Tony Abbott (Warringah, Liberal Party, Leader of the Opposition) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

My question is to the Prime Minister. I refer the Prime Minister to her statement earlier today, when she said, 'We have always, in the Malaysia arrangement, made sure that those obligations in the refugee convention and a number of others besides would be honoured.' I ask the Prime Minister: how can she ensure that obligations will be honoured when they are not required to be legally binding under the amendments that she is proposing to the Migration Act?

Julia Gillard (Lalor, Australian Labor Party, Prime Minister) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

In answer to the Leader of the Opposition's question, let me make clear the obligations that are in the agreement. Asylum seekers transferred from Australia will be there with the permission and agreement of the Malaysian government. They will have legal authority to remain in Malaysia, they will have the opportunity to have their asylum claims considered and Malaysia will not send any refugees back to persecution in their countries of origin—that is, they are upholding the central tenets of the refugee convention by not returning people to places of persecution and by processing their claims. Transferees will be issued with identification documents which will be endorsed by the Malaysian authorities and which will identify to the Malaysian government that the transferee is lawfully in Malaysia. They will not be subject to any of the penalties imposed on illegal immigrants. There will be arrangements allowing those transferred—

Tony Abbott (Warringah, Liberal Party, Leader of the Opposition) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Mr Speaker, on a point of order: how can an obligation be an obligation if it is not legally binding? Now, I asked a very simple—

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

Order! The Leader of the Opposition cannot argue the question.

Tony Abbott (Warringah, Liberal Party, Leader of the Opposition) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

question, and the Prime Minister should be required to be directly relevant.

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

Order! The Leader of the Opposition will resume his seat.

Opposition members interjecting—

Order! A question has been asked. The Leader of the Opposition rises on a point of order on direct relevance and then adds argument to the question. The Prime Minister will ignore the argument and will respond to the question as required by the standing orders. The Prime Minister.

Julia Gillard (Lalor, Australian Labor Party, Prime Minister) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I did want to make the obligations under the arrangement clear. There are obligations allowing those transferred to work and children to get an education. The UNHCR, the United Nations agency charged with upholding the refugee convention, will also assist transferees to access services and undertake refugee status determinations. And, to ensure the ongoing welfare of transferees, there will be an oversight body that will include representatives of UNHCR and the International Organisation for Migration, as well as Australian and Malaysian officials.

I say to the Leader of the Opposition: they are the obligations that Malaysia has freely entered into in this arrangement between us. The Malaysian government has done this freely. The Malaysian government has done it freely because it stands ready to implement it. The Leader of the Opposition has no evidence available to him—no evidence whatsoever—to suggest that the Malaysian government will not honour the obligations it has freely entered into. The Leader of the Opposition says that the only thing that ever compels anybody to do anything is legal compulsion. Well, I actually believe that, in the real world, decent people who freely enter into agreements that have obligations in them do that because they genuinely intend to meet their obligations. The Malaysian government has done that, and I think this sort of casual insulting of the government of Malaysia is not proper and not of assistance to us or to our role in the region.

I say to the Leader of the Opposition as well—and he needs to think about this—that the opposition in the past, when it was in government and indeed when it has been in opposition, has talked about things like towing boats back to Indonesia. Now, there are all the practical difficulties of that, all the risk of loss of life at sea—and the fact that Indonesia is not a signatory country. Indonesia has not entered into an arrangement of this nature with Australia. So how can the Leader of the Opposition say that that is satisfactory but this arrangement with Malaysia is not?

But, at the end of the day, I do not ask the Leader of the Opposition to resolve all of those conundrums and questions. But I am asking him to do what he said he would do earlier today when I met with him, which is consider the amendments that I have presented to him—those amendments being amendments which would enable executive government to act to have offshore processing and to do that in a way which is beyond legal risk.