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

I move:

That this House:

(1)

notes that:

(a)

Australia has a long and proud record of resettling more than 70, 000 refugees since the Second World War;

(b)

there are 10.4 million refugees around the world and less than 1 per cent will be offered a resettlement place;

(c)

Australia’s current refugee and humanitarian program is set at 13,750 with 6,000 of those places going to refugees mandated by the UNHCR and referred to Australia for resettlement;

(d)

the current Government has lost control of our borders with more than 9,000 irregular maritime arrivals to Australia since August 2008;

(e)

as a result of the failure to protect our borders, places in the offshore Special Humanitarian Program (SHP) are being taken up by onshore protection visa applicants and their families; and

(f)

women who have been identified by the UNHCR as being in danger of victimisation, harassment or serious abuse have been rejected by Australia because there are no longer any places left in our offshore SHP; and

(2)

calls for the Government to:

(a)

give priority processing to the following visa applications within the SHP:

(i)

offshore applications for subclass 201—In Country Special Humanitarian Program Visa which offers resettlement to people who have suffered persecution in their country of nationality and who have not been able to leave that country;

(ii)

offshore applications for subclass 202—Global Special Humanitarian Visa for those subject to substantial discrimination and human rights abuses in their home country and who are sponsored for entry by an Australian citizen or permanent resident who is not, and has never been, a subclass 866 visa holder;

(iii)

offshore applications for subclass 203—Emergency Rescue Visa for people who are referred to Australia by the UNHCR and whose lives or freedom depend on urgent resettlement; and

(iv)

offshore applications for subclass 204—Women at Risk Visa for women who are registered as being of concern to the UNHCR;

(b)

confine immediate family members of sub class 866 protection visas holders, that includes irregular maritime arrivals, to eligibility for sponsorship only through the primary visa holder as a secondary applicant for a sub class 866 protection visa; and

(c)

cap the number of visas available in the refugee and humanitarian program in the following ways:

(i)

6,000 subclass 200 visas for people identified by the UNHCR and referred to the Australian Government as mandated refugees;

(ii)

3,750 subclass 866 protection visas for primary and secondary applicants, including irregular maritime arrivals and their immediate families; and

(iii)

4,000 subclass 201, 202, 203 and 204 visas.

I have very strong views on the government’s failed border protection and immigration policies. I do not think that is a secret in this place or anywhere around this country. I hold those strong views because, if we continue with the failed policies that have been in place for the last 2½ years, boats will continue to come and, when boats come, people put their lives at risk. I do not think there is anyone in this country that could deny that that is a fact. We know, sadly, that over 200 people have met that fate as a result of those journeys we know about. People die on boats. I have said it before, and I never want to see it happen again. I hold this view because, as long as we have this type of arrangement in place, people who are in places offshore seeking our protection as they have for many, many years will be denied their right and their place under our program to seek protection and gain that protection, and that is the subject of the motion before the House this evening. Thirdly, I hold these views very strongly because I believe in the integrity of Australia’s immigration program. This immigration program has been an enormous success for this country, and I want to see that it remains a success in this country. I believe in its integrity, I believe in its intent and I believe that the confidence of Australians in this program needs to be upheld and proven. That is particularly the case in this area where the government has failed so badly and so damaged public confidence in our program because of its failures on border protection.

In one of these areas, in November of last year Captain Simon Hartley of the Salvation Army came to see me. We met in Melbourne. He was joined by other Salvation Army officers, a member of the Chaldean community here in Australia and a member of the Ethiopian community, who raised with me some very distressing cases. One of those who saw me was Ms Abate. She is a former refugee from the Kakuma Refugee Camp in Kenya. She came to Australia under our refugee program four years ago. Her mother has been living in virtual slavery since she was trafficked to Saudi Arabia. She wrote to me and others, and she repeated this story on the day. She said:

My mother Sofia … is an abused domestic servant in Saudi Arabia. She had to flee Ethiopia and was trafficked to Saudi Arabia. As a Christian, illegal woman now in hiding she has no real options and suffers abuses on a regular basis. My mother has been sexually abused, beaten, humiliated and has no one to protect her. No UNHCR, no police force, no women’s shelter. It is just suffering.

The woman who wrote this is an Australian citizen, and she asked the question in her letter:

How can my government abandon me?

Another woman wrote to me with a similar circumstance. She says:

I have a sister … a mandated UNHCR suffering in Kakuma.

A captain of the Salvation Army Kenyan divisional headquarters:

… has intervened to save her. However, she still fears for her safety. Gangs operate freely. Women have been raped and killed. Corrupt police demand money from her and threaten her with deportation if she does not comply. She lives in constant fear …

She says:

It saddens me that my government has abandoned relatives of Australian citizens.

The motion I have put tonight is coalition policy. It is a policy that seeks to give priority to the offshore applicants who seek our protection under our program. It is a policy that is designed to ensure that at least 10,000 out of our 13,750 places will be given to people who apply offshore.

I respect the fact that there are some in all political parties who will not always share the views of their parties in putting forward measures in what is a very difficult area. I respect those views, I respect those who hold them and I respect their right to have their say. If they seek to have their say in this debate, then I welcome that and I encourage and challenge those opposite to let those on their benches who have different views to their government speak up and say the same thing, as I am proud to say happens in the Liberal Party. I commend them for their strength of view and for their compassion.

Each year the Australian government provides 13,750 permanent places. There are three main components to this program. There is what we call the mandated refugee program where we take 6,000 people from camps in places around the world in cooperation with the UNHCR, there is the offshore special humanitarian program and there is the onshore special humanitarian program. The onshore program is for those who arrive by boat without a visa—what I refer to as illegal entry. They seek protection under that section of the program. There is protection for 6,000; there is not protection for any other places under that system. The balance of the places are allocated based on the applications that are received and the judgments that are made. But those who turn up and make onshore applications take priority under the system as it is currently designed.

In 2009-10, the number of visas granted to offshore applicants was 3,233. When the coalition government left office, the number in 2007-08 was 4,795. It is no coincidence that the number of offshore applications granted to special humanitarian applicants has fallen by about 2,000 and the number granted to those who arrive by boat has increased by about 2,000. This is what is occurring under our program, and I simply do not think it is fair.

Take the case of Afghan applicants for protection in this country: if you are outside this country and you make an application, based on the figures of the Department of Immigration and Citizenship, one in 10 get a protection visa. If you arrive in this country by boat as an Afghan asylum seeker, the Department of Immigration and Citizenship confirm that in the first nine months of last year you had a 96 per cent chance of getting that. That is what I call a pull factor. I think those who are sitting and waiting and waiting—not two years, not three years but, if you go to the Thai-Burma camps, three generations—are waiting too long. I think we should restore some balance to our system.

Those who cannot get on a boat are the immobile. Why are they immobile? Because typically they do not have resources. They are typically women, they are typically frail and they are typically unable to work the system through the smugglers and others to get them to a point where they can get on a boat. They have no voice at all. There are plenty in this place who want to say in this debate that they stand up for those who have no voice, but I can tell you the woman sitting in Kakuma had no voice in this place until this motion. This motion says: ‘We hear you; we think you should have a place. We think that there should be a place reserved for you that shouldn’t be crowded out because of a government that wants to pursue a failed border protection policy that has seen your place taken by those who might come by other means.’ There is enough suffering in this world.

This is a terribly vexed issue. It is a very, very hard issue and there are no easy choices. The alternative to what I have proposed in this motion is that we simply say that anybody who comes will get that visa, that these other visas will not be compromised and that we walk away from the capping system we have for our special humanitarian refugee program. This is a suggestion that others I am sure will put and that I have heard. I respect that suggestion, but I believe it would compromise our position of seeking to discourage people from getting on those boats. I think that position would encourage people to get on those boats and I do not want to do anything that would do that. While I respectfully listen to that suggestion, I cannot agree with it. The only way I can help that woman in Kakuma is to put forward a motion which says that we will reserve that place for her.

It is interesting that those who sit offshore, those who are recognised as refugees and get a visa for this country, wait 52.6 weeks for that decision. Even with the delays that are being experienced in our detention network today under the government’s failed policies, those who get the answer they are looking for wait 22.8 weeks. I can guarantee where they are waiting offshore pales into all sorts of horrid comparisons to what others might be experiencing in the detention network in Australia. There were people particularly on this side of the House during the last government who did many things to improve our system of detention in this country. They should be commended for that and this government has continued many of those initiatives. That would be a far better place to wait. This motion suggests that those who have had their protection claims assessed would be released into the community under temporary visas and their places would not be taken up with a permanent visa until one was available. These are our proposals. This is a difficult issue and I think this is a decent proposal. I seek the support of the House for it.

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

Is the motion seconded?

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

I second the motion and reserve my right to speak.

Andrew Leigh (Fraser, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

In 1983, I was attending Sutherland Primary School in the electorate of the member for Cook. One day a person from the computer company MicroBee came and set up a computer at the back of the room. It was the first computer most of us had seen. The program was a database of the First Fleet and each of us took it in turn to search the name records to see if our ancestors were on a ship. In that classroom, every 11-year-old child wanted an answer to the same question: ‘Could I possibly be descended from a boat person?’

Nearly three decades later, how is it that some people in Australian politics think they can use the term ‘boat person’ as a form of abuse? When they celebrate Australia Day, do they think the arrivals of 1788 held valid visas? Why do they applaud the courage of one risky sea journey to reach Australia but spread fear and loathing about another?

In my own electorate, I have had the privilege of meeting some extraordinary migrants. Last year I attended a prize-giving ceremony for an art competition run as part of Refugee Week. First prize went to a Karen Burmese woman who had woven a traditional crimson tunic. Because she did not have a proper loom, the woman had taken the mattress off her bed and fashioned a loom from her pine bed base. It is hard not to be overwhelmed by the courage and spirit of Australia’s migrants.

The great success of multiculturalism has been the way suburban Australians have, without fuss, welcomed successive waves of new migrants into our neighbourhoods. As a local member of parliament one of the things that I most enjoy is to stand in a school assembly amidst children from all ancestries in the world and sing with them those lines from the national anthem:

For those who’ve come across the seas

We’ve boundless plains to share …

Yet today, that consensus threatens to shatter. Senator Cory Bernardi tells us, ‘Islam itself is the problem’. And according to journalist Lenore Taylor, the member for Cook, Scott Morrison, told shadow cabinet last year that the coalition should capitalise on the electorate’s growing concerns about Muslim immigration. Neither of them have been rebuked by the Leader of the Opposition.

In his motion today the member for Cook continued his efforts to make political capital out of the Australian refugee program. Yet, like the coalition’s election costings, his efforts are riddled with errors. The motion conflates the refugee and special humanitarian components of the humanitarian program, which are effectively quarantined from each other in terms of the number of visas granted and the priority accorded to processing them.

The motion erroneously suggests that Australia has rejected women at risk because irregular maritime arrivals have crowded them out, a mistake repeated by the member for Cook in his media release last November. This is not the case. The number of places available for refugees overseas is not affected by the number of protection visas granted to onshore applicants, and that includes irregular maritime arrivals.

Australia continues to settle a significant number of refugees from overseas. Indeed, the Labor government has increased the program since coming to office, with an additional 250 places in 2009-10 following an increase of 500 places in 2008-09. This brings the total program to 13,750 for 2010-11. Beyond this, Australia also works to improve the situation of displaced persons in the region by providing substantial support to the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees and the International Organisation for Migration.

Still, if we overlook the factual errors in the member for Cook’s motion, it is plain that he is trying to make a simple point: the government should give preference to asylum seekers applying offshore rather than to those who apply onshore. This is simple enough to say, but hardly straightforward to implement. It raises the question: when the coalition’s proposed cap has been filled, what should we do with those people who arrive in Australia with valid visas and who then apply for protection? What should we do with irregular maritime arrivals found to be refugees? Should they stay in indefinite detention? Perhaps that is the kind of solution that appeals to people who wish for a return to the ‘grand old days’ of the Howard government’s migration policy. But whether you look at it from the point of view of compassion or cost-benefit analysis, indefinite detention for those who come to our shores does not make sense.

We should control our borders—of course we should—but controlling our borders does not require us to add to the suffering of people who merit our compassion. The current refugee program is a reasonable response by the Australian community to a worldwide challenge. Australia needs policies that are based on a humanitarian response, not only because that is what we committed to as signatories of the 1951 refugee convention but also because it reflects the concerns and interests of the community.

While scrutinising the flaws in this motion, let us not miss the broader context in which this motion is being moved. In the Sydney Morning Herald last Saturday, commentator Mike Carlton quoted Bruce Baird, the predecessor to the member for Cook, and a man who served the Liberal Party in the NSW and federal parliaments for 20 years. Indeed, when I lived for a time in Pennant Hills, Mr Baird was my state member of parliament, and even though I was, of course, a member of Young Labor, he did earn my grudging respect. Last week, Mr Baird said of the Liberal Party:

There’s no doubt the party has shifted to the right. It seems like One Nation is calling the tune. They are going for the blue-collar, right-wing vote. Moderate views in the federal party have largely disappeared.

As the Prime Minister told the Lowy Institute last year:

… it would take about 20 years to fill the MCG with asylum seekers at present rates of arrival.

Yet there are those who claim that asylum-seekers are a threat to the Australian way of life. They are on the wrong side of history.

There are those who think that Australia’s religious freedoms are too narrow to apply to all religions. They, too, are on the wrong side of history

There are those who tell us that when a rich nation like ours is hit with a flood, our generosity to Indonesia should cease. They are on the wrong side of history.

There are those who tell us that when family members are lost in a tragic accident off Christmas Island we should deny the survivors a chance to attend the funeral. They, too, are on the wrong side of history.

If you read the history books you will see that the seeds of hatred have been sown before. Brewing up racial discontent has its own special recipe. Start with a cup of rhetoric about how ‘those people’ with their ‘strange customs’ are different from ‘us’. Add a spoon of envy about how those outsiders always seem to get better treatment than ‘ordinary Australians’. And for good measure, why not dash in a suggestion that they could be happier if they just went home where they came from. Then give the pot a good stir, and let it simmer until it is hot enough to serve up to the electorate.

Believe it or not, there is even an academic literature on hatred. Harvard economist Ed Glaeser points out that inciting racial hatred will always be a tempting—

Ewen Jones (Herbert, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Mr Deputy Speaker, I rise on a point of order. The point of order is on relevance; we have got a motion here and I wish he would just start talking to it.

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

There is no point of order.

Andrew Leigh (Fraser, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Harvard economist Ed Glaeser points out that inciting racial hatred will always be a tempting strategy for political entrepreneurs, but only when a minority group reaches a certain size. Italian-Australians: too big—they might fight back; Luxembourg-Australians—hard to get the base fired up; but Middle-Eastern Australians—just right.

I was asked this morning by a journalist who I greatly respect, ‘Why are you bringing this up today?’ It is a good question so, in closing, let me try to answer why I do not think we should merely let the issue drop.

When Pauline Hanson brought her extremist ideology onto the floor of this parliament in the late 1990s, some people said ‘Just ignore it and it’ll go away.’ They meant well but, as the subsequent rise of One Nation showed, they were grievously mistaken. Sometimes you just have to draw a line in the sand. Here is mine.

If there is someone attacking a religion, that matters to me—even if it is not my religion.

If there is someone suggesting that asylum seekers are a threat to our way of life, that matters to me—even if I am not an asylum seeker.

And if there is a father who wants to attend the funeral of his child, that matters to me—even if it is not my child.

I urge the House to oppose the motion.

Judi Moylan (Pearce, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

From 2001 to 2005 I, with others in this place—the member for McMillan was one—worked to encourage changes to the Migration Act and its administration. Concern heightened in the public domain about the treatment of asylum seekers and the administration of detention centres, forcing important changes.

Changes included an agreement that 12,000 or so refugees living in the purgatory of the temporary protection visa system would be given permanent visas and that the Ombudsman would regularly report to this parliament as to why people continued to be held in immigration detention. These changes resulted in a greater level of public and parliamentary scrutiny. One of the single most important changes was that children would no longer be held in detention centres, except as a last resort.

Notwithstanding the inclusion of a declaration in the Migration Act to this effect, today we have over 1,000 children in detention. I notice a call by a Greens senator to have another investigation regarding children in detention, while the matter could be immediately resolved by honouring the existing declaration, and I would strongly urge the Minister for Immigration and Citizenship to do so. Detention centres are no place for children.

We have seen the unedifying spectacle and the treatment of Seena, the nine-year-old boy orphaned through the Christmas Island tragedy in December last year. This is an example of political callousness at its very worst, and I rise today to call on the government and the opposition to stop the political tactics and to end the escalating, hysterical rhetoric over who can produce the toughest policies, and for men and women of conscience in this place to call for the end of the politicisation of asylum policy.

In regard to this specific motion, I appreciate and share many of the concerns outlined by my colleague the member for Cook in bringing this motion to this place. In particular, I share the concern about the many women who daily face life-threatening situations in refugee camps. Of the 10.4 million refugees currently in the world, according to the UN, Australia’s generous resettlement program will take less than 0.0001 per cent per annum. This is the number that will find their way to our shores each year, and it would therefore be reasonable to craft policy in proportion to the dimension of the challenge faced in Australia—not to ramp it up with political rhetoric.

The real deficiency, though, of the current system is that in 1996, by a deliberate decision of the government, the number of onshore protection visas and the number of visas available under the Special Humanitarian Program were linked, so there is now a shortfall of places for special humanitarian visas. However, this motion intimates that somehow onshore applicants are less entitled to and less worthy of permanent protection than offshore applicants. It seeks to allot 3,750 visas to onshore applicants, or 787 fewer visas than the number granted to onshore applicants in 2009-10. This presupposes that asylum seekers would again be held in indefinite detention, or that temporary protection visas would be reinstated.

This would create the situation which in the past prolonged the pain and prevented the resettlement of asylum seekers. Apart from the obvious human trauma this policy engendered, it was administratively demanding and costly. The logical solution would be to delink the two programs and to allocate specific numbers for each of those programs. The fact is that once an asylum seeker reaches our shores we have a legal, social and moral obligation to assess the claim and then provide asylum. This obligation must be separated from our voluntary commitment to offshore resettlement programs.

The contention that temporary protection visas and mandatory detention will in some way stop the boats is not supported by history. Mandatory detention was introduced as a deterrent by the Labor government in 1992, when a small number of people arrived by boat. Ten years later, there had been 5,000 boat arrivals. In the five years prior to temporary protection visas being introduced, there were 3,103 boat arrivals. In the five years following the introduction of temporary protection visas, there were over 11,000 arrivals.

If we are serious about stemming the flow of refugees, we must desist from punitive policies and join with our regional neighbours and the international community to prevent the tyranny, genocide and war which cause people to flee from their homelands. We must prepare to share the burden of those who come to the region seeking asylum. After all, few people would choose to leave their home and make such a perilous journey without good cause.

Australia is working hard to restore peace and the rule of law in Afghanistan, through diplomatic and military commitments and through our government and non-government aid agencies. Our nation has tragically sacrificed 23 young Australians in that cause. It therefore seems to me incongruous that, in committing to restore order in a country in which we recognise the dangerous conditions, when the persecuted escape and come seeking sanctuary we lock them up in prisons which we have conveniently labelled ‘detention centres’.

I call on all my colleagues from all parties in this chamber to speak up for a bipartisan resolve. That resolve is to step up our diplomatic efforts, for a policy proportionate to the real dimensions of the issue and to explore durable, humane options to stem the terrible toll of refugees forced to leave their homelands. The real test of our humanity and decency is how we manage when people seeking asylum come knocking on our door.

Debate interrupted.