.1 million; Iran, 980,000; Germany, 582,700; Jordan, 500,400; Chad, 330,500; Tanzania, 321,900; and Kenya, 320,600. Clearly, when put in a global context, the number of asylum seekers arriving in Australia is tiny. You would not know this if you saw the member for Cook last night in the Main Committee—all red-faced and hysterical about this issue. We have come to expect this exaggerated rhetoric from the opposition. As my colleague and friend the member for Chisholm put it, they are followers and not leaders.

The government is developing a policy response to this issue that is focused on regional engagement. We will successfully manage this issue of unauthorised arrivals only by working with our neighbours—those countries through which the vast majority of unauthorised arrivals transit. Those of us who remember more than what happened yesterday will recall that during the Fraser government there were regional processing centres in Vietnam and Malaysia, and they had bipartisan support. This was a mature and rational way of dealing with the problem. The government’s policy may not necessarily be a quick fix, but it will achieve a lasting result.

As I have said previously, every person who is seriously involved in the asylum seeker issue knows that the central issue for Australia is what happens in Indonesia. Thankfully for Australia the government in Indonesia is democratic and the best friend Australia has ever had. Indonesia has an excellent President and an excellent Foreign Minister. The possible passage by the Indonesian parliament of legislation giving sentences to people smugglers is much more germane to people in the Adelaide Hills than is the hysteria displayed last night in the Main Committee by the member for Cook and his colleagues. This is the kind of mature policy response that Australian leaders, not followers, ought to be pursuing with our friends in Indonesia. None of us support people coming in unauthorised ways to Australia and being assisted by people smugglers. We should be pursing cooperative solutions to this issue.

I cannot understand the opposition’s policy. I was chairman of the Joint Standing Committee on Migration when the shadow minister for immigration, the member for Murray, voted on the committee in 2009 for asylum seekers to be treated more humanely and more rationally. She voted for that policy. That was the time when the opposition ought to have been demanding any changes they wanted to make to our migration policy, to the way we receive asylum seekers, rather than making hysterical political points during an election period with red arrows coming down to Australia, boat phones and passive invasions, when we really had to deal with a group of asylum seekers who need to be housed in a particular centre in the Adelaide Hills.

Our policy is about ensuring that Australia retains its rightful role of welcoming a reasonable number of the world’s refugees while maintaining the security of our borders. With the member for McMahon, the current minister, at the helm I have every confidence that our policies will succeed. The cheap political slogans implicit in this motion will not.

Sid Sidebottom (Braddon, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Order! The time allotted for this discussion has now expired.