Michelle Rowland (Greenway, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

My question is to the Prime Minister. Will the Prime Minister update the House on actions to tackle people smuggling?

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

I thank the member for Greenway for her question. Today the House has put in place arrangements for offshore processing. Today the House has done what the Australian people have wanted us to do for a long time. We have worked together to get this done. This has happened for two reasons. Firstly, Angus Houston and a team of eminent Australians have provided the parliament, the nation, with a very important report on refugee and asylum seeker issues. I thank them for their work, which is of the highest quality. The report charts a path of change that is very important for our nation, which is why the government has endorsed its recommendations in principle and in full.

Secondly, the priority recommendations of that report were to establish regional processing centres on Nauru and on Manus Island in PNG. We have been able to do that because the political parties have worked together—the Minister for Immigration and Citizenship working with his counterpart the shadow minister for immigration—on the wording of the amendments that the House has passed. The House has come together in a spirit of compromise, which is what I believe the Australian people wanted to see from us, so that we can get action under way. Action will be under way as soon as Friday, subject to this legislation passing the Senate, with reconnaissance teams deployed to PNG and to Nauru to begin setting up the facilities that will be needed there.

Today as a House, we can send a very clear message to people smugglers who would seek to prey on other human beings and to seek to persuade them that they are able to sell to them a passage to Australia. Those people smugglers can no longer pretend to those desperate people that they can guarantee them a journey to Australia. This House today can send a very clear message, too—and it has—to asylum seekers who are contemplating risking a voyage at sea. That message very clearly is: do not risk it, do not give your money to a people smuggler because you will not be better off as a result of having taken that step.

It is important that this parliament has worked together and that today is the day this House has said enough is enough. Today is the day that this House has risen above the politics of this issue and taken the action to save lives.