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

This is important legislation, let us be in no doubt about that. Let us also be in no doubt that this is not so much about offshore processing but, fundamentally, about a lifeline for a stubborn Prime Minister who has long been in denial about the one policy which has been proven to work when it comes to stopping the boats.

There is only one party that is preventing offshore processing in this country and that is the government, which closed down offshore processing in 2008. There is only one party which has obstructed Australia from processing boat people offshore and that is the government, which has not processed a single boat person offshore since it closed down offshore processing in 2008. This is a government that could have had offshore processing at any time if the Prime Minister had been prepared to swallow her pride and pick up the phone to the President of Nauru. This is a government that could have offshore processing today if it were prepared to accept the opposition's amendment, an amendment which will secure offshore processing and will also secure offshore protections, because while we need offshore processing—let there be no doubt about that—a decent country also puts in place decent protections for people who are sent from this country to another one.

Let there be absolutely no doubt about where the coalition stands on offshore processing. We support offshore processing. We invented offshore processing. We have the patent on offshore processing. But I'll tell you what, Mr Deputy Speaker, it was never offshore dumping. We specifically amended the Migration Act back in 2001 to ensure that the minister, the government—the country, in effect—had a responsibility to ensure that people who had come into our care and who left our country were properly looked after.

There is another question which is, in effect, before the parliament today. It is: who do you trust, who does this parliament trust and who does this country trust to stop the boats? Do you trust the party—the coalition—that did stop the boats or do you trust the party—the government—that started them up again? That is the fundamental question before this parliament and before this country. This is a coalition which has a very strong record when it comes to border protection. This is a coalition which has been totally consistent for more than a decade. That is a government, over there, which over the last few years has had every single imaginable policy, except the one that has actually worked.

Do you trust a coalition that has had a clear and consistent policy on this for a decade, a policy that has worked, or do you trust a government, a Labor Party, that has every policy except the one that would actually stop the boats?

This bill from the government is essentially about its Malaysia people swap. I want to make three points about the Malaysia people swap. First, it is a bad deal; second, it is a cruel deal; and third, it is a dud deal. It is a bad deal because no serious, competent, self-respecting government would go to another country and offer a deal on such disadvantageous terms to itself. No serious, self-respecting country would allow itself to be a dumping ground for other countries' problems—and yet that is what this desperate Prime Minister has done. No decent country would expose people who once had its protection to the kind of treatment that they would get in Malaysia.

I want to be absolutely crystal clear about this. Malaysia is a friend of Australia's. Malaysia is an ally of Australia's. But their standards are not our standards. I make no comment on their standards other than to say that they are different from ours and our responsibility with the people who have come into our care is to ensure that the standards they are going to are acceptable to us, not merely acceptable to others.

The Malaysia swap is a dud deal because it has simply not worked. Since the Malaysia people swap was announced we have had more than 1,000 illegal arrivals. Since it was signed we have had 400 illegal arrivals. That is 1,000 reasons why this deal will not work and it is 1,000 reasons why the policies of the coalition—which have been proven to work—are better for the Australian people.

Let us review the history of this whole business. Back in 2001 Australia had a problem, a very serious problem of border protection. It was not easy for the Howard government. Everything the Howard government did was ferociously attacked by, among others, members opposite. We were cruel, we were brutal and we were racist! That is what they said about us. But we put a series of policies in place that did stop the boats. There were three elements to our policy: Nauru, temporary protection visas and turning boats around where it was safe to do so. From that time to this the policy of the coalition has been absolutely consistent and absolutely clear. And it worked.

From 2002 until 2007 there were fewer than three boats a year. The policies that we put in place worked. Then there was a change of government, a change of government to people who thought they knew better and a change of government to people who thought that they were so good, so competent, that they did not need to leave well enough alone. In fact, we had the then minister for immigration say that the day that the Pacific solution was formally dismantled was the proudest day of his life.

I wonder how proud he feels now, given that, since then, we have had 241 boats and 12,000 illegal arrivals. But we have not just had the boats and the arrivals; we have had the deaths, we have had the riots and we have had the suffering. I do not blame everything that has happened since on the government. That would be unfair. The government did not intend, and did not cause, all of the tragedies which have flowed from this terrible mistake. But a terrible mistake it was. Yet, at any time, they could have reopened Nauru. At any time they could have put back in place temporary protection visas and at any time they could have talked to the Indonesians about reinstituting the sorts of informal arrangements which allow boats to be turned around.

The problem is that this government has had every policy on this subject but none has ever worked. On temporary protection visas, the Prime Minister has been for them and against them. On turning boats around, she has been for it and she has been against it, and now she wants to do it again—as long as it is a virtual turnaround. On offshore processing, she was against it and now she is for it.

On the question of the United Nations convention, first it was absolutely essential that people only be sent offshore to countries that had signed the refugee convention and then it was just the merest scrap of paper—it did not matter at all. The Prime Minister has had every policy except one that worked. She supported everything because she believes in nothing. It is worth quoting the words of the Prime Minister; they should be on the record in this parliament. On turning boats around, Gillard said in a press conference on 3 December 2002:

The Navy has turned back four boats to Indonesia … It has made a very big difference … It has disrupted people-smuggling operations tremendously … We think that it is important … that we do everything we can to disrupt people-smuggling. And we think turning boats around that are seaworthy, that can make the return journey, and are in international waters, fits in with that.

That was what the Prime Minister said then. Then, last year, she said turning around the boats is some kind of a joke. On offshore processing, on the Pacific solution, in this very House on 13 May 2003, she said

Labor will end the so-called Pacific solution—the processing and detaining of asylum seekers on Pacific islands—because it is costly, unsustainable and wrong as a matter of principle.

Well, since then, there has hardly been a Pacific island that she has not turned to to beg them to take boat people from Australia. On temporary protection visas, Julia Gillard said in a press conference on 3 December 2002:

… Labor’s policy, is that a unauthorised arrival who does have a genuine refugee claim would in the first instance get a short Temporary Protection Visa.

Really and truly, this Prime Minister, who gets on her moral high horse regularly in this parliament, has ridden every policy horse possible.

On the subject of the UN convention, we had the Prime Minister on radio 6PR on 8 July last year state:

I would rule out anywhere that is not a signatory to the Refugee Convention.

Let's mark these words: 'I would rule out anywhere that is not a signatory to the refugee convention'. You just cannot have a Prime Minister who makes categorical statements one day and then says the exact opposite another day when it suits her political purpose. Now the view of this government is:

… being a signatory to the Refugee Convention is important, but it's not the be all and end all …

Stuart Robert (Fadden, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Defence Science, Technology and Personnel) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

They've developed their thinking.

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

Yes, their thinking has developed, as the minister told us in this parliament. The one thing that it has never developed into is a firm and consistent policy to stop the boats. The one thing that it has never developed into is a policy that the people of this country have the right to expect: a policy that stops the boats.

We then have the statement from July last year from the current Minister for Immigration and Citizenship, who said that boat people had to be sent to countries that are signatories to the refugee convention 'for the sake of decency'.

Stuart Robert (Fadden, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Defence Science, Technology and Personnel) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

It's no wonder he wanted to resign.

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

It is no wonder that he wanted to resign, because the policy which his government is now pursuing, the policy which he is now required to implement, is, by his own standards, in his own words, an indecent policy.

Let's consider in more detail the sorry history of this government's handling of this issue, which not only betrays a lack of principle but shows a complete lack of competence. Since the Prime Minister belatedly 'lurched to the right', in the words of her predecessor—since the Prime Minister was convinced that this lurch to the right, as Kevin Rudd, the Minister for Foreign Affairs, put it, was necessary—we have had the so-called East Timor solution, and that did not work because the Prime Minister did not understand that the head of the government in East Timor is actually the Prime Minister and not the President. She called the President, not the Prime Minister—the one who is actually in control of these matters.

Then, of course, we had the Manus Island proposal, and that did not work; the Prime Minister sent a parliamentary secretary to supplicate the PNG government and the PNG government rather understandably thought, 'If this is important, come yourself.' Not only was she too proud to pick up the phone to the President of Nauru; she was too proud to send Kevin Rudd to PNG because he had a vital engagement in Kazakhstan at the time. Then we had the Malaysian people swap, which is unworthy of a self-respecting and serious country.

Then we had the events of this week, which demonstrated that the government are incapable of holding a position from Friday evening until Monday morning. On Friday evening, the Prime Minister dispatched senior officials of the immigration department, plus the Solicitor-General and another senior lawyer from that department, to brief the coalition on what the government had in mind. What the government had in mind was a truly remarkable abandonment of the principles which have always governed offshore processing in this country. What the government had in mind was to completely strip out of the Migration Act the requirement that Philip Ruddock, the member for Berowra, put in there back in 2001 that the countries to which Australia sent people had to observe relevant human rights standards. That was our position. That was our law. Yes, we believed in offshore processing, but we did not believe in offshore processing 'anywhere under any circumstances'. They stripped out the protections, because what they were on about in the legislation that they gave to us last Friday was not offshore processing but offshore dumping.

We made those points. The shadow Attorney-General, the shadow foreign affairs minister, the shadow minister for immigration and I, in a spirit of candour and constructive cooperation with the government, made the point that it would be very difficult for us to support legislation that did not retain the requirements for human rights to be protected and for people to be properly processed offshore. So I went and saw the Prime Minister late on Monday morning, as requested, and there was a new draft proposal, new legislation. But this legislation—

Opposition members interjecting—

As one of my colleagues says, 'Even a weekend is a long time in politics when it comes to this government.' The new legislation that we were presented with on Monday morning paid lip-service to the protections that we had talked about on the Friday evening, but it did not guarantee them. In fact the advice that we had from former Solicitor-General David Bennett QC was that the Monday morning position was in fact worse than the Friday evening position, because the Monday morning position was just as deficient on protections but was much worse when it came to legal certainty. That is why this legislation deserves to be defeated if it is not amended.

I want to turn briefly to the expert advice which the Prime Minister often refers to in this parliament. There is, in my judgment, no persuasive case that offshore processing in Nauru cannot work in the future; because it has worked in the past. Again and again we hear from members of the government that 90 or 95 per cent of the people sent to Nauru ended up in Australia. Dead wrong. I am not allowed in this parliament to call it a lie, but it is not a truth. And if I were not in this parliament I would say that it is a lie. The truth, which members opposite well know, is that 30 per cent of the people who went to Nauru ended up in their home country; 27 per cent ended up in a third country; and only 43 per cent ended up in Australia, and they often came here after a delay of up to five years. It was a very powerful deterrent. It was a powerful deterrent then; it can be a powerful deterrent again. The final point I make about Nauru is that it was a decent thing for the Australian government and the Australian people to do because, at all times, we knew that people being sent to Nauru were being looked after in accordance with decent standards, our standards, that were being supervised by Australians.

It is claimed that the expert advice is that boats could no longer be turned around. How can they say that when the government just has not tried? Kevin Rudd, back in 2007, said that he would be tough enough to turn the boats around, but not once has the government since then actually tried to turn boats around. Then it said that temporary protection visas would no longer be effective because most of the people on temporary protection visas were eventually given permanent residency. If temporary protection visas are not effective, why have there not been any more boats in Canada since temporary protection visas were put in place there?

It is very clear: Nauru is a proven success; Malaysia is a proven failure. Having put before us this proven failure, having asked this parliament to vote for a proven failure, they have absolutely no plan B. Again and again in this parliament members on this side of the House have asked the Prime Minister what happens when the 801st person arrives, and she has absolutely no answer. I have a clear message for the Australian people and for members opposite: this coalition does not vote for failure. This coalition votes for success. That is why this coalition is determined to vote for our amendment and, if our amendment fails, to vote against this bill.

When I saw the Prime Minister on Monday she said that the legislation would be introduced on Wednesday but then it would not actually be debated in the parliament until the following sitting fortnight because they had a very important bill before the parliament—the carbon tax bill—and it was so important that this particular amendment was going to have to wait. Now we are debating this amendment today and all of us in this parliament know why we are debating it today—because the Prime Minister is not sure of her numbers. Daily her numbers are crumbling and that is why we are debating this bill today. The one thing that the Prime Minister does not want is to have the Minister for Foreign Affairs back in this parliament. She does not want to risk this parliament having to decide this matter with the foreign minister present in the parliament. You can just imagine the Prime Minister's little speech to her cronies in the caucus, 'Let's not have a lurch to the Left,' because that is what we might have if the foreign minister comes back.

The other message we have heard again and again from the Prime Minister in the course of the last few weeks is that somehow the coalition is betraying the national interest by failing to support bad policy from a bad government. I say to this Prime Minister: it is never the opposition's job to support bad policy from a bad government. It is never the job of the parliament to give a blank cheque to the executive government. Does this Prime Minister not know any constitutional history at all? Has she no understanding of Westminster whatsoever? It is simply wrong for this Prime Minister to repeat, as she does time and time again, that somehow the opposition leader is required to assemble a parliamentary majority for the Prime Minister's legislation. She is only the Prime Minister because she says that she can command a majority for her legislation. If in fact she cannot command a majority for the important legislation of this government, there are options open to her and she should take them. If the Prime Minister cannot command the confidence of this House and of this parliament on an issue as important as this, the question then arises: should she have the confidence to remain as Prime Minister?

Let me conclude by reminding the House of where this government and this country will be left should the Prime Minister fail to accept the amendment that the coalition is putting before it. Remember: this amendment guarantees offshore processing, but it guarantees offshore processing with the protection that it must take place in a country which is a signatory to the UN refugee convention. Our amendment secures offshore processing, but it also does the best we can to secure human decency and to protect human rights, subject to the kind of legal certainty that the government now thinks is necessary in the wake of the High Court decision. If the government fails to accept our amendment, we will have no choice but to oppose the legislation. The likelihood is that, on the basis of that opposition, the legislation will fail to pass through the parliament. That will mean that the government has no capacity in its assessment to send people offshore. That is not an assessment that this coalition shares. We believe that, even under the existing legislation, offshore processing at Nauru is possible and desirable.

What the government will have left itself with is its strong assessment, its categorical conviction, that offshore processing is no longer possible combined with its constant statements over the last few weeks that without offshore processing our borders are simply uncontrollable. This will be a government that has put itself in the position of failing to do what is the first duty of any government, namely, to protect the borders of our country. A government which cannot protect the borders of our country is a government that is incapable of doing its job. A Prime Minister who is incapable of protecting the borders of our country is a Prime Minister who has manifestly failed in the highest task she has. Frankly, it is a government and a Prime Minister who should resign and not engage in the kind vituperation that I am sure we are going to get again and again in this parliament on this matter.

This is a Prime Minister and a government which now say that without offshore processing border protection is impossible. I wonder what they were thinking then in 2008, when the government closed down offshore processing. I wonder what the government has been doing for the last 12 months, when it has not sent a single person offshore to be processed. I say this is a government that can have offshore processing today. All it has to do is to accept the amendment that the opposition is quite sensibly and quite properly putting forward. It can have offshore processing in 148 countries, if that is what it wants. There are 148 countries to choose from. Certainly, it can have offshore processing in Nauru, which worked, and it can have offshore processing on Manus, which was its own policy until it seems to have been forgotten just a few weeks ago. This is a government which can have what it wants. It just has to say, 'Yes, we will accept the opposition's amendment.'

Richard Marles (Corio, Australian Labor Party, Parliamentary Secretary for Pacific Island Affairs) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

What we have just heard, over the last 25 minutes, is the total abandonment by this Leader of the Opposition of any desire to pursue public policy. We have heard from the Leader of the Opposition that there is a desire on their part not to vote for failure, but everybody on that side of the House and everybody who is listening to this broadcast today knows that they desperately hope that, in the pursuit of solving a very complex problem, this country fails. They are precisely voting for failure and that is exactly what they are about here.

We have seen a Leader of the Opposition—the author of Battlelines; a man who saw himself as a self-proclaimed conviction politician acting in the national interest—reduced to nothing other than a peddler of rank politics, dedicated to his own self-interest. Let me tell you, Mr Deputy Speaker, that there are a large number of people on the opposition benches today who privately agree absolutely with that proposition. They joined a conservative party wanting to engage in policy and they have found that they are being led by a man who is utterly opposed to any policy at all. We thought there might be some suggestion of the Leader of the Opposition acting in good faith when the High Court decision was made, but since then we have seen Tony Abbott, the Leader of the Opposition, crab-crawling away from that commitment to a place of base hypocrisy. We see him on the one hand saying that for a decade he has supported the proposition of offshore processing, and now he is voting for a proposition which is dedicated to stopping it. For a decade we have seen him talking about trying to disrupt people smuggling; now all he is about is trying to disrupt the government from dealing with people smuggling.

There are in this debate people who are trying to solve a complex and difficult problem of public policy and there are people who are engaging in base politics. The vote that we will have in relation to this debate is all about letting the Australian people know on which side of the fence every parliamentarian stands on this question. I stand today in support of the Migration Legislation Amendment (Offshore Processing and Other Measures) Bill 2011, and I do so because the purpose of this bill is to restore the law in this country as we understood it to exist prior to the High Court's decision in Plaintiff M70/2011 v Minister for Immigration and Citizenship on 31 August 2011.

This is a complex problem. No-one would suggest it is anything other than that. We live in a wonderful society in Australia. It is a society which, by international standards, has extremely high standards of living: excellent education, an excellent health system, democracy as its core value, fundamental freedoms and human rights as the basis of government action. This problem essentially takes all that is good about Australia and abuts it with those who come from parts of the world where all is not good—where people do seek to leave and do want to come to Australia, for many reasons. How we deal with those who want to come is a difficult issue. How we perform our role as a good international citizen and respond to that need in an appropriate way, whilst at the same time maintaining an organised and balanced system of migration which plays a role in contributing to Australian society—which we have done so wonderfully since Federation—rather than doing the opposite, is a complex matter. We do that by taking 13,750 people each year who seek refuge in this country, people who are asylum seekers, through a system of processing by the UNHCR which is undertaken in camps around the world. That is the normal basis by which people come here. Because that processing occurs offshore, it enables those people who seek refuge in this country to be settled within our communities very quickly. In addition to that, we have an extensive skilled and family migration program.

We all understand that when we are talking about this area of public policy we are engaging in the act of saying who can come to Australia and who cannot. Decisions in that space are about determining the very quality of lives of people in an extremely significant way, and these are therefore very hard and difficult decisions. This is an area which has been made even more complex by the decision of the High Court, and it is an area which is being made even more complex by a very difficult political landscape which is laden as heavily with political baggage as any landscape in the political arena. From the point of view of Labor, both in opposition and in government, we have approached this problem with a very consistent sets of ideals. We want to meet our international obligations, so as a matter of principle we deal with this problem by working with the UNHCR and the International Organization of Migration, and we work through with them the things that we can do to meet the global demand of those who are seeking asylum.

We seek to approach this problem from the point of view of having an orderly and safe way of people coming to this country. As soon as you talk about providing an orderly and safe migration process, you immediately say that it does matter that we stop the boats coming to Northern Australia. It matters because we need to stop the appalling death rate which accompanies people who come on those boats. By some estimates, as many as four per cent of people who decide to get on one of those boats—four people in 100—to come to Australia lose their lives. The fact of the boats coming also means that the principal agent for those people who come to Australia in that way is not the UNHCR but a systematic group of people smugglers. Of course, it also requires those people coming in that way until this point to be processed onshore, which creates a burden to our processing system in Australia.

In dealing with this issue it has been very important to Labor that it is argued to the Australian people in a way which is dignified and appropriate, which emphasises the very positive role migration has played in modern-day Australia, which celebrates those people who have come to Australia in that way, and which sees that migration and all the benefits that come from it are inherent to the culture that we have in this country today—that multiculturalism is a wonderful thing and that we do not vilify people who come here as asylum seekers or in any other way. How you argue this debate matters, and we have argued it in a way which celebrates diversity and multiculturalism rather than the opposite.

The politics of this is difficult and has been made more complex in the last 10 years. For those who are listening to this broadcast seeking to understand the complex nature of this political debate, have a look at the way people are motivated when it comes to the politics. Let me say before I go into that that there are very, very good people in conservative politics and certainly in Labor politics who have been trying to deal with this problem in good faith. But when politics takes hold the motivations can become very dark. When politics takes hold the motivations start to become clearer.

From the Labor side our political motivation is completely equated with trying to substantively resolve this issue. But, when politics overtakes the behaviour of those on the opposite side, you see the Liberal Party seeking to do everything they can to not see this issue resolved. They want to see this issue being talked about as much as possible within the media. A resolution to this problem, one which sees this go away from the front pages, is not in their political interest at all, and that is what is driving their behaviour in this House today. It is as plain and simple as this: the mob opposite have stopped trying to solve this problem and they are now simply engaged in rank politics and, in turn, that is leading them to rank hypocrisy.

At the outset of their criticism of the Malaysia deal—and we heard a little bit from the opposition leader just before—they said that five for one was a bad deal. That was the basis on which we heard the rhetoric against the Malaysian deal then. But now they have found their bleeding heart and they are telling us that in fact what is going on here is that there are not the right protections in Malaysia. Those two things are inconsistent. What we see is rank hypocrisy. They say to us is that what now matters in their view is the refugee convention and that is now what is wrong with Malaysia. Yet they still pursue a policy of turning boats around if they can and sending them to Indonesia—a country which is not a signatory to the refugee convention and does not have in place all the protections that have been negotiated in the context of the Malaysian arrangement. They say that they see offshore processing as an important part of their policies, and now they stand in this House today doing everything they can to stop it.

In holding those values to deal with this issue our response since being in government has been as follows. We brought to an end what was occurring in Nauru because it was bad policy. It was bad policy because it was costly and because people were being allowed to linger in Nauru without resolution of their status, which was simply not an act of humanity. One person was in Nauru for as long as five years; 120 people were there for more than three years. That ought to have been stopped and we did stop it. Another reason we stopped it was that it had simply ceased to become a deterrent.

We saw this as being as a regional problem which required a regional process. At the Bali ministerial conference on 30 March this year we agreed to the regional cooperation framework. Under that process we then entered into an arrangement with the Malaysian government that would see people coming from Indonesia by boat to this country seeking asylum transferred to Malaysia. In return for 800 of these people we would take 4,000 people over four years who had been processed by the UNHCR in Malaysia and our intake would increase per annum from 13,750 to 14,750.

The effect of that arrangement was really a breakthrough in terms of providing a significant deterrent because it meant that people returned to Malaysia under this arrangement would in effect be put at the end of a very long queue. There are 94,000 refugees in Malaysia. They would have paid their money to a people smuggler and not taken one step closer to this country. Therefore the people smuggler had nothing to sell and the model of the people smugglers would have been broken. In the process, though, significant safeguards were negotiated with Malaysia to make sure that, in relation to those 800 people, there would be no return to the country from which they had fled; there was a commitment to see their claims processed by the UNHCR; their lawful stay within Malaysia would be facilitated; minimum standards of employment, education and health would be allowed; and a commitment would be made to treat them with dignity and respect. Importantly, this was a proposal that was worked through with the support of the UNHCR and with the International Organisation for Migration. To supplement that we entered into a memorandum of understanding with the government of PNG on 19 August 2011 to establish a processing centre on Manus.

All of this represented a breakthrough—something that would actually see the boats stop, something that would put governments back in charge and defeat the model of the people smugglers, and something that would increase our share of dealing with the significant asylum seeking burden which is out there in the world today. The High Court changed that and by virtue of that we now stand before this parliament seeking to restore the law to a position which would allow executive government to make the decisions that it needs to make. Those opposite, as we have heard the opposition leader articulate, support a different proposal—and, were the opposition in government, that would be fair enough. We, in seeking to change the Migration Act, are trying to enable the opposition, if and when they come into government, to put in place their policy and for this government, while in government, to put in place its policy. We are trying to solve a complex problem; but we have just heard from the opposition leader that he stands opposed to that—and we will hear the same thing again and again from speakers on the other side. They stand for the failure of any attempt by government to resolve the asylum seeker issue.

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

The member for Bennelong recently told me that in tennis you never change a winning game but you always change a losing game. If only the Rudd-Gillard government had listened to this advice when they ignored advice and abolished John Howard's proven border protection regime in 2008.

Today we debate the Migration Legislation Amendment (Offshore Processing and Other Measures) Bill 2011 in this place because the government has been shamed into doing so. At no stage did this government seek to have debate on this bill expedited by this parliament; the opposition had to remind this government that it was an urgent matter. A government that was delivering lectures on the national interest had failed to work out that such a pressing matter should be urgently dealt with in this parliament. This is what the coalition did a decade ago when dealing with the question of illegal arrivals, and the then member for Bennelong, John Howard, introduced his Tampa bills. After another day of confusion and division within the government yesterday, the government finally relented and brought on this important debate.

The question now for the government is: how many of its own members will be muzzled—how many of them will sit silent? After a decade of vilifying the coalition, they will now sit silent on that side as with this bill their own government introduces their own worst nightmare. The bill follows more than three years of cascading failure by this government, which now seeks a blank cheque to inflict more failed policy on the Australian people. Since the Rudd-Gillard government abolished the Pacific solution, temporary protection visas and turning boats back, more than 12,000 people have turned up illegally on 241 boats. This has caused a budget blowout of more than $3 billion as well as chaos and riots in our detention centres. At least one critical incident occurs in the detention network every six hours. The Howard government's program cost less than $100 million each year; the Rudd-Gillard government's program costs more than $1 billion. When the coalition left government there were just four people in our detention network who had arrived illegally by boat; under the Rudd-Gillard government that number has exceeded 6½ thousand. As hundreds of illegal boats arrived, the government denied that there was even a problem. Instead, it vilified the coalition and all Australians who shared our concerns. At one point the government called us racists for our views—even as, long before the horrific and terrible tragedy at Christmas Island, we pointed out that people die on boats.

After Prime Minister Rudd abolished John Howard's solution, he proved to be an absolute soft touch by bungling the Oceanic Viking stand-off. Then there was his failed and discriminatory asylum freeze. Then, of course, came the embarrassment of Prime Minister Gillard's East Timor non-solution. Now we have Labor's incompetent five-for-one Malaysian people swap deal, which has already failed and would cost taxpayers almost $300 million. Almost 1,000 people have turned up since the deal was announced with a quota of just 800, and more than 400 have turned up since it was signed. This deal has a clear use-by date which will be deliberately exhausted by people smugglers as a tactic, and the government has no plan B for illegal arrival 801. This failed policy has already been condemned by both houses of this parliament, and just over three weeks ago it was struck down by the highest court in this land.

In 2001, the coalition established section 198A of the Migration Act to enable offshore-entry persons to be taken to a country which the minister could declare provided the following protections: firstly, access to effective procedures for assessing a person's need for protection; secondly, protection pending determination of their refugee status; thirdly, protection while they awaited return to their own country or were resettled in another; and, finally, the meeting of relevant human rights standards in providing these protections. This was the coalition's legislation. In it the coalition enshrined the twin principles of offshore processing and offshore protections in Australian law, and this has been the coalition's policy for a decade.

From the time of the announcement in May, the coalition has consistently highlighted concerns that the Malaysian people swap could not provide the protections required under section 198A. This position was only reinforced in my assessment during my visit to Malaysia in late June, which I made in order to form my own view of the conditions on the ground. During that visit it was patently obvious to me that, even with the best will—which I do not doubt—on the part of the ministers involved in putting the agreement together, such protections could not be practically guaranteed. In my consideration as a shadow immigration minister, there is simply no legal or institutional infrastructure in place in Malaysia to meet the standards set out in section 198A. A key reason for the absence of these frameworks is the fact that Malaysia is not a signatory to the United Nations Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees.

In a small country such as Nauru, this was less of an issue then it is in Malaysia, since the coalition was able to directly and practically ensure the welfare, support, processing and protection of every person through to the time of departure. As we know, of these people only 43 per cent came to Australia, 30 per cent went back to their home country and the balance were resettled in other countries.

This was recognised by the High Court in paragraph 128 of the judgment in the comments provided by His Honour Justice Gummow and his colleagues. They stated:

… the arrangements made with Nauru were very different from those that are now in issue—

Namely, those with Malaysia—

Not least is that so because Australia, not Nauru … was to provide or secure the provision of the assessment and other steps … as well as the maintenance in the meantime—

And—

to provide the access and protections in question.

The High Court judgment struck down a failed policy in Malaysia, not a proven policy in Nauru.

Given that Nauru has now signed the convention, is introducing complementary domestic laws to support their applications, and is willing to enter into clear and binding arrangements with the Australian government, and Australians will be directly involved on the ground to support the Nauruan government in meeting these obligations, the coalition remains confident about reopening Nauru under current law.

Contrary to the claims by the government to discredit Nauru, the Solicitor-General, in his advice to the government and in his briefing to the opposition, did not rule out this possibility. The type of direct control possible in Nauru is not possible in a country like Malaysia. People are left exposed and vulnerable to forces beyond the control of governments that are unaffected by the well-meaning words of non-binding agreements.

On 31 August the High Court struck down the minister's declaration and found that it was not lawful. The protections required were not established as a jurisdictional fact. No statute was struck down by the High Court; just the declaration of a minister who had failed to ensure appropriate protections were in place consistent with the Migration Act. While the court may have found that the discretion afforded to the minister was less than previously understood, there is no question that protections were a requirement of the act.

Rather than seek to uphold these protections that have been a feature of this act for a decade, the government's response to the High Court decision has been to abolish the protections in the act through this bill—as confirmed to the opposition by officials at our briefings—including the lack of any binding obligation for an offshore processing country under the government's proposal not to refoule. To support this bill in its current form, the coalition would have to walk away from a decade of proven policy that has supported such protections being contained in the act.

The bill also fails the test the Prime Minister established for its introduction—namely, simply to restore the previous legal understanding of the situation prior to the High Court decision. This bill goes far beyond this understanding, by stripping away prior protections. The bill also violates the Prime Minister's own commitment to not send asylum seekers to countries that are not a signatory to the refugee convention. The bill seeks to provide unfettered ministerial discretion through a legislative blank cheque rather than re-establishing protections that can be reasonably and objectively tested.

Officials indicated they were unable to identify an objective test of protections that would also satisfy the government's policy to transfer offshore entry persons to Malaysia. In other words, the only way they could make Malaysia lawful and immune from challenge was to provide the government with a complete legislative blank cheque. The recent failure of the government to provide sufficient protections in their Malaysia agreement when they thought they had a blank cheque, highlights the wisdom of retaining safeguard provisions within the legislation—not just for this government but also for any future government.

It is not unreasonable for a parliament to provide modest guardrails for the exercise of executive discretion. The blank cheque option is therefore not about reasonable executive discretion. Such discretion was not available to, nor sought by, the coalition when we introduced these measures 10 years ago—despite the false and desperate assertion by the Prime Minister to the contrary. However, the coalition believe that a safeguard, a clear litmus test, can and need be readily established following the High Court decision by requiring any country to which an offshore entry person may be transferred to have acceded to the United Nations Convention on Refugees or its associated protocol.

During the consideration in detail stage of this bill, I will be moving an amendment that gives effect to that proposal—and I table that amendment for circulating in my name. This will be the only amendment moved to this bill by the coalition. The former Solicitor-General, Dr David Bennett AC QC, has provided written advice to the coalition on the amendments provided by the government and the coalition's alternative. His opinion is that the coalition's plan 'provides more protection for asylum seekers than the government's versions and is less likely to be the subject of complex judicial proceedings'.

I also note that the bill deals with changes to the Immigration (Guardianship of Children) Act to deal with the High Court's decision in the same judgment. The previous understandings of the provisions were that the power to remove under the Migration Act took precedence over the requirements of the Guardianship Act. The amendments restore the original understanding of the ascendancy of the Migration Act over the Guardianship Act and are not opposed by the coalition.

The coalition has offered legislative support to this government to re-establish offshore processing that was abolished by the Rudd-Gillard government just over three years ago. By refusing the coalition's amendment, the government are refusing to guarantee reasonable protections, while leaving the door open for further legal challenge that could leave them once again stranded in the High Court. Our amendment seeks to provide protection in the act to ensure that this government again does not find themselves stranded in the High Court for yet another policy failure.

At the end of the day, the Australian people will make a judgment about this debate, and I believe they will do that on the basis of one simple question, and that is: who do you trust to protect our borders? Who do you trust to stop the boats? Who do you trust to restore the integrity to our refugee and humanitarian migration program—which has been, I think, one of this country's great contributions? We are proud of this program. We have been partners in this program with other members of this place for many, many years. As one who sits on a side of the House in a party that was once led by Robert Menzies, the former Prime Minister who was the one who ensured that we signed the refugee convention in the first place, I believe this is a matter of trust.

The coalition's border protection policy has always been tough, has always been uncompromising, has always been consistent and, most importantly, has always been effective—and it remains so. In contrast, Labor have supported and opposed every position there is, except for things that work—especially this Prime Minister. Labor's record under both Prime Ministers Rudd and Gillard has been failure after failure, and they are seeking a blank cheque for more failures. When it comes to the issue of trust, actions speak louder than words. Onshore processing has been the government's only policy. They abolished offshore processing. By contrast, the coalition turned back boats, successfully operated offshore processing on Nauru and denied illegal arrivals permanent visas. That is how you earn the trust of Australians on border protection. The coalition will stand by the policies that have earned this trust when dealing with the bill before the House. It is for a government to secure passage of their legislation, not for the opposition. The government alone will therefore be responsible for failure to accept our reasonable amendments and securing passage of this bill and will be responsible for every illegal boat that continues to arrive on their watch. (Time expired)

Mark Dreyfus (Isaacs, Australian Labor Party, Cabinet Secretary) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

At the start of a debate on a bill like this it is tempting to refer to the way in which the opposition have chosen to approach this difficult policy question, but I am not going to do that, because the two speeches that we heard this morning, from the member for Warringah and the member for Cook, indicate in the clearest possible way that the opposition have in effect dealt themselves out of consideration of the difficult policy that is under consideration with these amendments to the Migration Act. The member for Warringah made this crystal clear at the start of his speech to the House this morning by saying, 'Let us also be in no doubt that this is not so much about offshore processing.' The very purpose of these amendments is to put in place in the Migration Act of the Commonwealth provisions that deal with offshore processing. The member for Warringah portrays the approach of the opposition as one that is purely a continuation of the kind of mad partisanship that we have come to expect from those opposite on just about every policy question, but particularly difficult policy questions like the one that arises here.

I will start by giving a little bit of personal family history. I spoke about the history of my family's arrival in this country when I first spoke in this House. It was to inform the House that issues such as those raised by these amendments to the Migration Act are very close to my heart. My father and my uncle came to this country as people seeking refuge—indeed, as children—when they arrived on my father's 11th birthday, 22 July 1939. They arrived having been sent by their parents who were still in Nazi Germany. My grandparents remained in Germany to try to persuade their parents, regrettably unsuccessfully, to escape from that regime, and my grandparents—those who were still living in 1942—perished in the camps.

My father arrived here and was given refuge, along with his elder brother, in July 1939. They waited anxiously to see whether their parents would arrive and, happily, some months after the Second World War started, my grandparents did arrive in this country and for some years enjoyed a happy life in Australia, as did my late uncle and my father, who is happily still living. So this country has provided great refuge to my family. As that is part of my family history, the issues raised about how Australia is to provide compassion and fulfil its obligations under the refugee convention are dear to my heart.

We entered the refugee convention and we participated closely in the drafting of the refugee convention because Australia, as a compassionate nation, did not want to see a repetition of the horrific events that preceded the Second World War and occurred during the Second World War. People who were fleeing persecution, fleeing torture, fleeing imprisonment, fleeing imminent death at the hands of the regime in their country were denied refuge in different countries across the world.

Just last weekend in the media there was an account given of one of the worst incidents that occurred in that context: the denial of refuge to those onboard the St Louis, a boat that sailed from Germany and unsuccessfully tried to disembark its passengers in Cuba, unsuccessfully tried to disembark its passengers in the United States of America and was forced to return to Europe where the passengers—German Jews fleeing the Nazi regime—disembarked, and within a short time about a third of them perished in the concentration camps. It is to prevent events like that that the refugee convention was brought into existence.

We have continued to wrestle with the refugee convention, not just in the drafting of it but in working through it in all of the years since, right up to this time—for example, in determining how to treat the central obligation of the refugee convention, which is not to return refugees who have arrived. I will read the central consideration in article 33 of the refugee convention:

No Contracting State shall expel or return ("refouler") a refugee in any manner whatsoever to the frontiers of territories where his life or freedom would be threatened on account of his race, religion, nationality, membership of a particular social group or political opinion.

Then there is a qualification relating to the security of the receiving country. We honour that central obligation. The government of Australia will continue to honour it. It is central to the amendment to the Migration Act of the Commonwealth that we put before this House.

I back the Malaysia arrangement that our government has come to with the government of Malaysia. More broadly, I support regional arrangements because, for those seeking asylum and those in need of refuge, regional arrangements offer, and indeed secure, a better future for a greater number. We cannot pretend that there is not a large problem in the world. There are not merely thousands or hundreds of thousands but millions of displaced people around the world who are seeking refuge from persecution, and Australia has always played its part in seeking to provide refuge and to resolve the problem. That is why we are signatories to the refugee convention, that is why Australia presently takes over 13,000 refugees on an annual basis and that is why we will continue to seek to increase this number. One of the best aspects of this Malaysia arrangement is that it will see Australia increasing the number of refugees it takes by 1,000 people each year. That indicates the compassion which our government is seeking to bring to the resolution of this problem. By contrast, we have a coalition that is simply not interested in resolving the policy problems.

These amendments seek to restore the position in law to the position as it was understood to be before the recent High Court decision. It is important to understand the purpose of these amendments. They are seeking to give power to the Minister for Immigration and Citizenship, and it is a power to be exercised on specified conditions that are set out and will be set out in the Migration Act. It is a power to send people who arrive here seeking asylum to a so-called offshore processing country. As the minister made clear in his second reading speech, it is an arrangement that the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees is prepared to assist with. It is a recognition of the level of difficulty of this problem and a recognition of the important part to be played by all of the countries of our region that the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees has worked with Australia in developing the arrangement with Malaysia. I do not want this to be set up as merely a competition between the possibility of sending those who have arrived in Australia seeking asylum to Nauru and the sending of those seeking asylum to Malaysia, because the purpose of these amendments is not country specific. The purpose of these amendments is to restore the position to what it was understood to be when these provisions—specifically section 198A of the Migration Act—were inserted in the act by the Howard government in 2001. The purpose of these amendments is to restore the position of the government of this country to the position that it was understood to be.

We have had a lot of discussion about the way in which the High Court's decision is to be understood. We have had all sorts of suggestions which are in error as to what the brief comments made by the High Court in paragraph 128 of the majority judgment mean. I make it clear to the House that paragraph 128 is dealing with a statutory interpretation argument and a statutory interpretation argument alone. The only reason that the majority in the High Court saw it as necessary to refer to Nauru is that the sending of asylum seekers to Nauru had been raised in argument by the Solicitor-General in order to show to the High Court the context in which the provision under consideration, section 198A, had come into existence in the first place. The Solicitor-General was pointing out to the High Court that it came into existence in circumstances where the government of Australia was considering sending people to Nauru. The High Court, in express terms, was not commenting on whether or not Nauru did then or would now satisfy the requirements of section 198A of the Migration Act, which is the section we are seeking to amend. Rather, the High Court was dealing solely with whether or not the minister's declaration that designated Malaysia as an offshore processing country was lawful.

In order to determine what the content of that statutory provision was, the High Court was invited to look at the Nauru declaration that had been made by the former government. The High Court, in brief comments rejected the argument that it should condition its decision as to what the content of this power was by reference to the hopes or intentions of the then government, which the court said:

… do not bear upon the curial determination of the question of construction of the legislative text.

Then, in the part that has been referred to this morning by the member for Cook, the High Court said:

Second, even assuming them to be in some way relevant, the arrangements made with Nauru were very different from those that are now in issue. Not least is that so because Australia, not Nauru as the receiving country, was to provide or secure the provision of the assessment and other steps that had to be taken, as well as the maintenance in the meantime of those who claimed to be seeking protection. Thus it was Australia, not the receiving country, that was to provide the access and protections in question.

I repeat: the High Court was not looking at whether or not Nauru would have been a lawful place to send people seeking asylum. Rather, it was saying, 'We reject the statutory interpretation argument that is here being put forward by the Solicitor-General.'

It is the fact—and this is why this amendment is necessary—that Nauru would not presently satisfy the requirements that the High Court has read into section 198A of the Migration Act and that Papua New Guinea would not presently satisfy the requirements that the High Court has read into section 198A of the Migration Act and it is the case, because this was the focus of the decision, that Malaysia does not presently satisfy the requirements that the High Court has read into section 198A of the Migration Act. It is because we wish to pursue a compassionate arrangement with the government of Malaysia and with all of the countries of our region that we bring these amendments to the Migration Act before this parliament and seek the support of all those members of this House who genuinely seek to have, on behalf of our nation, an appropriate and compassionate resolution of a very difficult problem. It is because at present, on a full reading of the High Court's decision, there is practically no country that would satisfy the definition of an appropriate receiving country. Australia itself might satisfy the definition of an appropriate receiving country. New Zealand probably would satisfy the requirements that have been set down by the High Court, but no other country would. To point as do those opposite—and we would say ridiculously—to a sole requirement of being a signatory to the refugee convention would include countries like Afghanistan, Haiti, Iran, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Somalia and Zimbabwe. We do not think that is an appropriate qualification or condition to impose on the minister's discretion. These are appropriate and measured amendments to the Migration Act and I commend the bill to the House. (Time expired)

Ms Julie Bishop (Curtin, Liberal Party, Deputy Leader of the Opposition) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

This government is mired in confusion and chaos on this issue and has demonstrated over a number of years that it is without principle, without conviction and without consistency when it comes to border protection and the treatment of asylum seekers. The mess in which the government finds itself today over its various failed asylum seeker policies is entirely of its own making. The coalition has a solution. Before I turn to that, let me suggest that if the Prime Minister wants to find a solution she should take heed of the words of Albert Einstein. He said, 'We can't solve problems using the same kind of thinking we used when we created them.'

Let us consider the sorry saga of how the government arrived at the position it finds itself in today. Australia has experienced several waves of boat arrivals carrying asylum seekers since the 1970s. The first wave was from 1976 to 1981 when just over 2,000 Vietnamese arrived by boat in the wake of the Vietnam War. The second wave occurred from 1989 to 1998 when about 300 asylum seekers per year arrived, with most coming from South-East Asia and China. It was during this wave that the Keating Labor government introduced mandatory detention in 1992. That is something some on the Labor side often find uncomfortable, but it is a fact.

It was around 1999 that asylum seekers, mainly from the Middle East, began to arrive in Australia in larger numbers with the involvement of the people-smuggling networks. It is important to note the numbers. In 1999, 86 boats carrying 3,721 asylum seekers arrived; in the year 2000, 51 boats arrived with 2,939 people aboard; in 2001, 43 boats with 5,516 people arrived. The Howard government responded with a range of measures that included the introduction of temporary protection visas, excising some parts of Australia's territories from the migration zone, including Christmas Island, and the establishment of offshore processing on Nauru and on Manus Island in Papua New Guinea.

Amendments were made to the Migration Act to enable offshore processing, subject to a number of protections for those seeking asylum. This was consistent with Australia's obligations under the 1951 UN Convention on Refugees. The Howard government inserted into the Migration Act protections for asylum seekers and a reference to human rights for those that Australia was sending offshore for processing. The Howard government also had a policy of turning boats around if they were intercepted in international waters and returning them to Indonesia where it was safe to do so, and we did that on a number of occasions. Overall, these measures combined to provide a strong deterrent to the people-smuggling trade. The coalition's response at that time was driven in large part by the tragic drowning of 353 people when SIEVX sank off the coast of Indonesia.

There was an immediate response from people smugglers to the laws and policies that the Howard government put in place. In 2002, after these policies had been put in place, just one boat arrived with just one asylum seeker aboard. In 2003, there was one boat with 53 people aboard, yet the now Prime Minister, then in opposition, claimed at the time that this was a case of 'another boat, another policy failure'. In 2004, one boat arrived with 15 people aboard; in 2005, four boats with 11 people; in 2006, six boats with 60 people; and, in 2007, five boats with 148 people.

Just before the 2007 election the then Leader of the Opposition, the member for Griffith and the present Minister for Foreign Affairs, promised that if elected his government would also turn back the boats. I think this is important. His then deputy, the now Prime Minister, claimed credit for this policy and said at the time, 'I was shadow minister for immigration and developed the policy'—in 2002—'which remains Labor's policy now.' Labor won the election. In early 2008, this new Labor government was warned in writing by officials of the Department of Immigration and Citizenship that:

… any weakening of the coalition's border protection laws including the closure of Nauru, would result in an increase in people smuggling.

The government was warned by the Australian Federal Police, and the coalition provided many warnings, week after week, that if the coalition's policies were dismantled the inevitable result would be a flood of boats via the people-smuggling trade. But, no, the government knew best. The government ignored all of the expert advice that it had received and scrapped temporary protection visas, closed down the processing centre on Nauru and ended offshore processing for asylum seekers. The government ended offshore processing. Of course, there was an immediate response from a reinvigorated people-smuggling trade and boats began arriving again within weeks of the changes in the law. As of today, more than 240 boats have arrived with about 12,000 asylum seekers on board. We have seen overcrowding in the detention centres—the very detention centre on Christmas Island that the member for Melbourne Ports described as a 'white elephant' and likened to a gulag or a concentration camp. When this Prime Minister knifed the member for Griffith in the leadership coup in June 2010 she nominated border protection as one of the three critical policy areas where the government had 'lost its way'. She was conveniently ignoring, it seems, that she was, in fact, the author of the border protection policy upon which she claimed the government had lost its way. On 6 July last year the Prime Minister announced that the government would be reintroducing offshore processing, nominating East Timor as the host of a regional processing centre and specifically pointing out in her speech that East Timor was a signatory to the UN Convention on Refugees. That was important for the Prime Minister in announcing the East Timor solution. It was important for her to point out that East Timor was a signatory to the UN convention on refugees; therefore Labor could reintroduce offshore processing.

In fact on 27 July 2010 the now Minister for Immigration and Citizenship said:

… the regional processing centre—

referring to East Timor—

would need to be, for the sake of decency, at a country which is a signatory to the refugee convention.

What has happened in the space of 12 months? If, in July 2010, for the decency a regional processing centre had to be in a country which is a signatory to the refugee convention has Labor now thrown decency to the wind? Indeed, the Prime Minister also said:

I would rule out anywhere that is not a signatory to the refugee convention.

What has happened in 12 months? The Prime Minister said she would rule out anywhere that was not a signatory to the refugee convention. That was a strongly stated policy by the Prime Minister. This was Labor Party policy until 7 May this year when the Prime Minister suddenly, on the eve of the budget, announced a five for one asylum seeker swap deal with Malaysia—a nation which is not a signatory to the UN Convention on Refugees.

It became embarrassingly evident that the East Timor solution would fail notwithstanding the Prime Minister's protestations that negotiations were underway. With whom one has to ask because East Timor made it clear that they were not negotiating to host a regional processing centre? And as the boats kept on coming the government also announced plans to reopen the Manus Island detention centre, which had been part of the Howard government's Pacific solution. This was an embarrassing backdown for the government because the Prime Minister had previously dismissed the Pacific solution, the Manus Island solution, as 'an unsustainable fiasco.' The Prime Minister now embraces what she once claimed was an unsustainable fiasco as part of Labor's policy on border protection.

There were concerns raised about the legality of the Malaysia swap arrangement and they were dismissed by the immigration minister who repeatedly declared it was on 'very, very strong legal grounds'. The government has never released the expert advice it claims it relied upon to inform the Australian people that its Malaysia swap arrangement was on 'very, very strong legal grounds'. This House condemned the Malaysia swap agreement. This parliament condemned the agreement yet still this government went ahead. The High Court disagreed with the minister's claim that it was on very, very strong legal grounds and found that, in relation to this Malaysia swap deal, this minister had not satisfied the human rights protections for asylum seekers as was required by the Howard government's provisions in the legislation, the very provisions that underpinned offshore processing under the Howard government. The Prime Minister is now proposing that we amend the Migration Act to strip away all of the human rights protections for asylum seekers who are sent to another country for processing. I did not think that I would live to see the day a Labor government would seek to walk away from the 1951 refugee convention, that this government would seek to legislate away Australia's obligations under the UN Convention on Refugees.

The coalition has a solution. We propose an amendment that supports offshore processing. We were the ones who came up with the idea of offshore processing in the first place. We propose an amendment that will support offshore processing with the proviso that the country to which Australia sends asylum seekers must be a signatory to the 1951 UN Convention on Refugees or the protocol. This is precisely the same position that the Prime Minister had adopted before the last election. This is precisely Labor's policy before the last election. This is what it took to the last election. It had ruled out processing offshore in any country that was not a signatory to the convention. If the government adopted the coalition's proposed amendment, it could immediately recommence offshore processing on Nauru. Nauru has offered the government its assistance in this regard. In fact, Nauru has had an offer on the table for over 12 months. It is ready, willing and able to reinstate the detention centre for offshore processing. And, if the government adopted the coalition's proposed amendment, offshore processing could also recommence on Manus Island in Papua New Guinea because both Nauru and Papua New Guinea are signatory countries. All it would take is for this Prime Minister to admit for once that she got it wrong on border protection. Yes, it would be the final humiliating backdown for the Prime Minister but it would be in the national interest. I fear this Prime Minister is not capable of acting in the national interest on this issue.

The true cost of Labor's 2008 decision to weaken Australia's border protection laws is not only in relation to the tragic loss of life that we have witnessed. It is not only in relation to the overcrowding in the detention centres which has led to riots and the damage to property but the Treasurer has also revealed a budget cost blowout of more than $1.7 billion for offshore asylum seeker management. The thousands of people including children in detention are placing enormous strains on the ability of our institutions and our officials to cope. There has been dangerous overcrowding and there have been outbreaks of violence and rioting.

The saga of Labor's response to border protection would resemble a plot of a farcical comedy were it not such a deeply serious issue with, at times, tragic consequences. The Prime Minister spent almost a year maintaining that her solution to the people-smuggling trade and increase in asylum seekers arriving on our shores was the East Timor solution. When after a year it was evident that this was not going to work, she backflipped on her backflip and came up with the Malaysia solution.

I am afraid that, as a result of the High Court ruling, the minister has been shown incapable of applying the laws correctly. That is why this government finds itself in the position it does. It is a case of overwhelming hypocrisy for Labor to repeatedly rule out sending asylum seekers to Nauru because Nauru was not a signatory to the UN convention on refugees. It now is. (Time expired)

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

On 18 October 2001 an Indonesian fishing boat left the port of Bandar Lampung. There were 421 people on board, including at least 70 children. The boat was just 20 metres long and four metres wide, so people were tightly packed on board. The next day, about 70 kilometres south of Indonesia, the boat encountered heavy seas, took on water, listed violently to the side, capsized and sank within an hour. There were life jackets on board but none of them worked.

As a Senate committee, chaired by the late, great Senator Peter Cook concluded, there were at least 70 children aboard when SIEVX sank. Only three survived. Two hundred men and women lost their lives. As the International Organisation for Migration pointed out, the tragedy was due to 'the way the people smugglers pack these boats'. Nine years later, on 15 December 2010, a boat carrying around 90 asylum seekers sank off the coast of Christmas Island. Thirty bodies were recovered, including those of four juveniles and four infants. Up to 20 others are missing, presumed dead. The report of the Joint Select Committee on the Christmas Island Tragedy quoted Raymond Murray, the first person to arrive at the scene. He told the committee:

Standing right out on the edge of the rocks, there were times when that the boat was closer than you are to me now. I will never forget seeing a woman holding up a baby, obviously wanting me to take it, and not being able to do anything. It was just a feeling of absolute hopelessness. It was like it was happening in slow motion. A wave would pick the boat up and almost hit the rocks and then go back again, and then finally it was like it exploded.

Over the past decade or so there have been 414 confirmed drownings by asylum seekers at sea. For example, apart from those I have mentioned, five were drowned on 16 April 2009, 12 on 1 November 2009 and 12 on 15 June 2010.

Apart from this, there have been over 500 more unconfirmed deaths by asylum seekers at sea. There were reports of a vessel carrying 200 people that disappeared in March 2000. There were reports of another vessel, this one carrying 100 people, that disappeared—presumably with the loss of everyone on board—in October 2009. We will never know how many asylum seekers have died at sea in attempting to reach Australia, but we do know that those people certainly number in their hundreds and perhaps in their thousands.

Quite often the asylum seeker debate focuses on people who arrive by boat, but that is only a portion of the refugees we take. We also take refugees from offshore processing, people who in many cases have spent years in refugee camps. The more onshore arrivals we take the fewer offshore arrivals we take.

To provide a more complete picture, I want to say something about the refugees that are resettled from these offshore camps. The Department of Immigration and Citizenship has a vast network of offices, which work in cooperation with the United Nations High Commisioner for Regugees to process refugees. Our offices include those in Amman, Beijing, Cairo, Moscow and Warsaw. We work with the UNHCR that recommends or refers refugees for resettlement to the Australian government. Once recognised as a refugee by the UNHCR a person is referred to the Department of Immigration and Citizenship for resettlement.

Australia is unusual in this. We are one of only about 20 nations worldwide that participate formally in the UNHCR's resettlement program and accept quotas of refugees on an annual basis. For the last year that I was able to get statistics, Australia had the third largest number of refugees for resettlement under this UNHCR program. We were outranked by the USA and Canada but on a per capita basis we take more UNHCR refugees than either of those two countries. Of course, the numbers that we take are small. Our total humanitarian quota was 13,750 in past years, increasing now to 14,750 under this agreement. But that is a small share of the world's 15 million refugees, 10½ million of whom are under the UNHCR's mandate.

The world as a whole needs to do more to take in refugees under the UNHCR. Last year there were only 539,170 refugees recognised or resettled under the UNHCR. Of these, only 98,761 were resettled from other countries. What we need is a regional approach to a global problem. This approach began through the Bali meeting in March, bringing together countries in our region to discuss how to deal with the challenge of refugees. Labor's approach has always been one of multilateralism. That is as true for immigration as it is for trade and foreign policy. The coalition, on the other hand, have a tendency to focus on unilateralism, striking particular deals with single countries. They do it in trade and they do it in migration. We believe it is the wrong approach. Modern Labor's approach will always be a multilateralist one.

Yet while I am proud of modern Labor's multilateralist approach on refugees, it is important to also acknowledge my party's history, and that history has not always been a great one. We were a party formed to protect the rights of Australian workers, and, partly for that reason, there were Labor representatives in this place who played a frankly shameful role in restricting the intake of Jewish refugees fleeing persecution in Europe in the 1930s. They did so because of a mix of anti-Semitism and anti-capitalist radicalism. The confusion between Jewishness and capitalist banking meant that Australia took only 5,000 Jewish refugees before the outbreak of war. Labor Senator John Armstrong in 1938 said:

I urge the Government to take steps to prevent the unrestricted immigration of Jews to this country …

Labor immigration minister Arthur Calwell was shocked when the High Court ruled that he could not deport an Indonesian woman who had six children with her Australian husband. Calwell thought it was right that that family be torn apart.

But Labor's role is fundamentally a proud one. In 1945, at the San Francisco conference to establish the United Nations, Jessie Street—the only woman on the Australian delegation—argued for the removal of restrictions on Jewish migration and for an increased intake of Jewish refugees to Australia. In 1948, as the fourth President of the UN General Assembly, HV 'Doc' Evatt was a key drafter of the UN Universal Declaration of Human Rights, a document that says, in article 14(1):

Everyone has the right to seek and to enjoy in other countries asylum from persecution.

This set the foundation for the 1951 Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees, which was originally to address the problem of the millions of Europeans displaced by World War II and was then updated in 1967 to apply to refugees generally.

Today, the issue of immigration is a proud Labor issue. In my first speech, I mentioned my mother's parents—a boilermaker and a teacher—who lived by the credo that, if there was a spare room in the house, it should be used by someone who needed the space. I remember as a little kid eating in my grandparents' home with new migrants from Hong Kong, Papua New Guinea, Chile, Cambodia and Sri Lanka.

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.

In referring to refugees in my first speech, I was not unusual. If there is a defining characteristic about first speeches by Labor members and senators, it is that they almost invariably include a migrant's tale. Part of what we are doing in the agreement with Malaysia is trying to ensure better treatment for refugees currently in Malaysia. The challenging protection environment in Malaysia makes it difficult for the UNHCR to fulfil its mandate in the country. The UNHCR registers asylum seekers, determines their status claims and provides them with documentation. Our agreement will allow the UNHCR access to persons seeking asylum, including to assess their need for protection. It will strengthen the relationship between the UNHCR and Malaysia, not just for those refugees who come from the Malaysian camps to Australia but for the nearly 100,000 refugees who are in those camps. The UNHCR in Malaysia aims to recognise refugees and process claims, and Australia is helping UNHCR to achieve those aims. In the words of the UNHCR:

It is UNHCR’s understanding that the Arrangement will with time deliver further protection dividends in the two countries, as well as the region …

Lasting improvements in the region's response to asylum seekers and refugees necessarily involve countries, like Malaysia, that are not yet party to the convention. The arrangement with Malaysia is subject to oversight by committees involving representatives of the Australian and Malaysian governments, the UNHCR and the International Organisation for Migration.

We have to get policy right in this area and there are no simple solutions. As the old Max Weber line goes, public policy is like 'slow boring through hard boards'. Nowhere is this more true than with migration. As the Parliamentary Secretary for Climate Change and Energy Efficiency, Mark Dreyfus, has pointed out, this is not about being compassionate; it is about 'competing compassions'. There is no moral high ground.

I reject in this debate the attacks on public servants in the Department of Immigration and Citizenship that we have heard in recent weeks. Public servants have a difficult task, and we should respect the long hours that they put into crafting policy. I respect the many constituents of mine who work in the Australian Public Service and I will defend their impartiality.

I also reject the claim that some have made that this is a new 'Pacific solution'. There are two reasons this is wrong. Firstly, the Howard government's Pacific solution saw no increase in the total refugee intake. Under this policy, we are taking an additional 1,000 refugees per year. The second reason is that the Pacific solution had no involvement from the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees. Ours has a strong involvement from that body.

As a Labor member of parliament, I believe that the neediest people should be given the first priority. In our offshore processing centres in Africa, Asia and the Middle East, working with the UNHCR, we take people who have nothing. Those who come by boat are invariably those who have enough money to pay a people smuggler. In saying this, I am not reflecting on those who come by boat; in their shoes, I might well make the same decision. But we have a fixed humanitarian quota: 13,750 now, which will increase to 14,750. I believe it is appropriate to prioritise those who are selected in our offshore processing centres.

This is a hard debate, and I have had many conversations and email exchanges with people in my electorate about what is the right thing to do. I respect those who disagree with the government's position on this. But no-one has a monopoly on compassion. In closing, I pay tribute to those in the ACT who work with refugees, as my maternal grandparents did with refugees in their home. I want to acknowledge the work of the Multicultural Youth Services in settling young refugees, often those who are orphaned or who only have one parent. The work they do to bring newly arrived migrants into Canberra, helping them develop friends and social networks, is valuable work indeed. I recognise Companion House, which works with the victims of torture and trauma. It is hard work and it is important work. They provide health care and social networks. I acknowledge those who work in these organisations and the many other organisations that assist refugees in the ACT. Their compassion is a great credit to them and it is one of the reasons why I hope that in the future Australia will be able to take still more refugees than we do today.

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

I rise to talk on the Migration Act amendments that the House is considering today. I believe the way the debate has been framed by the Leader of the Opposition and the member for Cook—it is about trust and about who the Australian people trust to protect our borders—is the right way for the House to be looking at it today. It comes down to a judgment about whether you trust the people who have had a consistent policy for the past decade, a policy we have actually tried out and which has worked, or whether you trust the Labor Party, who on this issue have had every single policy except one that actually works.

It is not just the Australian people who make a judgment about Australia's border protection policies; it is the people smugglers as well. People smugglers are very sophisticated criminal gangs. They understand what is going on in terms of the policy debate in Australia. When the Labor Party 'develop their thinking' on these issues, as the immigration minister memorably put it—which, of course, is just another way of saying that they are consistently inconsistent—the people smugglers look at this inconsistency and make a judgment about whether the government have the policies and the resolve to protect Australia's borders. The way they respond to that is either to continue to send people to Australia illegally or to cease sending people to Australia illegally.

In 2001, when the people smugglers had sent a lot of people down to Australia illegally—we had a wave of illegal arrivals in the years leading up to 2001—the then government, the Howard government, decided that enough was enough and they showed some resolve. They took tough and controversial decisions to drive the people smugglers from their evil business. At the time, the Labor opposition heavily criticised the government for that. They called the Pacific solution, which was one plank of that policy, immoral; they said we were racist for pursuing these policies. There was a lot of controversy within the community about them, but I do not think that anyone could reasonably argue that they were not successful. They were extremely successful in stopping the people smugglers from deciding who came to Australia. They were successful in breaking the people smugglers' model, which is to go out into communities where people are in much more difficult conditions than we find here in Australia and to sell to those people at great expense—up to $15,000 per head—a passage to Australia. If there is a reasonable expectation that people can come to Australia and be resettled here permanently, then clearly that remains a very potent product for the people smugglers to sell.

You need to embrace a policy prescription that is as tough as necessary to break that model. You do not need to subject people to greater hardship than is reasonable; you only need to take away that product that the people smugglers are selling. The people smugglers will of course test the resolve of a government when policy changes. Unfortunately, what they have found is that, every time they have tested this government, it has been the government that has blinked—it has been the Labor Party that has always folded. We need to go back and look at the history of its policy backflips and changes since it came into government to understand that we are now in this blind alley that the Labor Party has led us down in discussing this legislation here today. This legislation seeks to strip away all the protections that the Howard government put in place within our Migration Act, some of which last year it was saying it held so dear.

When the government changed in 2007, the Labor Party had held many contrary positions in relation to border protection. As I said, they criticised the Howard government's policy of border protection very heavily. They were in favour of temporary protection visas and then they were against them. They were in favour of towing boats back to Indonesia and then they were against it. They have been in favour of offshore processing and they have been against it. We have watched them dismantle the successful policies that they inherited from the Howard government and we have warned them that the people smugglers will be emboldened to bring people back down to Australia illegally and very dangerously on leaky boats. Of course, when they came to office they went ahead in a fit of moral vanity and dismantled the Pacific solution.

The then immigration minister, who still serves as a senior minister in this government, Senator Chris Evans, said that dismantling the Pacific solution was his proudest day in politics. He remains, despite the terrible consequences that his moral vanity has had for our border protection policies, the third most senior minister in Australia. He said that offshore processing on Nauru was expensive and a failure. Those decisions went out as a signal that Australia was once again a soft touch for people smugglers. People smugglers picked up on that signal straightaway and went back into the business of bringing people down to Australia illegally. It is empirically impossible to argue that those decisions did not have an impact on the people smugglers' business model. In 2007 there were four people detained on Christmas Island; under this government there have been up to 3,000. As soon as those decisions were made in August 2008, people smugglers started to bring people down to Australia illegally. In September 2008, we had a trickle of illegal boat arrivals. That increased through 2009 and 2010 and the government's response was not that they had a policy problem but that they had a political problem. They have subsequently looked at it in that way. They have understood that Australians expect the federal government to provide a robust system of border protection and, therefore, they have seen this issue as an enormous political problem for them.

We have had some significant missed steps because of that. We had the debacle of the Oceanic Viking, where asylum seekers literally took control of a Commonwealth vessel and refused to be taken back to Indonesia. Subsequently, they matched wills with the federal government and, astonishingly, it was the Labor government that blinked. It did a secret deal with Indonesia to bring those people down to Australia, the culmination of which was to send a private plane up to Indonesia to collect people who had been deemed by our own domestic security agency to be security risks to this country. Subsequently, because of the political panic that has come with the collapse of Australia's border protection system, we have seen a gradual policy retreat from this government. It axed Kevin Rudd because he was unable to protect Australia's borders and the new Prime Minister, Julia Gillard, nominated border protection as one of the areas where she believed that the previous government had lost its way.

During the subsequent election campaign she said that the policy of the Labor government was to go back to offshore processing but to do so on East Timor. She never spoke to the government of East Timor about it. She made a perfunctory call to the head of state of East Timor and the East Timorese, from the word go, did not want a processing centre within their territory. As is their right, they did not want to host such a facility. The Australian government continued with the fiction that it was in negotiation with the East Timorese government, despite all of the evidence to the contrary. Embarrassingly, Australian diplomats were sent out into the region to argue the case for a policy that everybody in the region knew was a dead duck. It was an albatross around the necks of anyone practising Australian foreign policy. This farcical East Timorese processing solution had collapsed—it was dead on arrival; it was dead as soon as it was announced—yet for months and months Australia had it as one of its key planks in its foreign policy.

Finally, the government succumbed to reality and admitted that the East Timorese processing centre was not going to go ahead. So the government talked about reopening the Manus Island processing centre in Papua New Guinea, one of the evil planks of the Howard government's policy. It is actually a good idea, an idea that the opposition would support, but like everything this government does it cannot competently put any plan into action. The Papua New Guinea government, which is apparently amenable to reopening Manus Island, was gravely insulted by the fact that the Labor government sent up the Parliamentary Secretary for Pacific Island Affairs. Surely, if you were serious about getting something done, you would send someone more senior to negotiate what apparently is one of the most important policy proposals that the government is pursuing. The Papua New Guineans were rightly insulted by such a low-level official going up to talk to them about reopening Manus Island. The Minister for Foreign Affairs would not go; the Prime Minister would not go. Of course, that policy has now languished. It is a good idea and is an idea that is worth pursuing. The government of Papua New Guinea was apparently amenable to it being pursued; but, like so much of what this government does, it cannot competently pursue any policy proposal, and now the Manus Island proposal appears to have languished.

In the meantime we have had the collapse of our detention network. The government's policy was not to process people onshore but to process people on Christmas Island. But the sheer volume of people coming to Australia illegally meant that that centre was so full—and subject to riots and violence—that it has had to go back on other commitments about processing people onshore in a way that has led to a massive expansion of onshore processing.

Illegal boats have arrived by the dozen. The government has searched for any policy but the coalition's policy that has actually worked. Finally, it came up with this proposal with the Malaysian government to send people to Malaysia in what is a five-for-one people swap. This was announced in May, just before the budget, and since that announcement 1,000 people have been smuggled into Australia illegally. Since the agreement was signed, 400 people have come to Australia illegally. Clearly, the Malaysian policy is deeply ineffective, and not only for the human rights consequences that have been outlined by previous speakers. The government has no answer to the legitimate question of what its policy will be once that 800 cap has been reached. We have asked that in this parliament on many, many occasions and the government has absolutely no answer to it.

Our problem with the Malaysia arrangement is that it is unnecessarily cruel. Despite the government's protestations, the people we send there will surely not have their human rights protected in a way we would expect if they were processed in an Australian-run facility. The government has absolutely no response to the reasonable question about what it is going to do once that policy reaches its use-by date. It is only 800 people. We have had 1,000 people arrive since the policy was announced and 600 people arrive since the agreement was signed.

The response of the government to the High Court ruling, which was that the Malaysian arrangement was not in keeping with Australian legislation, was to march into this place and ask the parliament to accept amendments to the Migration Act that strip away all of the basic protections that the Howard government had put into that act when we faced similar policy dilemmas in 2001. This is a government that has shown incredible incompetence and a complete inability to have any resolve or conviction about its border protection policies, that has literally embraced every available policy except one that is going to work and that has marched into this place and asked this parliament to give it unfettered powers with no safeguards under the Migration Act. The opposition say no, we are not going to accept that proposal, although we will of course facilitate this government doing offshore processing. But we insist that it be done—as Labor has said on many, many occasions—in a country that is a signatory to the UN refugee convention.

If you are going to protect Australia's borders then you need to send a very strong message to the criminal gangs that smuggle people here. You need to have some resolve and you need to have a policy platform that is going to work and that you are prepared to stick to when it comes under criticism or under pressure. We have had the same policy for 10 years. We know that it works because it has worked in the past. (Time expired)

Adam Bandt (Melbourne, Australian Greens) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

This is a race to the bottom. This is a grubby debate and it diminishes this parliament in the eyes of the Australian people. It is a missed opportunity for us as a parliament and as a country to have a rational, sensible discussion about the long-term future and about Australia doing its fair share in dealing with people who are fleeing the most wretched of circumstances and are seeking our help.

We are here because the High Court has told us what we should already have morally known, and that is: Australia cannot expel children and adults who come here seeking help and send them to another country where we do not know what fate awaits them. The High Court decision gave us a remarkable opportunity to take stock of where we are going as a country. We could have begun a rational debate that would have allowed us to explain to people, to other members of parliament and to the whole country facts like, for example: every year 15,000 people come here and overstay their visas. That number dwarfs, by several orders of magnitude, the number of people who will ever arrive here by boat. It would take 20 years to fill the MCG with people who arrive here by boat, but the MCG is already half full of people who are overstaying their tourist visas and other kinds of visas. We do not have a national hysterical debate about the backpackers and their impact on society, and yet we have spent so much time in this parliament and in the media having a debate fuelled by misinformation, xenophobia and some of the dirtiest politics around some of the most vulnerable people in the world.

It is a sad day when the Labor Party comes into this place and says, 'Our position on refugees is tougher because we will send them to a country where they might be caned,' and then the Liberal Party says, 'No, ours is tougher because we will tow boats back out to sea no matter what fate awaits the people who are on them.' So long as the two old parties are locked in this deadly embrace, we are going to continue this race to the bottom and we are not going to have a rational debate in this country. Of course we should do everything we can to stop people getting on boats and making the risky journey that possibly might see them end their lives in transit. Of course we should do everything we can to stop that. But, if we were serious about a regional solution to stop that, we would put up front and square the protection of these people, and the debate would be about the best multilateral approach to ensure people's rights are protected and their lives are not put at risk. That is not the debate we are having. We are having a false debate about the so-called evils of people smugglers.

I have no doubt that there are some people smugglers who are not very nice people, but I can tell you this: if I were in a situation where I feared for my life, where I was worried about what might happen to my family and where there was war, famine and threats of political persecution, I would do everything I could to get out of there. I would do everything I could to get my family out of there, and that would include paying someone who offered me the last chance to flee a wretched situation. I would be prepared to bet that most people in this country would do exactly the same. If we started having a debate about that instead of so-called people smugglers, we might go some way to restoring the principle of humanity in this parliament, this parliament might have a better reputation in the eyes of the Australian people, and Australia might have a better reputation in the eyes of the world.

It is worth remembering that it was not always like this in this country. In the years after the Vietnam War, just over 2,000 people came here by boat. We did not tow them back out to sea. We did not send them off to other countries. We took them in and we opened our country to them, to members of their families and to their relatives, and we had a solution that saw, over the next decade, something in the order of 90,000 people come to this country. If you were to ask almost any Australian, I bet that they would tell you that it was a success and that we can look back now with pride at the compassionate approach we took in the past and what it has meant for our wonderful and vibrant society today. My electorate of Melbourne would be a very, very different and diminished place had we not, over many years, welcomed people here from other parts of the world—many of them as refugees. If you ask most Australians, every single one of them, I think, will have a story of someone they know, someone they work with, someone in their street, or someone that someone in their family is married to who came here as a refugee and who might have even come here either by boat or in a way that would now see them languishing in a detention centre or potentially sent off to another country. Everyone is only one or two degrees removed from that success story of migration into Australia, and poll after poll shows that a majority of people want refugee claims processed here onshore in a fair and humane manner. The last poll said 54 per cent of Australians want refugee claims processed here onshore and yet we have both of the old parties in lockstep together, marching away as quickly as they can away from public opinion.

If we were able to have a rational and reasonable debate about this, what we as the Greens would be advancing is a humane, compassionate and long-term practical approach that asks: what is Australia's fair share as a rich country in our region and in the world for dealing with this global problem of movement of people fleeing war, persecution and famine? We would, like the majority of the Australian population, see claims from refugees and asylum seekers processed onshore. We would have a minimum length of detention for the purposes of health and security checks—no more than 30 days and only longer if a court approves it. Once we had checked people's health and security status, we would allow them to live in the community while their claims were being processed, as happens in other countries and as we used to do. And we would lift to 20,000 the number of people we take into the country in the humanitarian refugee stream, something that the Refugee Council of Australia says is Australia's fair share.

This debate looks like ending in some kind of stalemate and we will end up with something approximating a default position, which will be what the High Court said the law and the legal situation is, which is that people will be processed onshore. I am pleased that that will be the outcome, presuming the legislation does not get through—perhaps it will. Whatever happens, I do not think that people looking at us around the country want us to come up with a position by default. I think that people around the country want us to take a stand and make a decision in Australia's long-term interest, in the interest of compassion and fairness, and in the interest of sharing our fair share of the burden within our region—but one that is based on principle. It needs to acknowledge that we will pull our weight within the region and that the basic principle that all of us in this chamber, with the exception of the member for Hasluck, are or are descended from boat people in one form or another. I think people would want us to come up with a position that is based on principle, on what we believe, rather than the short-term politics of the media cycle and the worry about what is going to appear on the front page of the newspaper the next day.

My position and the Greens' position in this debate is that we are not going to assist either of these old parties in their race to the bottom in what is a grubby debate. I will be voting against the coalition's amendments and against the government's legislation. My second reading amendment would bring this parliament into line with what the majority of the Australian people are very clearly saying they want.

This is a historic debate and votes that will be taken on this are historic, because in 10 or 15 years people will look back on this—in the way, I think, that we look back on the White Australia policy—and they will say: 'How could they come up with such a solution? Why were those principles informing their debate?' When they look back on this they will ask every member of this chamber: 'Where did you stand? Did you vote for a more compassionate, more humane and fair approach to dealing with some of the world's most vulnerable people or did you continue the race to the bottom?'

I know that there are some people in this place on different sides of the chamber who want to see this parliament take a stand that reflects the will of the majority of the population and that has processing done onshore. I say to all of them: this is an opportunity to have your vote counted. I hope that when we divide on my second reading amendment, and when parliament states as a matter of principle whether it believes in processing people's claims onshore, it is more than just me and the member for Denison sitting on the affirmative side, because this will be noted. We are entering an environment where seats do not just change hands in elections on the basis of who can come up with the harshest and most punitive policy. People around the country are increasingly saying: 'We've had enough. Seats will change hands and we will change our vote on the basis of who has the more compassionate, practical and long-term policy.'

I commend my amendment to the House. I do not know which way the votes are going to go today, but I do know there will be an opportunity for everyone here to take a stand on a matter of principle about how we as a country—a rich nation in a region where many countries have troubles of their own—will act, how we will be viewed in the eyes of the Australian people and how this country will be viewed in the eyes of the world.

I move the second reading amendment standing in my name:

That all the words after "That" be omitted with a view to substituting the following words:

"the House declines to give the bill a second reading and calls on the Government to end offshore processing and process all asylum seekers' claims for protection onshore."

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

Is the amendment seconded?

Andrew Wilkie (Denison, Independent) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I second the amendment and wish to offer a few comments. The High Court ruling against the Malaysia solution provided a very important opportunity for this parliament to look afresh at Australia's policy on irregular immigration. This government and this parliament should have seized this opportunity as a chance to remedy the wrongs of the past and develop a more humane policy towards some of the most vulnerable people in the world. But neither the government nor the opposition has decided to seize the moment. The government instead has chosen to try to cook the books, in effect, by legislating a workaround to dodge the High Court's ruling. The opposition, meanwhile, has seen the ruling as another opportunity to pursue its political self-interest ahead of the public interest—and, in my opinion, it has done so against the wishes of a clear majority of the Australian community.

I will not support the government's Migration Legislation Amendment (Offshore Processing and Other Measures) Bill 2011 because it would perpetuate offshore processing, with which I disagree most strongly. But I would support any new policy put forward by this government—and ideally, supported by the opposition—which finally came to grips with the complexity of the global irregular migration issue, particularly as it affects Australia. I would support a policy that finally and for the first time in this country took into account the fact that the flow of irregular immigrants to Australia is a function of many factors—not the least of which is the situation in source countries such as Iraq and Afghanistan and elsewhere—and which addressed the situation in countries of first asylum such as Iran and Pakistan, which host millions of refugees from bordering countries yet get next to no assistance either from the Australian government or from the governments of other developed countries. The policy I would support would also take into account the important role that transit countries such as Thailand, Malaysia and Indonesia have in the flow of irregular immigrants to Australia. Until we have a policy that addresses the situation in source countries, in countries of first asylum and in transit countries, we will continue to have these periodic surges of people making it, entirely understandably and entirely defensively, to our shores.

Irregular immigration is not a border security problem; it is a global humanitarian problem. Australia does not need a better border security policy; Australia needs a more humane policy that takes into account and addresses the humanitarian aspects of irregular immigration. The people who are coming to our shores in boats are not terrorists; they are overwhelmingly people who are escaping awful circumstances in their own country and who are fortunate enough to be able to scrape together or borrow the modest amount of money to pay the people who will facilitate their travel to our shores. With some confidence I would say that just about every person in this House, if they were put in similar circumstances to those of the people who arrive in Australia by boat—if they were put in the same boat, so to speak—would act in exactly the same way as those people do and that they would be shocked if they got to our borders and were not accorded the protection that Australia's obligations as a signatory to the United Nations Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees demand that it give.

I make the point again that this is not a border security problem; this is a humanitarian problem. Australia does not need another border security policy; Australia needs another humanitarian policy. Such a policy would be not simply the result of legislation which we might create in this place but also a matter of Australia's honouring its international obligations as a signatory to the refugee convention. I remind everyone in this place that, as a signatory to the convention, we are compelled to give protection to anyone who comes to our country and to promptly hear their claims. If their claims are found to be accurate, we are compelled to give them refuge. We cannot opt in or opt out of this—it is not voluntary. Many years ago we quite rightly became a signatory to the refugee convention. Why on earth can't Australian governments—this government and the last government as well as, likely, the next government—come to terms with the fact that we have obligations as a signatory to the refugee convention? We cannot turn it off; it is on. Because of that, we must give protection to people who come to our shores, hear their claims promptly and give them refuge if their claims are found to be accurate. Yes, we should put on the very next plane home those people who are not genuinely in need of refuge and whose claims are thus found to be fraudulent; but the overwhelming majority of people who come to our shores do have reasonable claims, and we should give them refuge.

The people who come to Australia by boat are not criminals and they are not illegal immigrants; neither are they unauthorised arrivals. They are human beings doing nothing more than exercising their rights as members of the human race and moving in accordance with what the refugee convention recognises and allows. They are doing nothing wrong, and those who continue to refer to them as illegal immigrants are doing those people a terrible disservice. Those people are not breaking Australian law; they are, in fact, acting in accordance with their circumstances in a way that we would recognise as entirely warranted. We recognise these circumstances because we have decided to sign up to the refugee convention and to remain a signatory to it. Let us put a face to this. A fellow called Najaf Mazari—and I am sure he will not mind me mentioning his name—fled from Afghanistan some years ago. He made the final stage of his journey to Australia by boat. For his troubles, the Howard government locked him in Woomera for many, many months. Here is a man who fled in fear of his life after many members of his family—who were Hazaras, I would add—were murdered by the Taliban. He fled in fear of his life, including being prepared to travel a very dangerous leg overseas by boat from Indonesia. And what did the Australian government at the time do? We did what I suspect many people in this place still approve of: we jailed him in what was nothing better than a concentration camp in Woomera.

Fortunately for Najaf, his claims were found to be accurate and he was released. He is now an Australian citizen. He has finally got his wife and his young daughter out from Afghanistan and they have a little afghan rug shop in Melbourne. When you talk to that family you realise that they are human beings who genuinely fled in fear of their lives. We have done the right thing by them by letting them settle here and allowing them to become Australian citizens. And they are now pillars of their community in Melbourne—to their great credit.

When you look into Najaf's eyes you see a deep sorrow—a man who has lost many members of his family to violence—but you also see a great joy that a country did give him refuge. You see in him a great potential—someone who will go on and become a great Australian in whatever way he chooses. These are not just SIEVs; these are not just irregular immigrants. These are human beings, and the overwhelming number of them are people fleeing violence.

There has been some commentary today about this being a question of leadership. I agree with the commentary in the media: it is a question of leadership. It is a question of the Prime Minister's leadership and it is also and equally a question of the opposition leader's leadership—because it is not a case in this parliament, in a power-sharing parliament, where one or the other can act alone. I call on the Prime Minister and the Leader of the Opposition to both show leadership, to put their heads together and to seize the moment; not to look for workarounds on how to cook the books and get around High Court rulings.

I call on them to look at this as an opportunity to look afresh at our policy and to create a new policy, a sophisticated policy that is matched to the complexity of the issue—something that means we do more to help out and to stabilise source countries; a policy that give much more foreign aid to countries of first asylum, like Iran and Pakistan; a policy that gives much greater assistance to our transit countries, particularly Indonesia, and, in particular, to help the Indonesians deal with the people smugglers. I make the point: the only people who are doing anything wrong here are the people smugglers. As far as us tracking down wrongdoers, we should be helping Indonesia and other transit countries to track down and to deal with the people smugglers, because they are the only criminals, the only people doing anything wrong.

In summary, I hope my words help to explain why I will not support the government's bill that would perpetuate or resume offshore processing. Nor will I support any opposition amendment that would restrict offshore processing to countries that are a signatory to the refugee convention. I laboured with this issue about the possibility of the opposition bringing on an amendment that would say that Australia can send asylum seekers only to countries that are signatories to the refugee convention. For a long time I did see the value in supporting such an amendment, because if we are going to have offshore processing, let us at least send people to countries that have some safeguards in place—and Malaysia is not one. But in the end I have decided that I will not support such an amendment for fear that it would create the circumstances in which the government and the opposition might work together to continue offshore processing in a place such as Manus Island, where I do worry that the government's and the opposition's interests overlap.

I will support the member for Melbourne's amendment, but I fear that I will be the only person supporting it. The member for Melbourne and I hope that other people come together and support that amendment. That amendment is to do the right thing. It is an amendment that would legislate that we have only onshore processing—the humane approach, the approach consistent with the refugee convention, and the approach in line with the majority of Australians.

The Howard era's irregular immigration policies were a shameful episode. The Malaysia deal would be just as shameful or, arguably, more shameful. At least on Nauru and Manus Island there were Australian officials on the ground ensuring that at least some safeguards to Australian standards were being maintained or adhered to. But the Malaysia solution would not even have that. There would be no Australian officials on the ground—in a country that is not a signatory to the refugee convention, in a country that does use the cane, in a country that would return people to dangerous countries of origin.

This is the moment to seize for both the Prime Minister and the opposition leader. They both need to act in the public interest. This parliament needs to seize the moment and put the shameful episode of the Howard era behind us and to put the shameful suggestion of the Malaysia solution behind us. That is why I will not support the government's bill and I will not support opposition amendments. The only thing I expect to support today will be the member for Melbourne's amendment.

Bob Baldwin (Paterson, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Tourism) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise today to speak to the Migration Legislation Amendment (Offshore Processing and Other Measures) Bill 2011 and, in particular, to reject the government's bill and to support the opposition's amendments. The only reason that we have had 12,263 illegal arrivals on 241 boats is that this Labor government held up the 'open for business' signs. In fact, since the Prime Minister became leader there have been 100 boats, containing 5,710 illegal immigrants. For the record, not one person has been processed offshore.

It was this week that Treasurer Wayne Swan was named Finance Minister of the Year. I am absolutely sure that the 'People Smugglers Association' would call our minister for immigration the 'International Immigration Minister of the Year' because he has done so much for people smugglers. In fact, he has recreated an industry that brings to those people smugglers somewhere between $120 million and $250 million in revenue, and that was after the Howard government smashed the people-smuggling rings.

It is only absolute stubbornness that stops the Prime Minister from having an offshore processing solution. The Prime Minister—that wheeler and dealer; that negotiator of extreme ability—cut a deal with Malaysia which sees us taking five refugees for 800 people. That is a hell of a deal, but she should actually work out that 50 per cent of something is better than 100 per cent of nothing. If the Prime Minister were to agree with the amendments by the opposition, she would have in place an offshore processing regime that does not dictate Nauru. In fact, Nauru is excluded until Monday, when it will finally have its signed ratification of subscribing to the UN convention on refugees. In fact, what amazes me is the Prime Minister's push for Malaysia when so many speakers in the past, on previous bills, have spoken about the need to have countries that are signatories to the convention.

I quote from the UNHCR website about Malaysia. It says:

Malaysia is not party to the 1951 Refugee Convention or its Protocol.

…   …   …

By law, refugees are … vulnerable to arrest for immigration offences and may be subject to detention, prosecution, whipping and deportation.

It is true that Nauru is not a signatory at this point in time. It will not be ratified until Monday. So by the time this bill is voted on and by the time it goes through the Senate, Nauru will be a signatory. As I said, it is only the stubbornness of this Prime Minister. In fact, I quite expect the Prime Minister to come in and say something along the lines of: 'We, and we alone, will dictate the terms of who comes into this country and by which means they come into this country.' So much so is her stubbornness.

Hypocrisy knows no bounds. I say that in the light of the Prime Minister's position on 6PR on 8 July last year, when she said:

I would rule out anywhere that is not a signatory to the Refugee Convention.

But she has changed her mind yet again. This Prime Minister has had more positions and more policies than I have had hot feeds—and, I have to say, that is actually saying something! She has changed her mind on so many issues and has changed direction from one extreme to the other, bouncing almost like a ball in a pinball machine—bouncing off the little flickers—

Luke Hartsuyker (Cowper, National Party, Deputy Manager of Opposition Business in the House) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

She's faster than that!

Bob Baldwin (Paterson, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Tourism) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

She is faster than a ball in a pinball machine, but she is not on her own. I state to the House: when the Howard government instituted offshore processing, when we turned the boats around and had the Pacific solution, supported by temporary protection visas, it stopped the boats. We did not have this problem. We broke the people-smuggling ring and we denied them of around $250 million worth of income.

The hypocrisy is shared by many on her side. In fact, I might not agree with Mr Bandt, the member for Melbourne, but I do admire his conviction and, in particular, his consistency. That is something that is absolutely lacking from members opposite. I think back to the speeches in the debate on the Migration Amendment (Designated Unauthorised Arrivals) Bill 2006. That was debated on 10 August 2006. There were a number of speakers, in particular the member for Grayndler, as he was then. In his speech he said:

You do not protect your borders by giving them up—and that is what this bill does.

He went on to say:

The Labor Party supports border protection but does not accept that excising the whole of Australia is an effective means of border protection. You do not deal with boat arrivals by pretending that you do not have sea borders or by pretending that, if you arrive by one particular mode of arrival—boat—you do not arrive in Australia …

In fact, he then went on to quote the UNHCR and said:

If this were to happen, it would be an unfortunate precedent, being for the first time, to our knowledge, that a country with a fully functioning and credible asylum system, in the absence of anything approximating a mass influx, decides to transfer elsewhere the responsibility to handle claims made actually on the territory of the state.

He even went on to quote Justice Kirby's letter, which said:

Every diminution of freedom takes us in the wrong direction. Every act of discrimination by our parliament and governments dishonours our nation.

He summed up by saying:

But we have to bear in mind how future generations will look at what we are doing …

I look forward to the courage of conviction and consistency from the member for Grayndler. But he is not on his own. The member for Melbourne Ports—one of those people so passionate about human rights and such a strong advocate who is lining up—in his speech, on the same day and on the same bill, said:

I am pleased to see that some of the members opposite—the members for Kooyong, McMillan, Pearce and Cook—agree with us. I commend their adherence to principle on this matter and hope other coalition members and senators will also agree with us.

The list goes on. The member for Shortland, on the same day, said:

Nauru will be used to detain asylum seekers, and asylum seekers arriving by boat will have no access to legal or appeal proceedings in Australia. I think that is rather horrendous.

She went on to say:

… I see asylum seekers and refugees as some of the most vulnerable people in the world. I am very ashamed to have been part of a parliament that has adopted this approach.

I ask her: how does she feel now? She goes on to say:

If I was in a situation where I was as desperate as many of these people who are hopping on those leaking boats are, I would do exactly the same.

Further, she says:

Labor believes all asylum seekers should have the right to access Australian appeal processes, the Refugee Review Tribunal and Australian judicial review. To deny this is to deny basic human rights.

But the ringer in all this is the Minister for Immigration and Citizenship, who made a speech that same day when he was just the member for Prospect. He said:

If the Migration Amendment (Designated Unauthorised Arrivals) Bill 2006 passes the parliament today, it will be the day that Australia turned its back on the refugee convention and on refugees escaping circumstances that most of us can only imagine. This is a bad bill with no redeeming features. It is a hypocritical and illogical bill. If it is passed today, it will be a stain on our national character. The people who will be disadvantaged by this bill are in fear of their lives, and we should never turn our back on them. They are people who could make a real contribution to Australia.

He went on to say:

The biggest problem is that, even if an asylum seeker overcomes all these obstacles and has their application for refugee status accepted, there is no guarantee of a visa to settle in Australia. Someone who makes it to the Australian mainland and has their case as a refugee accepted may not be able to gain a protection visa in this country, and that is a national disgrace.

Further, he said:

The Prime Minister is selling out our national sovereignty. This tragic and discriminatory policy does not come cheap. Taxpayers are paying for the maintenance of offshore detention centres at the cost of $3 million to $4 million a month. They are much more expensive than detention centres in Australia. We have the worst of all worlds—an expensive, discriminatory and tragic policy.

He summed it up by quoting the convention on refugees, which says:

The Contracting States shall apply the provisions of this Convention to refugees without discrimination as to race, religion or country of origin.

Finally, he said:

I appeal to the better angels of the nature of those opposite. Some have already expressed their unwillingness to support this legislation.

I think that pretty much sums up the hypocrisy of the people that occupy the government benches. It shows the hypocrisy of members like the member for Banks, the now member for Werriwa, the member for Melbourne Ports, the member for Jagajaga, the member for Lyne, the member for Grayndler and the member for Sydney, to name but a few, because they lack conviction. One of the things you have to be very careful of in this place is that when you make a speech and you say something on the record it is there forever. Those words that I have quoted are their words, not words that I am putting into their mouths.

But what are we going to see today? We will see them all line up. At that time they called on people like the then member for Cook, the member for McMillan, the then member for Kooyong and, of course, the member for Pearce to have the courage of their conviction and to cross the floor because sending people to a country that is not a signatory to the refugee convention was immoral and a disgrace. We say to them today: act upon your conviction and your principles. Cross the floor and support an amendment that dictates not an individual country but basic human rights protections. I quote the paragraph we wish to include:

(d)      the designation of a country to be an offshore processing country need be determined only by reference to the fact that the country is a party to the Refugees Convention or the Refugees Protocol.

It cannot be any simpler than that. The country must be a signatory. I go back to what I said earlier, wherein I quoted the UNHCR website about Malaysia. I have no problem with Malaysia. They have their own laws, they have their own values and they have their own views but, unfortunately, they are not a signatory to the convention. The UNHCR website says:

Malaysia is not party to the 1951 Refugee Convention or its Protocol.

…   …   …

By law, refugees are … vulnerable to arrest for immigration offences and may be subject to detention, prosecution, whipping and deportation.

Those members that I named previously had a lot to say when they were in opposition about offshore processing, how inhumane it was and how terrible it was that we were not standing by the convention to which we subscribe. I say to them now: here is your opportunity; reject your own bill, which goes against the very essence of your own conviction and your previously stated statements to this House, and support the opposition. Will they have the absolute conviction to stand up for what they believe in, and what they have already said, and support the opposition? It may not be what they truly want, but what they are going to vote for with this government goes against every grain, everything they have said and everything they have stood for. In the years after they leave this place, as one of the members I mentioned said, how will future generations look upon the actions that they have undertaken?

This is fairly simple. The government will be given a licence for offshore processing in a country of the minister or the Prime Minister's choosing, provided it is a signatory to the refugee convention. I restate what the opposition's policy will be if we come to government: we will institute offshore processing, we will institute temporary protection visas and we will turn the boats around. It worked once before; it will work again. It is only this Prime Minister's absolute stubbornness and conceitedness that stops her from progressing in this vein. (Time expired)

Don Randall (Canning, Liberal Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Local Government) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I am pleased to speak on the Migration Legislation Amendment (Offshore Processing and Other Measures) Bill 2011. I have a passion and an interest in migration because it is one of the most important issues in our community today. You cannot go to the shops, you cannot go down to the local sporting club, without people having an opinion on this and having something to say about it. I want to analyse why we are here today. We are here today because this is a government that is in real trouble, diabolical trouble, on a number of fronts. This government's troubles on this migration issue are of its own making.

Let us examine the history of why we are here today. Ten years ago the Howard government had to deal with the Tampasituation—a situation I know well because I was elected in 2001.

Luke Hartsuyker (Cowper, National Party, Deputy Manager of Opposition Business in the House) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

And what a great member too. A wise choice they made.

Don Randall (Canning, Liberal Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Local Government) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Thank you very much. I was the only member from Western Australia elected in the 2001 election and that had a lot to do with migration issues. Ten years later we are still going through the same issues and Nauru is still an issue. We had a problem and we found a solution. The solution was that we would process offshore the people who arrived unlawfully. Thousands of people, until this action was taken, were arriving unlawfully and there had to be a solution. Offshore processing did a number of things. It made sure that the UNHCR assessed people properly in an area not on the Australian mainland. It was important we did this because Australia was seen as a soft touch and an easy destination.

What has changed since then? The Labor Party, after the 'Kevin 07' election, came to government. In February 2008, within three months of coming to office, the Rudd government moved to dismantle the Pacific solution by announcing the closing of the Nauru detention centre. The Pacific solution had worked because, as we know, when the Rudd government came to power in 2007 there were only four people in detention that had come by boat. Disregarding any analysis of success or otherwise, we had gone from thousands of people arriving to just four in detention being processed.

In May 2008 the then Minister for Immigration and Citizenship, Senator Chris Evans, dismantled temporary protection visas. They were the other very important element of the Pacific solution. Temporary protection visas allowed people to stay on the Australian mainland for two reasons: firstly, while their refugee bona fides were being checked and, secondly, until the country of their origin was deemed safe to go back to. With much fanfare, earlier this year the Minister for Immigration and Citizenship, Mr Bowen, came into this place and said how they had struck a wonderful deal with Afghanistan to return people not deemed to be refugees. Do you know how many people have gone back to Afghanistan as a result of that agreement with the Afghan government? Not one. Not one person has returned even though a bilateral agreement between both governments was reached.

Recently I went to Afghanistan with a number of my colleagues, including a Labor members. On the basis that the Afghans are being given refugee status in Australia, the whole of Afghanistan could come to Australia. Everyone in Afghanistan could deem themselves as being in an unsafe environment and being either persecuted or targeted and fearing for their own or their children's safety. On that basis, under the easy tick-and-flick method, the whole of the Afghan nation—if they could get to Australian shores—could come here and receive a visa. It is just bizarre.

In July 2009 the Rudd government—before the Prime Minister was politically assassinated—was boasting that the dismantling of the Howard government's asylum seeker policy had been achieved. It is their dismantling of a successful policy which has led us into the dire migration situation we find ourselves in today. There have been many different views. Remember it was Prime Minister Gillard that came to the position of Prime Minister just over 12 months ago because the government had lost its way. It had lost its way in several areas: one was carbon tax, another was the mining tax and one was migration issues. None of those have been fixed.

This Prime Minister, 12 months later, is in a bigger mess. Before the last election she was fishing around trying to find a solution so she said she was going to organise a regional processing centre in East Timor because East Timor would be a good location. The only problem with that was she did not tell anyone in East Timor she was going to do it. In fact, the ones she did tell were the wrong people and they became somewhat offended. The East Timorese knew that a processing centre in that setting would provide for asylum seekers entitlements and amenities far superior to what many of the people themselves in East Timor were receiving in the way of food, health, education, communications and pay. So that was canned. It was a serious issue, and this was done on the advice, we are told, of people from the department.

I am not one to criticise departmental officials but I will point out a level of hypocrisy evident in the parliament yesterday. I happened to be fortunate enough to be in the Main Committee and hear the member for Canberra railing against Bob Brown for slurring departmental officials. As the member for Canberra—and we know there are a lot of bureaucrats and public servants in Canberra—she was protecting her constituency. She was railing against Senator Bob Brown from the Greens, saying how he had terribly slurred the bureaucrats and the people giving advice to the government and how shocking it was. In question time the same member got up in this place and asked the Special Minister of State for Public Service and Integrity about how shocking it was that anyone would slur the bureaucrats. What was the answer from the minister? It was the fault of the coalition that these people were being slurred. The member for Canberra had one position in the morning and she had another one in the afternoon. All advice is given objectively but it is not always correct because the proposal for East Timor obviously was not something that could fly. So then what did the Prime Minister do? She started fishing around for another location. She tried to find another location which was Malaysia. I say to the Labor Party backbench in particular: walk through your shopping centres and ask anyone if they think the five-for-one swap is a good deal. The government then said to Malaysia: 'Have we got a deal for you. We'll take 4,000 of yours at great expense, and at great expense we'll give you 800 of ours and we'll pay for the lot. Guess what? We think that's a good deal.' I would really like the Prime Minister to be my bank manager because I could put a dollar in and get five dollars back every time. What a ludicrous situation. But somehow this seems to be a good result.

What is worse than that is the fact that the Prime Minister and the Labor Party, particularly during the Howard years, were against offshore processing. We have heard my colleagues one after the other outlining the statements of members and ministers who in the past have said that it was a shocking thing that the coalition did in sending people to offshore processing areas like Manus Island. They said: 'How shocking. Manus Island, what a shocking place to send people.' They said that it was inhumane and it was against all human rights principles in the conventions that we have signed up to. The Prime Minister's original objection to Nauru was that it was not a signatory to the UN conventions that we have signed up to. These conventions have been listed and I may refer to them in a moment.

Then what happened? There seemed to be a conversion not on the road to Damascus but on the road to Kuala Lumpur. This conversion on the way to Kuala Lumpur was that we do not have to send people to a country that is a signatory to the convention because we have such a good deal—the five-for-one deal—that we have to send them there. I say that the government are so bogged down on this that they are now almost obliged to try to keep going with it.

We know about the Labor left on the other side. The member for La Trobe, I understand, seconded the motion in caucus brought by Senator John Faulkner against this. We know a whole lot of people spoke about how terrible it was that people were going to a country that had not signed the convention. Yet we see the dishonesty of those, particularly the Left members on the backbench, because you will hear them speak today supporting this motion even though we know they spoke in caucus against it. This has been reported and they have not denied it. They are going to endorse this crazy deal that the Prime Minister wants to do to continue to try to send asylum seekers to Malaysia.

We have given the government an out. We have an amendment to this bill. We have said, 'Yes, we will amend the bill to allow the minister of the day to send people to a country that is a signatory of the convention.' That is a very simple amendment, a very logical one, and I will give you an example of countries in the region that are signatories where they might want to send asylum seekers. Papua New Guinea is a signatory, the Philippines are a signatory, Samoa is a signatory and the Solomon Islands. I have been to Tuvalu, a nice place—

Luke Hartsuyker (Cowper, National Party, Deputy Manager of Opposition Business in the House) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Tuvalu.

Don Randall (Canning, Liberal Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Local Government) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

It is pronounced Tuvalu and the capital is Funafuti for those who cannot say the name of it. The Labor Party seem to want to say it is our fault because we will not give them the discretion to go to Malaysia because, in their own words, it is a place that did not sign the convention. They still seem to have a problem with Nauru even though this was a facility that was run by Australians and managed by Australians. We knew that the treatment of the asylum seekers there was well and truly monitored by Australians. Dare I say this is just political bloody-mindedness—they have a solution and, because it was something that we did, they are not going to do it.

We have heard the Prime Minister and others say, 'It's too far away and it's too dear.' It was not too far away before. We saw a plane parked up at Christmas Island detention centre for days and days waiting for the decision on the Malaysian solution—so much about expense. They were talking about a billion dollars to reopen Nauru. Many of the huts are still there, much of the infrastructure is still there. In the six years of the Pacific solution, which included Manus Island, the total cost was $289 million. Where do you get a figure of a billion to use Nauru now? It is a figure just plucked out of the air. I hope they do not blame the bureaucrats for that and say it is a figure given to them by the department, because I would like to see the justification for that. In fact I would like to see the figures on how they arrive at a billion. It is a very expensive option. It must come with jacuzzis and spas and everything else if it is going to cost a billion.

We need to maintain the offshore solution. I know the Left and the Greens want an onshore solution. I even heard Michael Raper from the Red Cross this morning, who used to be from ACOSS—this is part of his core business, this is how he gets employed—saying that he wants to see an onshore solution. He said, 'It's just a handful of people; there are many more people that come as overstayers.' Those who are overstayers have a very much reduced success rate of getting a visa. Those who come by boat—and that is why they pay a people smuggler up to $20,000—have closer to an 80 per cent success rate of getting a visa. So why wouldn't you try to come by boat when you have a successful outcome like that?

This is, again, a mess that the Labor Party have found themselves in. It is a mess of their own making. Paul Murray in an article on 21 September said:

This problem is all Ms Gillard's. And the next boat is another policy failure for her, no one else.

This is a self-made problem, a self-inflicted wound and we are not going to bail them out. We have given them a solution. Unless they take it, it is their problem.

Stephen Jones (Throsby, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I am the great-grandson of a boat person and an illegal immigrant. He was a Swedish seaman who jumped ship in Albany in the 1890s to try his luck in the goldfields of Kalgoorlie. As matters happened he did not have much luck and he found his way east and worked on the wharves there for the remainder of his working life. He made a great contribution, and I would argue his offspring have made a great contribution to this country. The issue of migration is no less vexed a debate today as it was when Gustaf Carlson jumped ship in the 1890s.

As a wealthy democracy and an active member of the international community, Australia has a duty at home and abroad, a duty to uphold our obligations under international law, a duty to ensure we carry our fair share of the burden when it comes to helping and resettling people who are fleeing persecution in their country of origin and a duty to ensure that when we accept people as refugees we help them integrate into the Australian community. Further, we have a duty here as parliamentarians and leaders in the Australian community to ensure that we lead a debate that is based on facts and values not on fallacy and fear.

We are lucky that in the 100 years since Federation we have never had to face a civil war. While we have on several occasions had to repel attempts at invasion, including the bombing of Darwin, the overwhelming majority of Australians have not had to witness the sorts of wars and conflicts that cause so many to flee their homes and seek sanctuary in another place. Perhaps if we had we might think and talk differently about this matter.

Despite our relative isolation, Australian governments have played an important part in crafting the international arrangements to deal with human rights and refugees. Australian Labor has been at the forefront of this. As Australia's Minister for External Affairs, Doc Evatt worked with Jessie Street to found the United Nations. They were at the centre of the negotiations, the drafting and the adoption of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Doc Evatt was President of the General Assembly of the United Nations when it adopted the Universal Declaration of Human Rights which, in article 14, says: 'Everyone has the right to seek and to enjoy in other countries asylum from persecution.'

In the aftermath of World War II the international community decided that in times of civil war, persecution, and ethnic cleansing special conventions were needed to protect vulnerable minorities such as children, Indigenous people and refugees. In the wake of the holocaust that preceded the agreement we realised that any of us could some day be in need of shelter. In July 1951 the United Nations General Assembly adopted the United Nations Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees, and on 22 January 1954 the Menzies government ratified it. Australia's signing to that convention was the trigger point that made the refugee convention operative as an international treaty.

I entered this debate calling for more facts, less fallacy and a bit more perspective. According to the United Nations High Commission for Refugees, at the end of 2010 there were 43.7 million people of concern, including 10.6 million in the care of UNHCR and another 4.8 million Palestinian refugees in care. As an island nation that gave protection to the people of East Timor and Vietnam, we do know that asylum seekers generally look for protection in their region of origin. Seventy-five per cent of all refugees reside in countries neighbouring their own country.

In 2011 there are 500,000 refugees needing permanent resettlement but only 100,000 resettlement places available. Of the 10.6 million refugees currently in the care of UNHCR, 80 per cent have sanctuary in developing countries. Many Australians may be surprised to learn that Pakistan, one of those developing countries, hosts both the most refugees, 1. 9 million, and the most compared with the size of its national economy. The second prize goes to the Democratic Republic of the Congo and third prize to Kenya.

In 2010 the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees put it succinctly. He said:

Over half of the refugees for whom UNHCR is responsible live in protracted situations. There are 25 such situations today, in 21 countries. This burden is borne disproportionately by the developing world, where four-fifths of all refugees live. Combined with the continuing impact of the global financial and economic crisis, the resources of host countries are under serious strain … A new deal on burden-sharing is essential to ensure that the generosity of host countries and communities is matched by solidarity from the developed world.

In absolute terms, some of the poorest and most politically volatile countries host the largest refugee populations. These include Iran, Syria, Kenya and Chad. Not all of these countries have signed the refugee convention yet they are, by far, carrying the greatest burden of hosting refugees on our troubled globe. They have limited resources to deal with large inflows of displaced people that put additional pressures on their weak governance structures and fragile political situations. Despite these social and political pressures, these countries honour the spirit of the refugee convention by allowing people to stay in their territories until more durable solutions are found.

For its part, Australia has settled around 700,000 refugees since the Second World War. Asylum seekers represent only two per cent of Australia's annual migration intake. A little over 8,000 people claimed asylum in Australia in 2010, amounting to a little over one per cent of the global total. Most asylum seekers arrive in Australia by air. From 2001 to 2010 boat arrivals accounted for 24 per cent—that is, less than one-quarter of Australia's total asylum claims. While Australia has had an increase in the absolute number of asylum seekers it receives, it is still far below those recorded by other industrialised countries. I paint this picture quite simply to make the point that Australia can and should do more. I welcome the fact that the agreement that we have reached with Malaysia will lead to an increase in our refugee intake. I would like to think that it is the first instalment in what we can and should do as a wealthy nation, a democratic nation and a civilised nation in a troubled world and region.

I would like to talk about the values that should underscore our actions in this area. I do not believe that on this issue there are any moral absolutes. I do believe, however, that our actions should reflect our values, and that we must be able to clearly articulate this both as a party in this place and to the nation.

For Labor, our actions must stem from our proud history as trailblazers and as innovators. We must be willing to stand on the shoulders of men and women like Doc Evatt and Jessie Street and like the architect of our post-war migration program, Arthur Calwell. We must be able to say that what we are doing is consistent with our Labor heritage. The core Labor values of fairness and equity must form the bedrock of this approach. It should build on our history of leading the nation.

I have already said that I do not believe that it is fair that this country, a country that is so relatively wealthy when compared to our regional neighbours, should do proportionately less when it comes to refugee intake. This, quite simply, is not equitable. I further argue that we should not lay out a process that has the effect of giving preference to those who can pay over those who cannot, whether that payment is by way of a plane ticket or a ticket on a boat. It, I argue, is not consistent with the Labor way, to give preference to those who can afford to pay over those who cannot.

Nor should we give preference to men over women in our refugee intake. We should be able to determine the regions from which we take our refugees and where we think they may best be settled and form an important part of the Australian community. These are all principles that I argue are consistent with Labor values. It is critical that we in this place are able to articulate this clearly to the Australian community.

The final observation that I wish to make goes to the quality of public debate and our obligations to lead. Many who have contributed to this debate so far have used the unfortunate language of 'solution'. I find that incredibly offensive and politically misleading. It is historically problematic, and that is a point that I should not have to labour to any in this place. But it is also incredibly politically misleading because it lifts the bar so high. Whether the former government or the current government, neither of us can argue that we have a final solution that would put the barriers up and prevent anybody from coming to this great country of ours. That is not true. It is hardly surprising that a country which is as wonderful as ours, situated in such a troubled region, will be an attractive place for anybody to come. Try as we may, there is no ultimate barrier which will prevent that. We can put policies in place which may enable us to control it, but there is no ultimate bulwark.

Can I say something about the notion of deterrence, because that has been at the centre of this debate as well? There are many things we can do to deter people from coming here. Our obligation as parliamentarians is to ensure that what we do is moral and consistent with our values. There is no shortage of things that we could do to deter people coming to Australia, I am sure. Most of them could not be contemplated in this place.

It is said, and I believe it, that the purpose of the deterrence value of the Malaysian arrangement is that it negates the purpose of the journey in the first place, the importance of Malaysia being that this is often the first point of departure for people in transit from Afghanistan, Pakistan and places within that region. It is argued, and I believe it, that if people are returned to Malaysia as a part of this process then it negates the arrangement that put them there in the first place.

The same cannot be argued for Nauru. The deterrence value of Nauru is quite simply that it tortures those who make the journey. It does not return them to the place of their original departure, it simply locks them up on an island isolated from the rest of the world. It leaves them there with very little control over their future and very little certainty. It tortures those who have made the journey and, if we are to believe the history of those who found their way to Nauru under the policies of the previous government, around 68 per cent of those were ultimately resettled in Australia and around 95 per cent of those were resettled either in Australia or in New Zealand.

It was a tortuous arrangement, and it was a solution to nothing. It was barbaric in most regards and ultimately it did not stop the people. If we are to accept the arguments, and I do, that are put to us by those who have spent most of their lives operating in this area, the advice that was given to our government and which was provided to the Leader of the Opposition was that, even if some were to accept that Nauru ever did work, it is within the wit and will of those who ply their trade in people smuggling to work out exactly what went on and to put in place arrangements which will negate the effect of it in the future.

I end my contribution to this debate in the place where I started: I think it is critically important that we as parliamentarians fulfil our obligation as leaders to ensure that we have a debate based on facts and values, and that we are able to clearly articulate the values that underpin our policy—not a debate which is based on fallacy, on fear, on deception and on opportunism. We do have an obligation to uphold our duties under international law, a duty to ensure that we carry our fair share of the burden when it comes to helping resettle people in our region—people who are fleeing persecution in their country of origin—and a duty to ensure that we accept people as refugees and do everything that is within our power to ensure that we can integrate them into the Australian community so they can make the contribution that we on this side are confident that they can make, that they have made and that they can continue to make to this great country of ours.

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

I rise also to speak on this bill and the amendment that we have proposed. I will take a moment to reflect on the member for Throsby's contribution because I know that this is an issue which is very important to him. He has been reasonably brave, it has to be said, in defiance of his party's position on this through their processes, in the caucus and in public explaining that he does not agree—and I think he did it very well in his contribution to the parliament just now—with the direction that the Prime Minister and the Minister for Immigration and Citizenship are taking on this matter.

What the member for Throsby did not say in his contribution is that he supports the bill. I think it reflects very poorly on the Labor Party that they have got to this point with this bill. When I first became involved in politics my first involvement at a federal level in an election campaign of a serious nature was Trish Worth's Adelaide campaign in 2001. Trish Worth served in this parliament for some time and it is fair to say she had a humanitarian bent when it came to this issue. In the 2001 election campaign the Australian Labor Party, its candidate Tim Stanley, its campaign manager and people involved in the campaign, including the current member for Adelaide, sought to make the most vicious politics of this issue against Trish Worth. They sought to make the most outrageous suggestions about members of this side and about people involved with the Liberal Party—to the extent that a current very senior serving union official in South Australia, who may have been the union official who went to a gunfight with the Premier but forgot his gun a couple of months ago, made claims—

Dick Adams (Lyons, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Order! I remind the honourable member that we are dealing with an amendment. It is a wide-ranging debate but there are limits to what can be brought into the debate.

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

Thank you, Mr Deputy Speaker. I am talking about the history of migration policy—

Dick Adams (Lyons, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Order! I reminded the honourable member about the debate. I do not expect him to then come back at the chair. I have said it is a wide-ranging debate but the honourable member is talking about issues which are not the history of migration in Australia but are about other matters involving campaigns.

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

Thank you, Mr Deputy Speaker. In the 2001 election campaign this was a major issue, and it was the first time I had been exposed to the issues around migration and boats arriving in the northern parts of our country. We on this side all remember on the day of the 2001 election the vicious nature of the Labor Party officials and supporters who were claiming that we were race baiting, that we were rednecks—the member for Wakefield nods his head—that we were without hearts, that we were dog whistling and that we were xenophobes or were playing xenophobic politics and John Howard was pushing buttons in the community. There was all this kind of language. People were accusing others of being racists for being involved in public forums. They were yelling across tennis courts at people. We all remember that, and some remember more than others.

So, it is with great surprise that we stand here debating this proposal from this Prime Minister—this proposal from this Labor Party who have moralised on this issue like nobody else, maybe except for the Greens. I absolutely agree with the member for Throsby when he says on this issue that there are no moral absolutes. I have heard him say that in other places before, and I am sure he has said it in caucus as well. That is exactly right. This is a very difficult issue, and people look at this issue and develop policies on this issue in different ways.

I respect the fact that the Greens have had a policy on onshore detention—in fact I think they would even go so far as to say that they do not even support detention, at their core. They are entitled to pursue that policy, and they have for a long time. For 10 years now we have supported offshore processing as a deterrent to people getting on these boats in Indonesia, largely. The Labor Party has been all over the shop but members of the left wing of the Labor Party moving motions in their own caucus against this policy shows how far this Prime Minister is willing to go to avoid the politics of an issue. It is a very sad day when the left-wing members of the Labor Party are forced to stand in this parliament and support sending people to countries which have not signed the UN Convention relating to the Status of Refugees. Just last year the Prime Minister said she would never agree to such a proposal.

I think it is with a heavy heart that the member for Throsby and his colleagues on the left of the Labor Party stand here today. They should support our amendment so we can continue with offshore processing in a place which is signed onto the UN convention, and that would continue to act as a deterrent. Some 10 million people around the world are genuine refugees, as deemed by the UNHCR. Each year Australia accepts 12,000 or 13,000, on average. I understand that that is still the highest proportion of genuine refugees accepted per capita, and we should continue to accept those refugees. In fact, I believe we should take more—and we can take some more, in the right circumstances. People right around the world are in horrific situations. The situation in the Horn of Africa right now is terrible. There are millions starving and there are millions dying. We should do our bit to help those people who have been in these situations for many, many years.

When the member for Throsby says there are no moral absolutes on this issue, he is right because of this: who gets to decide who gets an opportunity to come to our great country, the best country on earth? Who makes the decision that they get that opportunity, as the member for Throsby told us his great-grandfather did in jumping ship and getting his opportunity here? Do these opportunities go to people purchasing a ticket for a boat trip or to people who have been living for years and years in circumstances which are beyond belief?

The person the Labor Party has derided more on this issue than even John Howard is the member for Berowra, who was the Minister for Immigration and Multicultural Affairs in 2001 when this most vicious campaign was run by the Australian Labor Party and its friends. The member for Berowra has visited nearly all these refugee camps across the world. He has seen these situations and he understands how bad this is. He makes the right point that Australia should control who we allow to take each one of our privileged places each year. That is the absolute right policy for us to pursue. We cannot take 10 million people even though this would give us a good feeling. We cannot possibly accept all the genuine refugees who sits in camps across the world. It is just not possible.

We need to maintain reasonable control over our program because (1) we should decide who gets that opportunity and (2) we need to continue to have Australian public's support for what we do. A point John Howard often made was that if you lose the confidence of the Australian public on this issue that is a terrible step backwards. The problem with what this government is doing in mishandling this issue, which has led to this appalling piece of legislation, is it is losing the confidence of the Australian public on this issue. The Australian public listened to the Prime Minister before the last election and heard her say we cannot have a processing centre on Nauru because it is not a signatory to the UN refugee convention. She said she would never send people to a country that had not signed that convention. She said she would not open any more onshore detention facilities. She said all this prior to the last election, just 12 months ago. We now see this appalling piece of legislation, which is morally contemptible. We have seen the additional onshore detention facilities, including in Inverbrackie in my electorate. We have seen the lack of regard for communities on this issue. We have seen people lose faith in the government knowing how to run an immigration program properly.

I think that there is an opportunity for Labor members of parliament to refuse to support this legislation and to refuse go down this track. We know that the Minister for Foreign Affairs, who is not part of this debate, does not agree with the shift to the right on this issue. We know that because he said in a press conference the night he was being rolled that he did not support the Labor Party lurching to the right on this issue. This is not just a lurch to the right; this is falling off a cliff on the right side of the mountain. This is an absolutely appalling piece of legislation. The member for Throsby talked about Labor values and said we should be moral and consistent with our values. I would like to hear just one Labor MP tell the parliament how this is morally consistent with their values on this issue.

Sending people to a country which has not signed the UN refugee convention and which has a record of mistreating refugees is a terrible step for this parliament to take. For people who have campaigned on this issue and have accused those on this side of parliament of being rednecks, xenophobic and racists this is hypocrisy writ large.

Mr Sidebottom interjecting—

There has been a consistent policy approach on this issue from the member for Braddon over the years. He used to stand on this side of the chamber and throw the most horrific abuse at the former prime minister and at the member for Berowra when he was a immigration minister. Now the member for Braddon supports this legislation. Good luck back in Tasmania telling people how removing all the protections in this legislation is a good idea. I am sure this will be really popular in the cafes in Launceston. I think it would be decent if you had a public meeting to tell people why this is such a wonderful idea.

It is an appalling idea. This bill should not be supported. At the very least our amendments to this bill should be supported. There is a better way to handle this issue. It is important that we handle this issue properly. It is an emotive issue in the community. It is an emotive issue in this place. It deals with people's lives. It deals with people in very difficult circumstances. Politics is being played by all players in this debate, not just one side. This issue should not be resolved by creating a bill which removes all human rights protections in this legislation. It is a disgrace. It is shameful. The Labor members of parliament should not support this bill. They should not support this direction being taken by the Prime Minister.

We should not be debating this bill today. We are debating it today to avoid a leadership spill on the other side. The Parliamentary Secretary for Pacific Island Affairs and the future leader of the Labor Party laughs, but we know he will get a promotion if there is a spill. We know he is conflicted on this. We know that his boss will look favourably upon him, but I know in his heart of hearts he does not think this is the right way to go. I know the member for Wakefield does not think this is the right way to go.

Nick Champion (Wakefield, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I do.

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

And I certainly think the member for Throsby knows this is a terrible way to go because he did not once say that he supports this bill, and nor should he. The parliament should not support this bill. It is a disgrace and the other side should be ashamed of themselves.

Nick Champion (Wakefield, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I strongly support the Migration Legislation Amendment (Offshore Processing and Other Measures) Bill and I have strongly supported it since we first started discussing it. In 2007 this country decided to give compassion a go. The Labor Party were not alone in this. The coalition did not oppose the end of temporary protection visas. They had the option of moving a disallowance motion in the Senate and in the House, but they never did it. Indeed, in 2009 Sharman Stone, who was then the shadow minister for immigration, said on Lateline:

We don't need the Pacific Solution now, that's Nauru Island and Manus Island, because we have the Christmas Island centre completed.

She went on to say:

So we don't need alternatives to Nauru and Manus island, we have Christmas Island.

It is untrue to say that it was just the Labor Party who supported these changes. The opposition did as well, by their actions and by the fact that they did not act, did not disallow regulations and did not attempt to oppose the changes in this parliament.

Obviously since that time we have had increased boat arrivals and we have had a terrible tragedy on our coast at Christmas Island. I was on the committee that looked into the Christmas Island tragedy and I was profoundly affected by it. If those listening want to know what has changed Labor Party opinion, I think it has been that tragedy. It is a graphic reminder of the risks that are taken. There were 30 dead, and there was evidence from people like Mr Raymond Murray, who on page 35 of the hearing transcript says:

Standing right out on the edge of the rocks, there were times … that the boat was closer than you are to me now. I will never forget seeing a woman holding up a baby, obviously wanting me to take it, and not being able to do anything. It was just a feeling of absolute hopelessness.

It is testimony like that that has changed my mind, and I think it has changed the mind of many in our country. After hearing the evidence to that committee, I greatly worry about the risks taken by our border protection forces—people in the ADF, in Customs and in the Federal Police. We heard testimony from Mr Mathew Saunders, who says on page 5 of the Hansard transcript:

… that is the thin line of risking your life to save someone else's. I think we were right on the edge of that …

That echoes Lieutenant General Hurley's high praise for those involved on the Triton and on HMAS Pirie; he said:

They put their own lives at risk in extremely dangerous circumstances to rescue 41 people from the sea.

So this is not an easy debate. It has not been an easy debate for a decade; I think the member for Mayo was right about that. It has excited people's passions, and unfortunately there has been a lot of politics in it, and there has been a lot of politics in the debate today—a sickening amount of politics. What has changed my mind is that tragedy and hearing the evidence before that committee.

There has been a lot said about the Malaysian transfer agreement by the minister and by our opponents, and I do not think recounting that or going over it will do much good, but I would like to point out that the UNHCR has said:

… the Arrangement will with time deliver further protection dividends in the two countries, as well as the region …

That is what the UNHCR has said about it. With all this talk about human rights from those opposite, they do not talk about what the UNHCR has said about it. The UNHCR has also said about the arrangement with Malaysia:

The Arrangement and its implementing guidelines contain important protection safeguards, including respect for the principle of non-refoulement; the right to asylum; the principle of family unity and best interests of the child; humane reception conditions including protection against arbitrary detention; lawful status to remain in Malaysia until a durable solution is found; and the ability to receive education, access to health care, and a right to employment.

The right to employment is a pretty important right. It is a right that is not there in Nauru. One of the problems with Nauru was that people were just left there; that was the deterrent. We just left people on an island for years, going crazy and doing nothing, with no option to work or to have their claims advanced. They were just sitting there for years and years and years.

When you get right down to it, with the Malaysian transfer agreement the proof will be in the pudding. If we are allowed to implement it by this parliament—if the Liberal Party would just get out of the way and let us implement it—we will be judged on its effects, and we are happy to be judged on its effects. I am proud of what the minister has done in this area since his appointment. I think he has done a very good job of getting people out of detention and forming an agreement which deters people from taking a dangerous journey that risks their lives and the lives of others and which will dismantle the people-smuggling rings and stop their trade, at the same time as increasing our humanitarian intake. That is the right approach. It might not please those opposite and it might not please the Greens, but it does do those things.

I heard the member for Melbourne, 'Captain Compassion', talking about Vietnam. He talked a bit about how 2,000 people came here by sea, and he said there was not the same reaction that there is today. He is quite wrong, of course; it is a very selective view of history. In actual fact there was quite a bit of consternation in the public arena. But both sides of politics decided to resettle a large number of people, some 55,000 people, by processing them in other countries—places like Thailand and Malaysia—and we dramatically increased the intake to do that. The Greens move an amendment and they say that all of our problems will be fixed and people will stop taking boats if we process more people in Indonesia and Malaysia. But their own policy only increases the humanitarian intake to 20,000 a year, and that is simply not enough if you are going to stop the boats. If Poindexter really wants to stop the boats by increasing our humanitarian intake, it is going to have to be a lot more than 20,000. So I think the challenge to the Greens is that there are four million refugees in our region. If they are really serious about stopping the boats through increasing our humanitarian intake, they have to increase it a lot more. Otherwise their claims to compassion are just politics. They are the politics of gesture and emotion and they are not a practical plan to really stop the boats. He ended his speech talking about votes and talking about seats, because that is what it is about for the Greens. It is not about practical solutions to these problems; it is not about deterrence; it is certainly not really about increasing our humanitarian intake, because what we got is this token increase to solve a very big problem. If he is serious he is going to have to talk about resettling hundreds of thousands of people, not 8,000 a year. So the test for the Greens is to come up with a real, workable policy. If they claim they can stop the boats through increasing the humanitarian intake they had better start working a lot harder at it now, otherwise it is cant, otherwise it is politics.

We see a lot of that; we certainly see it in the opposition. As I said before, in 2007 they were quite happy to go along with the changes moved by this government. They were quite happy to see Nauru closed, to see Manus Island closed and to see TPVs removed. That is the reality. They did not move a disallowance motion and they did not campaign against it.

Luke Simpkins (Cowan, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

You claimed a mandate.

Nick Champion (Wakefield, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

But you did not do anything. For all their talk now, they say they have been consistent, but it is not true. They and the rest of the country, to be fair—we did this together, but events have since proved that we have to take a different approach.

The Liberals, Tony Abbott and all the backbench, have been going on like a broken record about stopping the boats. They have been talking tough, demanding government action. I have never heard them talk about the UN before—never. I have never heard them talk about humanitarian concerns. And now, on the grounds of compassion and the UN fiat and officialdom, they say they are going to oppose offshore processing. There was an interview with Bob Brown on Meet the Press on 18 September and he said:

What happens if Tony Abbott votes down the Gillard position and we will be, you end up by default with Tony Abbott supporting the Greens position, now that's where this country should be. The majority of people should want that—wrong motive, right outcome.

So we will have the Liberal Party basically endorsing the minority position. That is what Bob Brown says; that is where he sees this going. He is only too happy for the Liberal Party to block this amendment bill.

It is a very dangerous position for the opposition to take, given their rhetoric of 'stop the boats, stop the boats, stop the boats'. And, given their rhetoric about the Greens, they now propose to join an unholy alliance with them, just as they did around carbon trading in the last parliament, defeating sensible action on climate change through the emissions trading system. It was not that different—and I note the member for Wentworth was interviewed on Lateline the other night—from what we are debating in the parliament today. The systems were broadly the same but an unholy alliance of the Liberals and the Greens blocked action on climate change. Now they are blocking offshore processing and preventing an effective deterrent against taking a dangerous boat journey.

I do not think the Australian people are going to be terribly impressed when they see Abbott and Bandt, after all this rhetoric, voting together in the House of Representatives. And I do not think they are going to be very impressed when they see Brandis and Bob Brown together in the Senate, and it will be more than one vote, voting together to end offshore processing. The dangers are pretty apparent, given the Christmas Island tragedy. This is not an issue that you can delay on or play politics with. It is not an issue that you can afford some partisanship on. It is an issue of critical importance. It is an issue of life and death.

The one thing the member for Mayo said that was right was that this has been a difficult journey for the Labor Party. We have agonised over it; we have agonised over the debate. It was a tough debate to have, but we are not playing politics with it. Frankly, it would be easier to do what the Greens want to do and it would be easier to do what the Liberals want to do. There is just one problem: neither of those policy outcomes will work. They are high on emotive political appeal. They are not practical, though; they just will not work and they will be counterproductive.

Perhaps the Liberal Party should pay some heed not to me but to Bill Hassell, who is a former Western Australia state leader of the Liberal Party. He said in an opinion piece in the West Australian today:

This would not prevent the Opposition from expressing reservations, exposing the deficiencies of the plan and putting forward an alternative solution.

He proposes that the bill should be passed. As he says, that will not stop those opposite criticising. He goes on to say:

The Australian public will not thank the Opposition for more boats and onshore processing, the inevitable outcome of their unholy alliance with the Greens.

That is what conservatives are saying. The former leader of the Western Australian Liberals is saying that it is an unholy alliance, that it will not be welcomed by the Australian people. That is true.

The Liberals' position is fundamentally inconsistent. They claim now that the UN convention is all the reassurance that one needs, and yet they never used it in government. Their speeches are full of cant and politics and humbug, and the speech of the member for Melbourne was full of the same—emotive appeals aiming at getting votes. One party, the Greens, is aiming at the inner city, and the other, the Liberal Party, is aiming at the outer suburbs.

We in the Labor Party, however difficult and agonising this debate is, are determined to do the right thing because these are life and death issues. They are issues which tug at the heart, but we are determined to do the right thing. This amendment bill serves that purpose.

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

I rise to speak on the Migration Legislation Amendment (Offshore Processing and Other Measures) Bill 2011. The coalition strongly support offshore processing. In fact, we developed an effective program for offshore processing, one that worked. It worked under us. It worked for many years under us. It worked so well that, when the Labor Party took office in 2007, there were just four people—four, not even a handful—in detention. It was a remarkable success. Yet 12,000 people have arrived by boat since that time.

We oppose the government's Malaysian proposal because it is bad policy. It is bad policy because, firstly, for every asylum seeker Malaysia takes, we receive five back here. It is not an acceptable arrangement. It is not a sustainable arrangement. It will work, if at all from that point of view, on a one-off basis. What happens after the 800 have arrived? There has been no satisfactory answer. In fact, when the Prime Minister was asked that question last week, you could see from her body language that she had not thought it through. She was all at sea. She had effective spin prepared for every other question that day, but, when it was put to her in question 8 last week, 'What will you do when you reach the 800,' she clearly had no idea. There is no plan B.

It is, on all grounds, a policy conceived out of politics. It has been continued because the Prime Minister is too pig-headed to eat humble pie for a day and do the effective thing. I think everyone expected, after the Labor Party formed government at the most recent election, that politics would be put aside and the Prime Minister would pick up the phone to Nauru and seek to get an effective solution in place. It would have involved 24 hours of some egg on the face, but people out there really do not care who conceives an effective policy. They do not give points according to who the idea came from, whether it was from Tony Abbott or anyone else, for that matter. They just look to the government to adopt effective solutions. And, in the end, a government will be rewarded for adopting effective solutions—but not this Prime Minister. The only thing standing in the way of a return to a proven offshore model is the stubbornness and pigheadedness of the Prime Minister. She does not want to lose one skerrick of face by conceding that there may be already in place, already available, a proven offshore model.

The other ground on which we oppose this Malaysian proposal is that it provides no guarantee of protection. The High Court itself disallowed this arrangement in the first place, and in our view there are still no guarantees. There are just good faith obligations. That is all there is in this proposed bill. There are good faith obligations but no guarantees that the human rights protections that should sit around any offshore arrangement—or any onshore arrangement, for that matter—are there. There is a very real prospect, in fact, that the High Court would also rule this legislation invalid because, although the government, in this week's version of the legislation, as distinct from its version last week, has reintroduced the protections that are the essence of the UN refugee convention, those basic requirements do not have any legal backing, such as Malaysia signing up to the refugee convention. So, if legally challenged again, the government will most likely end up with a black eye again.

This sums up four years now of incompetence on this issue. This has been a running sore for the government for four years. Try as they might, on all sorts of fronts, the one thing they are determined not to do is to take on a proven model, because the proven model is associated with their political opponents. That betrays a lack of political confidence, and the government are paying the price. They are paying the price for their lack of confidence in themselves to take a proven model and put it into effect. Their handling of this issue not only displays remarkable incompetence; it also displays a lack of principle.

Just before I came into the House, I received a note from my neighbour member, the member for Melbourne Ports, Michael Danby, along with a publication from Freedom House. Of course, the member for Melbourne Ports has a strong and well-deserved reputation for defending freedom and human rights. It has been a hallmark of his career in this place. Michael, whom I consider a friend, sent me this booklet, Freedom in the World 2011, which assesses the level of freedom in different countries. In his note to me, he says: 'In my view, this Freedom House survey gives you the big picture on the overall situation in any given country, and some context to political developments that affect democratic rights.' The categories for countries are 'free', 'partly free' and 'not free'. I looked up the definitions. The booklet says:

A Free country is one where there is open political competition, a climate of respect for civil liberties, significant independent civic life, and independent media. A Partly Free country is one in which there is limited respect for political rights and civil liberties. Partly Free states frequently suffer from an environment of corruption, weak rule of law, ethnic and religious strife, and a political landscape in which a single party enjoys dominance despite a certain degree of pluralism.

A Not Free country is one where basic political rights are absent, and basic civil liberties are widely and systematically denied.

I then went to the very comprehensive table in this publication recommended to me by a member of the government who has a very well deserved reputation for defending freedom and civil and human rights. I see that Australia is listed as a free country. On political rights and civil liberties respectively, Australia has scores of one and one. The scores go from one to seven, with one being the optimum score. I then looked at how Nauru is classified—for all those years, were we, the coalition, sending refugees to a country which was not free and did not respect political rights and civil liberties? Nauru is classified by Freedom House as a free country and also gets top ratings—one for political rights and one for respect for civil liberties.

I then had a look at the classification of Malaysia. It is classified as partly free. I remind the House that a partly free country is one where 'there is limited respect for political rights and civil liberties. Partly free states frequently suffer from an environment of corruption, weak rule of law, ethnic and religious strife, and a political landscape in which a single party enjoys dominance despite a certain degree of pluralism'. On a scale of one to seven, Malaysia rates four on political rights and four on respect for civil liberties.

This confirms the fears that we have had about the protections which are embodied in the UN refugee convention not being guaranteed. Malaysia militates against respect for the civil liberties and political rights of those that come there. All of the anecdotal evidence associated with immigration cases that has been presented over the last five years—30,000 canings associated with immigration, and much more—is confirmed by those ratings of four and four. This is one of the reasons why we have been so strongly opposed.

There is a workable alternative. It was working and it respected human rights. Yet we were told by Prime Minister Rudd that it must change because there was a more compassionate way of dealing with this issue. My friend and colleague the shadow minister for immigration personally inspected the circumstances under which the 95,000 or 100,000 refugees are currently living in Malaysia. When I asked, 'What is it really like, Scott?' he said, 'You wouldn't send your worst enemy to those refugee camps.' Forget about the kids—of course they should not be there under any circumstances—but 'you wouldn't send', he said, 'your worst enemy'. Yet here we have a party which has had a proud history of at least supporting human rights issues and it is now unilaterally pursuing an approach which is, in all likelihood, going to have no guarantee that fundamental human rights will be adhered to.

That might be a hard choice for a government if there was no alternative, but obviously there is an alternative that has worked, and I will recount what happened. We were told that there had to be a change because of push factors: the Afghani action and the Iraq war. The invasion of Afghanistan started in October 2001 and the Iraq war started in March 2003. We saw: in 2001-02, 19 boats; in 2002-03, no boats; in 2003-04, one boat; in 2004-05, no boats; in 2005-06, eight boats; in 2006-07, four boats; and, in 2007-08, three boats. Throughout seven years of action in Afghanistan and six years of war in Iraq, we saw a handful of boats and four people left in detention.

This is unacceptable. The community is hostile to queue jumping, the community saw a boat program that worked and the community sees this proven system not being pursued because of pig-headedness. The bill must not be supported; the amendment must not be supported. (Time expired)

Bob Katter (Kennedy, Independent) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I come into this not having had a detailed knowledge until the last few days. I seriously have to say that I do not understand what is taking place here. The current figures that I have been given say that 85 to 95 per cent of people who get on a boat end up in Australia as Australian citizens. So a person in one of these countries where the people climb on the boats says, 'If you get on the boat, you've got near enough to a 90 per cent chance of becoming Australian.' And they say, 'Mate, come to Australia. If you've got a wife and three kids, you get pretty close to $80,000 a year and you do not even have to work.' I would think that half the population of Asia would be on a boat tomorrow. We do not have the wherewithal—even the good Lord said the poor will always be with you—to look after the world. We could not even remotely go close to looking after the world.

People in this place must have electorates that are very different to mine, because I have many people who are finding it extremely difficult to make ends meet. When we had a meeting of 15 towns, I was very surprised that people there were having enormous difficulty paying their electricity charges. We cannot pay electricity charges and yet we are able to take tens of thousands of boat people in each year. My position is: stay on the boat. They came here on the boats. I do not believe in drowning them or anything of that nature, of course—you provide them with diesel, food and bedding or anything—but you just do not have the right to simply walk in here and say, 'I am an Australian. I am seeking asylum.' These people are self-smugglers; they are smuggling themselves into Australia.

I represent some of the finest Australians and the finest modern migrant group that there is in this country; the Sikh people from India are very big in the Kennedy electorate. They are absolutely exemplary patriotic people who come to this country and within three seconds are proud, flag-waving Australians—and I do not mean to denigrate other groups by saying this. If you say that we are going to take these people in and process them here and that 90 per cent of them will stay here, I am telling you: my mob are going to be hopping on the boats, and I will be wishing them well. I will be out there waving to them and saying, 'Come here, fellas, that is a bloody great idea.' As far as I am concerned I would be letting huge numbers of those people into Australia. They have proved themselves in every single respect. I do not come here to praise a particular racial group. All I am saying to you is: it is so unfair to those people that they are kept out of this country by self-smugglers who arrive here and say, 'I am an asylum seeker.'

It would not be news to any informed person in this place that the Sikhs have not had a particularly happy road in India. They are not a majority group there. Many would argue that they suffer and may even still be suffering today. They can make as strong a case as anyone else to come here. Much as I love these people, we just do not have the wherewithal to take all these people in.

I have stood up in this place 100 times, maybe 200 times, and said, 'Please develop the water resources to the north.' We can take 100 more—

Opposition Members:

Opposition members interjecting—

Bob Katter (Kennedy, Independent) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Don't come up with your hypocrisy. You were in government for 12 years and we did not get even a heap of concrete across a gutter-way. So don't come up with your hypocrisy.

The electorate of Kennedy can probably sustain a population of 70 million or 80 million people. The rivers in the Kennedy electorate have half of Australia's water run-off. Most of those are in the gulf, which is flat country—no rocks; absolutely fantastic farming country. I am not saying we would be able to use a million acres of the thousand million acres that are up there, no matter how many dams we built. I do not want to pretend what I cannot deliver.

Most certainly it is considered opinion that on the example of the Murray-Darling, with eight million megalitres, we can most certainly double or triple that figure in the gulf and peninsula. We can support a population of 60 million people because the Murray-Darling supports a population of 20 million people. I have always advocated an increase in population coming into this country. I see absolutely no problem. In fact, I think one of the preferred groups have very similar religious beliefs to the religious beliefs of this country. They have had democracy for 70 or 80 years; they have had rule of law for maybe 100 or 200 years. Whatever criterion you want to use for fitting in and feeling at home in this society is met, the fact that they have already proved themselves to be good citizens would be another element in that equation.

Similarly, the population of Queensland in the late 1890s was predominantly not European; it was predominantly Chinese. I would also have to say that the Chinese have proved exemplary citizens in North Queensland. It would be hard to name a family that was not related somewhere in the past or the present to people of Chinese descent.

We do not stand up here today to advocate a lowering of the boom; we are here advocating that the door is not open to anyone who wants to jump on a boat and call themselves an asylum seeker, when in actual fact they are self-smugglers. There may be very good reasons why they are self-smuggling. I am not denying that. There are a hell of a lot of people in the Punjab in India who could put up a very strong case indeed, in fact a stronger case, than half the people who are sneaking in now—and I use the words 'sneaking in'.

I voted against the Malaysian decision last time because I am not for handling them in Nauru or Malaysia or anywhere; I am for keeping them on the boat. They chose to get on the boat; that is their business. If a person chooses to go on a boat and can therefore automatically become an Australian citizen, which is the mechanism and machinery, then we have very serious problems indeed.

Debate interrupted.