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

I present the instrument of designation of the independent state of Papua New Guinea as a regional processing country under subsection 198AB(1) of the Migration Act 1958, together with five related documents in accordance with subsection 198AC of the Migration Act 1958. I ask leave of the House to move a motion relating to the approval of the instrument.

Leave granted.

I move:

That, in accordance with subsection 198AB of the Migration Act 1958, the House approve the instrument of designation of the Independent State of Papua New Guinea as a regional processing country.

Today, acting under section 198AB of the Migration Act, I designate by legislative instrument the independent state of Papua New Guinea as a regional processing country.

In accordance with the legislative amendments to permit regional processing which came into effect on 18 August 2012, I am required to present to the House the following documents: a copy of the designation; a statement outlining why I think it is in the national interest to designate Papua New Guinea as a regional processing country; a copy of the memorandum of understanding with Papua New Guinea signed on 8 September 2012; a statement about my consultations with the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees in relation to the designation; and a statement about the arrangements that are in place or are to be put in place in Papua New Guinea for the treatment of persons taken there.

I now seek approval of this designation and present the necessary supporting documents to the parliament. I call on colleagues in both houses of parliament to approve this designation to enable the first transfers of offshore entry persons to Papua New Guinea for processing in accordance with the regional processing arrangements. Approving this designation will reinforce regional processing arrangements already underway in Nauru and illustrate the government's resolve to discourage dangerous boat journeys to Australia.

The government has endorsed in principle all recommendations contained in the report of the Expert Panel on Asylum Seekers presented on 13 August 2012 and has already taken significant steps to implement these recommendations. I have previously spoken about the government's decision to increase Australia's humanitarian program to 20,000 places a year, with 12,000 of those places being for refugees offshore. This is the biggest increase to Australia's refugee intake in 30 years and clearly demonstrates Australia's commitment to assisting those most in need.

In further support of this, the government has already allocated $10 million for regional capacity building projects, with a special emphasis on the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees. This funding will assist the UNHCR and non-government organisations in the region to build safer and more orderly migration pathways, which is part of the strategic and integrated approach recommended by the expert panel and a demonstration of Australia's ongoing commitment to building protection in the region through the Bali process regional cooperation framework.

The panel's advice highlights the task which this government is undertaking: balancing effective border control with the need to deal humanely with asylum seekers arriving irregularly by boat in Australia and the underlying need to prevent the loss of life occurring as a result of irregular movement. These important issues are at the heart of Australia's national interest. Today's designation of Papua New Guinea is a further step in the government's task of implementing the panel's recommendations. It builds on the progress already made, particularly in relation to regional processing on Nauru. Regular transfers of asylum seekers to Nauru from Australia commenced on 14 September 2012 following the designation of Nauru as a regional processing centre by this parliament on 10 September 2012.

Following the commencement of transfers to Nauru, we have already seen a number of asylum seekers choose to return home voluntarily. This is evidence of the false stories that people smugglers are selling about what awaits asylum seekers in Australia. These returns represent a powerful message which undermines the viability of the people-smuggling model. The parliament's approval of my designation of Papua New Guinea as a regional processing country will further reinforce this message to asylum seekers considering a boat voyage to Australia and demonstrate that there is no advantage in doing so. As this parliament is acutely aware, a substantial number of lives have been lost at sea as a result of the activities of people smugglers. The government is gaining important momentum to stop this tragic trade. This designation is a key and urgent part of the action required to prevent this tragic loss of lives at sea from occurring in the future.

The only condition for the exercise of my power to designate a country as a regional processing country is that I think it is in the national interest to do so. I think that it is in the national interest to designate Papua New Guinea as such, as Papua New Guinea has provided Australia with certain assurances, which include specified assurances required by legislation. I also think that it is in the national interest to designate Papua New Guinea as a regional-processing country because it will discourage irregular and dangerous maritime voyages, thereby reducing the risk of loss of life at sea; it will promote a fair and orderly refugee and humanitarian program that retains the confidence of the Australian people; and it will promote regional cooperation in relation to irregular migration and addressing people smuggling.

It is important for Papua New Guinea, as a sovereign state, to have input into the development of any arrangements, and it has been keen to do so. We are dealing with people seeking protection, and there is a need for fully considered arrangements to be put in place. By presenting the designation and accompanying documents, in accordance with the legislation, I provide the parliament with the opportunity to be satisfied that what is in place, and will be put in place, is appropriate.

Again, I call on both houses of parliament to approve this designation to enable the first transfers of offshore entry persons to Papua New Guinea and to provide the circuit-breaker to irregular maritime arrivals called for by the expert panel's report.

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

Naturally, the coalition will support the designation of the independent state of Papua New Guinea under the act to enable offshore processing to occur on Manus Island or another place within that territory. It is not surprising we would, because it has always been our policy to have offshore processing in places such as Manus Island, and particularly on Nauru. It is not surprising, because that is exactly the commitment we gave eight weeks ago when the overarching legislative changes that give effect to what we are dealing with today were put in place. On that day we were prepared to support the designation of both Nauru and Manus Island. We subsequently dealt with Nauru, several weeks ago. Now, eight weeks after we gave that commitment, the matter has been brought to this place by the minister and we are in a position to support the designation of the independent state of Papua New Guinea. We do it today, as we would have been prepared to do it eight weeks ago, or at any time.

I particularly note that in the documents provided by the minister today—not only in the instrument but in the explanatory memorandum and, in particular, in the memorandum of understanding—the guiding principle, on page 3, says:

Clearly, all activities undertaken in relation to this MOU will be conducted in accordance with international law and the international obligations of the respective participants.

The independent state of Papua New Guinea is a signatory to the refugee convention. As a result they have willingly brought upon themselves legally binding protections. This has always been the coalition's key requirement in relation to supporting these matters. The government does not believe that binding legal protections are necessary to ensure the designation of these countries. I note in these documents that in making this designation the government once again, as the minister did in the case of Nauru, is not considering or taking into account whether or not legally binding protections are in place. I do not think it reflects well on the government that they do not believe legally binding protections are important in making these decisions. It just so happens, thankfully, that in the case of Papua New Guinea, as was the case with Nauru, those binding legal protections are in place. It was the opinion of the High Court, which struck down the government's deal in relation to Malaysia, that legally binding protections are necessary. We agree with that view and that is why we are happy to stand today as a coalition and support the designation of the independent state of Papua New Guinea.

This day has been a long time coming. Like Nauru, the designation of Papua New Guinea has come too late and it restores too little of what the coalition successfully had in place with the strong border protection regime that was first instituted under the stewardship of the minister for immigration at the time, the now 'father of the House', the member for Berowra, who is in the chamber with us today. This day has been a long time coming. In 2010 the governor of Manus Island wrote to the Prime Minister—and Papua New Guinea—and said that he was very happy, and that that state was very happy, to have Papua New Guinea, and particularly Manus Island, host the reopening of an offshore processing facility. That was more than 20,000 arrivals ago. The governor of Manus Island made it very clear that they were happy to restore this facility.

If we go back 15,430 arrivals ago, it was in May 2011 that officials from the department of the minister's predecessor were in Papua New Guinea investigating and inspecting the site at Manus Island with a view to having that facility reopened. That was in May 2011. And they did not just do that but also provided $811 million in the 2011-12 budget to do it. But that money was never spent for that purpose and 15,430 people have turned up in Australia on boats, illegally, since the time the first investigation of that site was undertaken by the government. But there is still no centre, despite the fact that the governor had said, 'Yes, we are happy to do it,' and despite the fact that the government and the department had actively initiated an investigation, visited the site, were happy to do it, and had budgeted the money to do it. But there was still no centre or offshore processing. Since then 15,430 people have turned up.

Instead, the government went down a different path. It seems that every time this government is faced with a fork in the road on border protection, they always make the wrong choice. On this occasion, when they had the opportunity to go forward and reopen offshore processing on Manus Island, they said, 'No, we are going to go down the Malaysian route,' and we all know where that ended. It ended in the High Court with a thumping thud. Since that time, the government has been able to remedy that measure and has been dragged kicking and screaming to introduce these measures that are before us. Also, it was in December of 2011 and in January of 2012 when the minister himself said, again: 'We believe there is a place for an offshore processing centre. We pursued and gained the agreement of Papua New Guinea to that centre.' But, again, there is still no centre. And that was 11,700 people ago—before they had arrived in Australia by boat.

At the end of the day—even though we have this matter now before us—in the eight weeks since the decision was taken to reopen these facilities, some 3,830 people have turned up. Some 6,436 people have turned up since the government's own self-imposed impasse at the end of June. Equally, they could have brought matters into this House to see the offshore processing centre established at Papua New Guinea, on Manus Island. The opportunity extended all the way through this period of time, and the decision still was not taken to put it in place. Well, here we are, thousands of people later—as is set out in the minister's own statement, in the record of arrivals that have occurred while we have waited and waited and waited—and, finally, the day has arrived. But, as we know, the government did not always feel this way about the reopening of Manus Island.

The now Prime Minister, in another capacity in 2002, said, 'We know that the Pacific solution is unsustainable from the point of view of our agreements with Papua New Guinea and Nauru, with both of them stating substantial reservations about the continuance of the so-called Pacific solution, and we know that delivers absolutely no outcomes.' This is what the now government, then in opposition, described the Pacific solution as at that point. We all know the record of the six years, including that one in which the now Prime Minister made that statement: 272 people turned up on fewer than three boats a year over the six-year period. Now, that is not an outcome? I would happily have the government compare their outcome over a similar period, when we have had almost 26½ thousand people turn up over a space of less than five years.

So, I am happy with the outcome the Howard government was able to achieve with its successful measures. Even though the Prime Minister had also said that Labor would end the so-called Pacific solution when they were in opposition, as well as the processing centre and the detaining of asylum seekers on Pacific islands, because it is 'costly, unsustainable and wrong as a matter of principle'—these are things the Prime Minister once said—here we are today with a complete capitulation on all those years of demonising, once again.

This government, when it was in opposition, opposed these measures. They abolished them in government, and now we are at a position where they are seeking to reinstitute them. They said they would get rid of it on day one—and they did. They did get rid of the Pacific solution on day one. Now, on day 1,803, they have to put it back in place, and that is what they are doing. But they will still not go far enough. As a result, they cannot expect the outcomes of the Howard government if they are not prepared to put in place the policies of the Howard government. They simply cannot have that expectation—and that expectation certainly is not being realised by what we have seen in recent months.

Now, why won't they go far enough? It is because, as we all know, at the end of the day they just do not believe it. They have been forced to this position by politics, not by a belief in the policies. I think this is the real difference between those who sit on that side of the House and those who sit on this side of the House when it comes to the issues of border protection. They have been driven to it by politics, not conviction. And I think the lack of conviction, the lack of genuine belief and the lack of genuine commitment to this policy—and equally to the policies that are also required to ensure that we have an effective set of measures in place with temporary protection visas, with turning boats back where it is safe to do so, and with a raft of other measures the coalition has outlined on many occasions—has become the pull factor. And that is what the problem is. If you look at the core of the problem the government faces, it is the government themselves; they are the pull factor. Their lack of conviction, lack of credibility and lack of belief when it comes to these issues is the reason that those seeking to come here know that this government is a soft touch—and that has not changed.

They may change their rhetoric, they may backflip on everything they ever say they believe in—but who knows? At the end of the day, there is not a track record of conviction, there is not a track record of belief, there is not a track record of performance—but the crisis does roll on. The crisis rolls on because of this lack of conviction. We see it in the record of arrivals, now at over 2,000 per month, that continue under this government. We have seen it since the decision to reopen Nauru, with 1,585 people turning up—and over 3,800 since the decisions were taken some months ago. These decisions of restoring offshore processing in the vacuum of other, necessary policies cannot be considered to be going far enough, in our view. As a result, the government cannot expect to see a change in the outcomes.

With record arrivals, with a record detention population, it is now true that at the end of August there are more people in immigration detention centres. I am not just talking about the alternative places of detention; that is on top of this figure. There were 5,216 people at the end of August who were actually in detention centres. That is more than were in detention centres at the time of the Christmas Island and Villawood riots. There are more people in detention today, with community release and community detention taking place—and the government trumpeted their credentials on that side—because there are more people coming. This government cannot get them out the door and into the community fast enough, and our detention centres continue to fill up. And that comes at a significant cost. Last year the cost, on average, per boat turning up—when you look at the costs across managing asylum seekers—was $12 million. That is what it cost: $12 million a boat, under this government, last year. That is what the taxpayer had to pay every time one of those boats turned up: $12 million in costs. This financial year alone, we have had this government exceed the estimated number of arrivals by more than 1,000. They anticipated 5,400 over the entire financial year. In 100 days, they have blown that by more than 1,000.

That is going to have a consequence in this budget. This budget already puts aside $1.1 billion, more than 10 times what was spent in 2007-08 in the last budget of the Howard government, to deal with these matters, and that budget will blow. This Treasurer has still not yet come into this place and said what the bill will be for the continued failure. We will have to wait for that, it would seem, in MYEFO. We look forward to hearing that number because the Australian taxpayer at least has the right to know, if this government is going to continue to fail, what the bill will be. And they will find out what that bill is ultimately, just as we have found out at every single MYEFO and every single budget, where the accumulated blow-outs under this government, because of their inability to have the conviction needed, backed up by the policies that worked to deal with this problem, has led to blow-outs of $4.9 billion and counting. That does not include the extra $50,000-plus per person they are going to add to the annual refugee and humanitarian intake. It does not include the costs that are now going to be incurred as a result of the measures that we are discussing here as a result of this designation. It does not deal with the extra costs that are going to happen this year because of the record arrivals I have pointed out.

This government's record of cost blow-outs, of arrival blow-outs and of detention centre blow-outs is unparalleled. This government, this Prime Minister, simply needed to do one thing when they introduced this measure today, to say: 'We got it wrong; we should never have abolished these measures. We are now going to restore them and all the others that need to be restored that the Howard government had in place'—but they will not do it. The only way that will happen is with a change of government at the next election.

Jason Clare (Blaxland, Australian Labor Party, Minister for Home Affairs ) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

In August the expert panel on asylum seekers, headed up by Angus Houston, made 22 recommendations to prevent asylum seekers risking their lives on dangerous boat journeys to Australia. This is one of those recommendations—to establish a capacity on Papua New Guinea to process the claims of asylum seekers.

The Houston report recommended that a capacity be established in Papua New Guinea as soon as possible to process the claims of irregular maritime arrivals transferred from Australia in ways consistent with the responsibilities of Australia and Papua New Guinea under international law. The Houston report made it clear that, in addition to Nauru, similar arrangements needed to be put in place elsewhere in the region to address the rising number of irregular maritime arrivals to Australia. The Papua New Guinea government has facilitated these arrangements in the past and entered into a memorandum of understanding with Australia on 19 August 2011 for the processing of asylum claims of irregular maritime arrivals at an assessment centre on Manus Island.

The Houston report suggested that if a processing centre for asylum claims were to be re-established in PNG, similar arrangements to those proposed in the report in relation to Nauru should be negotiated with the PNG government—and that is what has occurred. These negotiations have taken place and the declaration now before the parliament gives effect to the recommendation of the Houston report. This means that offshore processing can occur at both Nauru and Manus Island.

But this is just the beginning of our work. The Houston report made 22 recommendations, not two. They also made it clear that they must all be implemented—we cannot just implement some of them. This includes offshore processing in Nauru and Manus Island. It also includes regional processing in Malaysia. The Houston report recommended that the Malaysia agreement be built on and not be discarded. At page 51 of the Houston report it says:

The Malaysia arrangement is an important initiative in bilateral cooperation between Australia and Malaysia on the issue of great significance for both countries and for the broader region. It is also a potential building block for a stronger framework of regional cooperation on protection and asylum claims.

It goes on and says at page 52:

… the arrangement would be able to play a vital and necessary role in supplementing the processing facilities in Nauru and PNG.

In the subsequent media interviews that members of the expert panel gave, they commented about how important in their view the Malaysia agreement would be. The chair of the panel, Angus Houston, said, in relation to Malaysia:

This is absolutely 100 per cent what we have to do if we want to stop boats in the long term.

He also said that Malaysia was the best plan for the future. Paris Aristotle, a member of the panel, was interviewed by Sabra Lane on the ABC on 14 August, and he concurred with the views of the former Chief of the Defence Force. He said: 'I think Malaysia is absolutely vital to this'. When asked by Sabra Lane, 'Can this work without Malaysia?' Paris Aristotle said, 'I think in the long run, no—I think Malaysia is absolutely vital to this.' In the same interview he also said, 'Malaysia is an important plank in building a regional arrangement.' Michael L'Estrange, the third member of the expert panel, was interviewed by Samantha Hawley on the ABC on 13 August and was also asked about the Malaysia agreement. He said, amongst other things, that 'the Malaysia agreement is an important undertaking'. He said:

We think that this negotiation with Malaysia needs to be built on, not discarded. We think, actually, in the future it is going to be very important to have this kind of arrangement with regional countries that are not signatories to the refugee convention, and most countries in our region are not signatories.

The government agrees with the comments, the thoughts and the recommendations of those three men. We strongly support the Malaysia agreement. The Liberal Party strongly supports offshore processing in Nauru and Manus Island. In December last year, when I was five days into the job, when 200 people died when their vessel capsized off the coast of Indonesia, the government put a compromise proposal to the opposition and said: 'The government believes in Malaysia; the opposition strongly believes in Nauru and Manus Island for offshore processing. Well, let's simply do both—let's do all of that.' It was a compromise, but it was rejected—so, through the course of the debates that we have had in this place and elsewhere over the course of this year, the government have agreed to a further compromise: to commence offshore processing first in Nauru and now in Manus Island.

We did that because it is the only thing that could get through this parliament. The alternative to passing legislation to allow offshore processing in Nauru and in Manus Island is that we do not do it at all—we do nothing. If we nothing, as we have seen too much of over the course of the past 12 months, people will die.

Ultimately, we need to do Nauru, Manus Island and Malaysia. Doing Nauru and Manus Island is a good start; Nauru, Manus Island and Malaysia would be better. That is what Angus Houston has said, that is what all members of the expert panel have said, but that is what the Liberal Party and the Greens party have refused to do. The Houston report looked at all three, and it accepted one, Nauru, and rejected the other two—TPVs and turn backs. The Houston report makes 22 recommendations. A number of them are relevant to my portfolio, so let me use this opportunity to talk a little bit about those recommendations and where things are currently at.

Recommendation 20 and part of recommendation 4 concern bilateral cooperation on asylum seeker issues with regional countries, including Indonesia, to address search and rescue issues. Australia and Indonesia have a very strong interest in effective search and rescue for people travelling by sea in our region. Too often, as I have said, we have seen the tragic consequences of people risking their lives by getting on unseaworthy vessels. Last month I travelled to Indonesia with the Minister for Defence and the Minister for Infrastructure and Transport to have discussions with our Indonesian counterparts about ways to improve search and rescue efforts between Australia and Indonesia. We agreed to expand the $38 million Indonesia Transport Safety Assistance Package, which began in 2007, to provide for additional bilateral coordination on search and rescue activities.

Our search rescue agencies, BASARNAS and the Australian Maritime Safety Authority, have been working together very closely over a period of years to improve their capability and coordination. Activities undertaken to date include search and rescue exercises, short-term officer secondment, and training in aeronautical search and rescue operations. Under the agreement we reached in Indonesia last month, the Australian government will make an additional $4½ million available to enhance coordination between the two search and rescue agencies.

We agreed to six key measures. The first is the exchange of officers between BASARNAS and AMSA. This will involve embedding officers in their counterpart agencies, starting this financial year. That will be very important in assisting in actual search and rescue operations, but it will also play an important role in training and mentoring, and allowing officers to gain exposure to their counterpart agency's operating environment. The second measure is the enhancement of ship-tracking information. This capability will provide BASARNAS with an accurate near real-time picture of ships that are operating in or transiting through the Indonesian search and rescue region.

As I mentioned when we had this debate a couple of weeks ago, we learned in Indonesia that there are approximately 1,000 merchant vessels travelling through the Indonesian search and rescue zone on any given day—an enormous number of vessels. The key to harnessing the availability of those vessels when needed, when there is a search and rescue operation, is having that information in a near real-time environment and being able to communicate with that vessel. Therefore, the third thing we agreed on was enhancing the maritime satellite communications ability of the Indonesian search and rescue authority. This will allow BASARNAS to rapidly communicate via satellite communications with merchant vessels identified from the vessel picture and make them available to do search and rescue operations.

The fourth measure is additional search and rescue exercises between BASARNAS and AMSA. This will provide more advanced and challenging search and rescue exercises to build on the capabilities developed over the last few years. The exercises will allow for deployment of search and rescue assets and coordination of assets from multiple agencies. The fifth is regular search and rescue discussions. It is planned that a regular series of meetings and workshops between AMSA and BASARNAS to share technical information and promote mutual understanding are to commence. These meetings will be held alternatively in Australia and Indonesia and promote best search and rescue practice.

The sixth and final part of the package was aircraft access. We have agreed to explore further rapid clearance for Australian aircraft to operate in Indonesian territorial airspace and to land to refuel at suitable airfields when engaged in search and rescue activities in cooperation with Indonesia. These are all important reforms that help to implement the recommendations embedded in the Houston report.

Another recommendation which is very important and often underappreciated is the recommendation that has to do with the disruption of people-smuggling activities in the countries of our region. The report recommends that disruption strategies be continued as part of any comprehensive approach to the challenges posed by people-smuggling and that relevant Australian agencies be resourced with appropriate funding on a continuing basis for this purpose. This is a very important recommendation.

The work law enforcement agencies do to disrupt people-smuggling vessels, as I said, is often not properly appreciated and certainly not widely reported, but it is very important. The Australian Federal Police work closely and successfully with other law enforcement agencies across our region. Since 2008, there have been 498 disruptions involving more than 15, 000 potential asylum seekers. So far this year there have been 178 disruptions involving 6,572 people. That includes 108 disruptions in Indonesia, five disruptions in Malaysia, 60 disruptions in Sri Lanka, four disruptions in India and one disruption in Vietnam. This is very important work and it must continue.

Obviously there is still a lot more work to do in implementing the recommendations of the Houston report and beyond. It is also important that we communicate the changes that we are making here in this place. The Department of Immigration and Citizenship as well as my agency, Customs and Border Protection, have jointly developed a communications strategy to discourage people from taking the dangerous boat journey to Australia. The government has committed $1½ million for an overseas communications campaign and a further $915,000 in administered funding this year to Customs and Border Protection.

This includes work being undertaken by the Department of Immigration and Citizenship as part of its 'no advantage' campaign. The campaign involves distributing messages in multiple languages, both locally and via the internet. The messages are targeted at asylum seekers in places such as Afghanistan, Pakistan, Sri Lanka and the Middle East.

Information has also been shared with the International Organization for Migration, which is working in Indonesia to inform people of the recent policy changes and discourage people from getting onto boats.

In many of these countries, there is no recognised media landscape in which to 'advertise'. Instead, Customs and Border Protection works with local communities to get the message out. This includes activities such as liaising with local media outlets, including radio, television and newspapers and online media, and conducting grass roots community activities. The message is: do not get on a boat to Australia; you will get no advantage and no special treatment by getting onto a boat and, what is worse, you will risk losing your life at sea.

The information we get from people who have sought asylum in Australia, and have been intercepted by boat and arrived at Christmas Island, indicates to us that people smugglers are still telling lies—telling people that they will only be in Nauru for a short period of time. We have to counter those lies with the truth and get that information out.

This motion is important because it is about saving lives. More than 400 people have died in the last 10 months. They have died while we have fought over this issue. As I have said many times, we need to put down our swords and agree to implement all the recommendations in the Houston report. That is what the people of Australia expect of us, and that is what they deserve.

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

Let me just say that I welcome the designation of Papua New Guinea as a regional processing country, but I do so with a degree of disappointment. The minister's speech still had in it the sort of language that I think leaves us dangerously exposed.

I think the most compelling figure that I have heard in this debate thus far from the shadow minister was the number of arrivals since 14 August, when the government agreed to reopen Nauru without restoring TPVs and turning boats back. The figure is, in that time, 60 boats with 3,800 people. What is remarkable about that figure is that it exceeds the total number of places for offshore processing by about three times. That is an extraordinary situation to be in, and I do not like to come into the House and to have to say that the ways in which these issues are being dealt with are highly unlikely to resolve the problem. They are highly unlikely to put to an end the tragic loss of life which the government tells us persuaded it to change its approach.

When I spoke after the government made its first announcement in this place I coined a number of phrases. I said that the measures that you might want to implement ought not to be seen as a menu from which you can pick and choose. I think the situation is so diabolical that you need every measure—every weapon in your armoury—to be brought to bear if you are going to deal with the size and the dimension of the problem that this government, through its own policy approaches, has brought about.

I suspect that the government members are still in denial. The minister spoke about the need for compromise on these matters. That is the menu argument: 'We'll give you this and you give us that; we'll have a compromise and maybe that will work.' This is not a matter in which you can, in my judgement, compromise. I think the work of the expert panel was admirable. But, as with panels, the sort of language that they use suggests that they know that there are sides that people have taken; they know there are certain constituencies and that you have to try and address them. But I think they showed in that report that they recognise that all of the measures that the Howard government had used were absolutely necessary. They certainly did not recommend the reintroduction of TPVs. But what did TPVs do? Temporary protection visas essentially denied those who were found to be deserving of protection the opportunity for a permanent visa, which carried with it family reunion entitlements. That became, essentially, the anchor on which a lot of other people would then travel.

The government said: 'We don't think you should use TPVs because if you use TPVs people will get onto boats as children, essentially on the basis that they will be unable to be sponsored by a parent if they had previously accessed Australia. More women and children will be on boats; you can't do that.' But the fact of the matter is that the government's own expert panel has said that they ought to restrict the availability of family reunion to those people who obtain permanent residency.

The problem is that the methodology that they are using involves family reunion for some and not the extended family reunion that you might have got if you were using the special humanitarian program. That means to me that the panel was at least cognisant of the important role that TPVs would play, and I think the government ought to be honest enough to say, 'We're going to use all the weapons in our armoury.' And that needs to be made clear to people offshore as well.

With respect to the turn-back of boats, when you read what the expert panel was saying, you find that they were saying that the turn-back of boats is highly desirable and you ought to be working on achieving cooperation to put that in place. And this government is rejecting it. It does not even recognise that it might be open.

I was somewhat troubled by the minister's comments because we have had some important negotiations with Indonesia on how search and rescue can be more effective in Indonesia's search and rescue areas—not ours, theirs. We are going to give them planes and we are going to enhance their ability to be able to supervise search and rescue. The one thing that is clear is that when people are rescued in somebody's search and rescue zone, the people who are rescued ought to go to the country whose zone they have been found in. What is the message that is coming out of this? The message, it seems to me, is that if you get on a boat and you get on a phone and you can convince people in Australia that they should get in touch with the Indonesians and activate all the search and rescue then all you have to do is stand over the captain and say 'I want to go to Christmas Island' and everybody acquiesces. Journeys will be less dangerous and there is no suggestion that those who are found in Indonesia's search and rescue zone are going to go to Indonesia. In my view, when you make decisions like that—I recognise the negotiations and discussions you have to have to deal with are sometimes difficult—there is nevertheless a message that is going through to all of those people who are desirous of accessing Australia that Australia is still open, open for business.

I said when I commenced my remarks that this trafficking and loss of life that has tragically occurred is a result of people coming to a view that if they get onto a vessel and access Australia, they will have a permanent residency outcome and they will have a new life in one form or another. It has very tragic consequences: some people tragically lose their lives at sea. What is more tragic to me is that people who are more deserving of an asylum place in Australia's refugee resettlement program miss out. The people whose claims are far more deserving, not just because they are a refugee but because of the very circumstances in which they are in—the immediate threat to their safety—miss out because the places are taken by those who meet the lowest common denominator threshold test, a test which a lot of well-meaning advocates who have never been to a refugee camp in their life and who listen to the people who happen to get here take the view that they have to be helped more than those who are in these other circumstances. So we see the development of a legal system that makes it even more likely that if a person's claims are considered here, they will get through the gate.

My problem is that I hear nothing from the government that suggests that they understand these issues or that they want to seriously deal with these issues. It is a question of give us Malaysia and she will be right. You want offshore processing? We will give you that. You are saying that will work. I am not saying that. I am saying all of the measures were necessary. I never argued when I was there that particular measures would work. I could not tell you which ones were going to work. What I know is that when we implemented all of the measures, it changed the total psychology of the issue.

It is a lot more reassuring when you have few people seeking to access Australia via these dangerous journeys. It is much more assuring even though you have to wear a bit of odium, even from the other side, when you know that people's lives have been saved. When you go to places like Kakuma in Africa as I did, various parts of the Middle East as I did, the Balkans as I did and see the people in those sorts of circumstances and you are able to talk to them then you understand that some of them can be helped. It does make a huge difference. I am very troubled about this issue because I believe the way in which it has been dealt with was quite clearly going to leave Australia exposed.

I debated the former minister for immigration who spent most of his time suggesting that the TPVs would not work, for instance. They were introduced and they did not stop people getting on boats. That is the argument I heard. Well, I do not know if that same minister would say—I do not know whether the government uses him in the Senate when these matters are debated—whether the announcement on 14 August, 60 boats and 3,830 people arriving was a failure of the measure or just that there was a lag in implementing it. But he never acknowledged that there might have been a lag effect with TPVs. I would suggest, as I did before, I cannot tell you if it was TPVs. I cannot tell you if it was turning boats back. I cannot tell you that it was offshore processing. But what I can tell you is when you use all the weapons in your armoury, it does have an impact.

I am very pleased to hear of the minister's support for the continuing work to disrupt trafficking. I have no doubt that the various agencies working on that, including the Australian Federal Police, are using their very best endeavours, and they are achieving some successes. But that disruption is nothing new. Disruption was being undertaken when I was there and it has been continued, and yet, notwithstanding the disruption activities which have been undertaken on a continuing basis, the number of arrivals since polling day is 18,000 and the number since the change of government is 26,000. The enormity of the movement of people to Australia unlawfully by boat needs to be understood, and the need for all the weapons in our armoury to be used needs to be understood by the government. Our support for this measure is forthcoming but we do not believe it is going to do the job.

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

I will not be supporting this motion on the designation of Papua New Guinea as a regional processing country. I think everyone in Australia had the same reaction when they witnessed the horrific sight of boats going down and people losing their lives in terrible circumstances. That was especially the case with Christmas Island, but it also relates to many events over the years when we have lost lives as people have tried to make their way to this country.

The Greens have said for a significant time that if the concern is protecting people, stopping people from taking those high-level risks that could potentially result in the loss of their life, we need to provide safer pathways and a more orderly system. What might that mean? It would mean, for a start, lifting Australia's humanitarian intake, because at the moment it is the lowest that it has been for 30 years. It would mean a comprehensive regional plan of action that also includes taking more people directly from places like Indonesia and Malaysia. We know that in those countries there are thousands of people waiting in camps, many of whom are genuine refugees and have already been found to be so, but they have no light at the end of the tunnel. Some of the 8,000 people who have been waiting in camps in Indonesia, for example, have been waiting for many years. That is not surprising, given that the UNHCR up until a while ago had only two people processing their claims and their budget is slated to decline over coming years.

The experts working in and supporting people in those camps tell us that, if you provide people who are in those camps with an orderly pathway out, they are much more likely to stay there and wait for genuine resettlement. We hear a lot about the people smugglers' business model, and the people smugglers' business model is based on desperation. It is based on people waiting in those camps for years at a time, often already having been found to be genuine refugees, with no clear exit. If I were in that situation and I had waited in a camp for several years and someone came to me and said that if I gave them a bit of money they would get me and my family out, I would probably take that opportunity as well. I think most people in that situation would do the same. Until we take many more people directly out of the camps in Indonesia and Malaysia and send a clear message to all those people who are in there that if they wait then they will be resettled, potentially in Australia, people are still going to come to this country.

Unless we make this country as unattractive as the place from which they are fleeing, people are always going to come. Harsh deterrence does not stop the boats and does not stop the drownings. We saw 353 people die when the SIEVX met its tragic fate, and that was when the Pacific solution and the John Howard government arrangements were in full swing. Unless we make Australia as bad as the Taliban has made Afghanistan, people are going to continue to come here because we are a better bet, and we are a democracy. This is why, when we had the opportunity to debate this matter recently in this place, I and many others came away with a heavy heart. We had a real opportunity not to pander to the worst in us in this country but to talk to the best in us. We could have taken the opportunity to have a national debate about how to deal with this complex and global problem. Anyone who thinks there is a simple solution to this is not paying attention. It involves actions here, it involves actions in countries where there are camps, it involves actions in the transit countries and it involves taking actions in the source countries.

What we could have done was have a debate free from the hysteria about the small number of people, comparatively speaking, who are coming to this country by boat, and we could have asked what would be a genuine regional solution that does not involve us contracting ourselves out of the obligations in the refugee convention. This is the convention that we signed up to voluntarily, and the High Court said that what the government was trying to do was not consistent with those obligations we signed up to, so we were at a fork in the road. We could have then come up with a set of solutions that was consistent, or we could have tried to contract out and change the law. That is ultimately what happened. Instead, we could have come out of it with a new comprehensive regional plan of action, along the lines that I have just outlined and along the lines that almost all of the experts recommended to the Houston committee.

But, instead of going back to Fraser, Labor has taken us back to Howard—and we in this country have missed a real opportunity to repeat the successes of the years after the Vietnam War.

It is instructive to remember what we did then. Yes, it was a different geopolitical situation and, yes, it was a different point in history, but in the decade after the Vietnam War we took in between 90,000 and 100,000 refugees and their families. We said, 'We see these people are fleeing and coming here by boat—let's not have that situation; let's have a comprehensive regional plan of action.' We should not gild the lily and pretend that that plan was some kind of ideal solution—it wasn't. It was harsh and there were debates about it at the time. But what we said was that we, as a developed country in this region, had the capacity to bear a bigger share of this regional and global burden—and so we took people in. I think that, if you asked anyone in this country now, they would say that approach was a success. If we had spoken to that—if we had spoken to the fact that everyone in this country has someone in their family, in their street or in their workplace who came here as a refugee, or whose parents came here as a refugee, and who they think is a good person—we could have gone down that road again. But we have not done so. Instead, we have gone back to the Howard era.

The Howard era involved mandatory indefinite detention. As a reminder of what that entails, it is worth referring to an Amnesty International report in which they tell us what happened the last time we had offshore processing on Manus. The report says:

The ongoing suffering of asylum seekers is illustrated by the case of an Iraqi Christian who was detained on Manus Island between October 2001 and July 2003 under the “Pacific Solution”.

In May 2002, after suffering from depression, he was diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder. After another 10 months on Manus, he was transferred to Baxter detention centre in South Australia for medical review. His condition worsened, and in November 2003, still in detention in Baxter, he attempted to commit suicide by ingesting glass fragments from a broken fluorescent tube and by attempting to electrocute himself.

After six months in Australia, this man would have been able to appeal his asylum application through the Refugee Review Tribunal (RRT). But on 21 January 2004, just eight days short of the six month deadline, he was handcuffed, forcibly removed from Baxter and sent to Nauru.

Eventually, the detainee was recognised as a refugee and was resettled in Sweden.

But that resettlement came only after he had first attempted to take his own life. That is what indefinite mandatory detention does to people. The tragedy is: we do not need to do it but we are about to do it again.

As I have made clear, I do not support this motion. But it is also clear that it is going to get up because the government and the coalition will vote together. Given that it is going to get up and given everything we know about mandatory detention, there needs to be a time limit on how long someone will spend on Manus. The experts have told us that, if you keep someone longer than a year, you are almost certain to do harm to their mental health and to their wellbeing. For that reason, I have what I consider a very reasonable amendment to propose. It is one that anyone who is interested in making sure we preserve the mental health of refugees—even if you are in favour of the government's proposed solution—should support.

I move:

That the following words be added to the motion: "and calls on the government to put in place a 12 month time limit on immigration detention in Papua New Guinea."

There can be no basis for opposing this amendment if what we are concerned about is the protection of life and the protection of refugees. As I said, we were told at the start that that is the reason we need these laws—that we are concerned about people's lives. If that is right, we should be just as concerned about someone who takes their own life in a detention centre as we are about someone who drowns at sea. That means taking all reasonable steps to protect the mental health of refugees and that means putting a 12-month time limit on their detention.

If this amendment is not supported, it demonstrates that the so-called no-advantage principle is really about indefinite detention and detention for longer than a year. That is something a spotlight needs to be shone upon. I was talking earlier about camps where you can wait five or six years. If you were to take the mathematical average of how long people spend in Malaysian camps—given that a lot of people spend their whole lives there—you would, on one calculation, get 76 years. So, if the government is not going to support this amendment, a question that has to be answered is: just how long can someone stay on Manus Island or Nauru? If the limit is not 12 months, what is it? Is it two years? Is it three years? Is it five years? Is it 10 years? Are we being asked to again sign off on indefinite mandatory detention? Are we saying to people, 'You are now going to go to Nauru or PNG to spend an indefinite amount of time in detention'? We know what that will do to people.

We need to remember that the UNHCR has refused to be involved in offshore processing on PNG, just as it has refused to be involved with offshore processing on Nauru. PNG is not even a full signatory to the refugee convention. The government of Papua New Guinea acceded to the 1951 refugee convention and its 1967 protocol back in 1986—but with reservations relating to refugees' rights in the areas of employment, housing, education, freedom of movement, non-penalisation of refugees unlawfully present, expulsion and access to naturalisation. All seven reservations are still applicable.

We know that in PNG there are no facilities that can house people safely. We know that they were still importing asbestos as a building material up until July 2010, that it is in a dengue fever and malaria zone and that prominent PNG politicians say they are going to take legal action against this detention centre because it contravenes PNG law.

For all of those reasons, I do hope that this very reasonable amendment will find support. If it does not, I would invite members from the government side to tell us in what is left of this debate, before the motion is passed by this House, for just how long it is okay to keep someone in mandatory detention.

Dick Adams (Lyons, Australian Labor Party) 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 reserve my right to speak.

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

The coalition endorse the designation of PNG—specifically, Manus Island—as a regional processing country. Since 2007, 26,347 people have arrived on 446 boats. This government's immigration policy has more twists and turns than a track at the grand prix, and the coalition's position has been consistent for over a decade. We support the reopening of Manus because PNG signed the refugee convention, so there are legally binding protections in place for people who are being sent there.

It was the coalition who made sure that human rights were protected in the Migration Act under section 198A for those who are processed offshore. We saw the ridiculous situation where this Labor government proposed the Malaysian deal, with a five-for-one people swap. It was a ridiculous deal that was not going to provide enough protection. There was not going to be sufficient protection for children who were sent there in terms of their education and health, and there was no way that we were going to support that. So it is really good to see that the government has come to this position.

The coalition have always opposed the Gillard government's attempts to strip away all those protections from the Migration Act, and our stance was vindicated by the decision made by the High Court of Australia, and again by the Houston report, which found that the Malaysian deal did not contain enough adequate human rights protections for those who were being sent there.

As I said, there have been a number of twists and turns in this government's immigration policy. When you look at the number of announcements that have been made and what has occurred as a result, the government has done anything but stop the boats from arriving. As at 25 November, when the bridging visa was announced, there had been 187 boats and 12,798 people arrive. The total number of arrivals after the High Court decision was 206 boats and 14,159 people. Since the Malaysian announcement on 7 May 2011, the total number of arrivals has increased to 222 boats and 14,844 people.

In September, the government put before parliament a very special legislative instrument to authorise offshore processing on Nauru. That declaration passed the House of Representatives and the Senate with the support of the coalition, and this new designation of PNG as an offshore processing country is very similar in form and content. The deal with PNG, according to the documentation the government have provided, is open-ended and does not require a five-for-one people swap as in the ridiculous deal in their failed Malaysian agreement. The deal also provides support for a whole number of age cohorts and for families, and makes sure that educational opportunities are provided. But, as usual, the government have been dragged kicking and screaming every step of the way.

And what did they do when they again faced the situation of a huge number of boats arriving? There was a boat arriving almost every day, under the circumstances. They had to be dragged kicking and screaming to reopen Nauru, and even then they outsourced their decision to the Houston panel. They could not make a decision themselves; they had to give it to the Expert Panel on Asylum Seekers. While the panel did the very best that they could, Australia is becoming known as a country that is turning its Navy into a taxi service. We are picking them up from Indonesian search and rescue.

People smugglers have thrived under this government. They have made more money than they have ever made in their entire history under this government's swapping and changing of policies. Hundreds of people have died at sea, including women and children, but the government have steadfastly refused to introduce the full range of measures we advocated, including temporary protection visas and turning the boats back. You cannot just pick and choose; you have to introduce the whole suite of measures or it will not work. We have seen the result in the number of boats that keep arriving.

This has been a very costly exercise for the government. Their immigration expenditure has blown out to $4.9 billion as a result of the Houston report. Settlement will cost about $1.9 billion, because every time there is a boat arrival it costs another $50,000 to settle people. And it is not just the financial costs that are absolutely exorbitant; there is also the terrible humanitarian cost in the loss of lives at sea.

There are at least 8,100 people who have been waiting offshore in camps, in desperate circumstances. I have been to those camps. I have been to the Thai-Burma border with Chin and Karen people. I have seen them waiting patiently in camps. There are 140,000 people on the Thai-Burma border all being interviewed by the UNHCR and all wanting to come to Australia as genuine refugees. It is heartbreaking to see the people in these camps who genuinely want to come to this country and are doing all that they can. They simply do not have the money to pay people smugglers.

We have one of the best humanitarian immigration programs in the world. The number of humanitarian program places is capped at 13,750. Every boatload of people coming in illegally deprives the people in those offshore camps of the opportunity to come to Australia through acceptance under our refugee and humanitarian program.

I had the wonderful privilege of attending Access Community Services' 10 years of settlement celebration. Access have been resettling refugee and humanitarian entrants for 10 years and doing it very well. I heard some heartrending stories about people who had been in camps for 20 years. I heard stories of African women who had been in camps for several years finally being allowed to come to Australia. I heard of one woman's exaltation when she was accepted, with her two children, being greeted at the airport by the caseworker, being taken to her home, being given essential equipment—saucepans, bedding—all of the things to help them start life in Australia. That is how we should be welcoming people to this country through the United Nations refugee program. Instead, we are depriving genuine refugees an opportunity to come to Australia—the ones who cannot afford to pay people smugglers, the ones who are in camps, the ones who have been in camps and had to raise families in camps. It is heartbreaking to hear their stories.

We do things very well in this country—settlement under the humanitarian program. We have been doing it a very long time and we should be able to accept many more people under the humanitarian program from offshore. As people are languishing in camps in many places around the world, we are facing a situation where illegal boats arrive and the only people who are benefiting are people smugglers. The coalition has always had a strong border protection policy, and an orderly immigration system is essential to safeguard the integrity of the humanitarian refugee program. Per capita, we run the most generous settlement program in the world. It is not just me saying this. The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees was here last year and commended Australia on the great work we do. Less than one per cent of the world's 10 million refugees will be resettled in any one year. We believe you have to steadfastly protect the integrity of the program. We should be in a position to decide who will get the rare chance of resettlement.

If elected to govern, the coalition will restore the full suite of proven policies, including offshore processing in Nauru, temporary protection visas and turning boats back where the circumstances permit. We have to restore the integrity of our immigration program. We have to make sure that we accept wonderful refugees like Godfrey who has gone through the Access program. Godfrey has a Bachelor of Arts in Business Accounting and is studying for his MBA. He and his partner, Julie, have a 20-month old girl. James Ladu, who is studying theology at the Australian Catholic University in Brisbane, is going to be ordained to be a priest in June next year. John, married with four children, has a Bachelor of Information Technology, is working in the disability sector and lives in Toowoomba. Daniel Zingifauboro's is the most amazing story I heard at Access the other day. Daniel trained to be a lawyer in this country and has chosen to be a politician. I know not many people choose to be a politician. He also studied to be a lawyer. He has gone back to South Sudan where he is going to take up the role as Minister of Local Government and Law Enforcement. So here are some great success stories of people who have come through the refugee and humanitarian program. Not only are they making a huge difference to Australia but some of them have gone back to their own country to restore law and order and to restore democracy.

The number of boats will keep coming unless the full suite of measures is restored. Last week, six times the number of people turned up on boats than those who were sent by Labor to Nauru. Overwhelmingly the government's attempt at offshore processing is getting worse. We have a huge number of boats continuing to arrive. Many countries are represented at the moment among the offshore arrivals—Sri Lanka, Iran, Iraq and Afghanistan—and the number of people who have already been sent to Nauru totals 211. Boats will keep arriving unless something is done to restore the suite of measures from when we were in government and the member for Berowra was immigration minister. We support the designation today to make Manus Island a processing centre.

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

I rise to speak on the motion to approve the instrument of designation of the Independent State of Papua New Guinea to be a regional processing centre. As our previous speakers have said, we agree with the assignment which this motion deals with in terms of Manus Island. This is part of the select committee report and it is only sensible, because it was our policy, that we agree. I want to bring to the attention of this House one of the issues which Minister Clare, who was previously at the table, raised in his speech, which was that the full suite of measures are not needed. He talked about not being able to turn boats back. This government continually talks about not being able to turn boats back.

Recently I have been fortunate enough to have spent some time on my study leave in Sri Lanka examining some of these issues. A report on the Sri Lankan website states:

Australian MP visits SLN Dockyard.

Australian Member of Parliament, Hon. Don Randall visited the SLN Naval Dockyard in Trincomalee on 30th September 2012. He was warmly welcomed by the Deputy Commander Eastern Naval Area, Commodore PH de Silva.

The Deputy Eastern Naval Area Commander briefed the visiting Australian MP on the current situation and the port facilities available at Trincomalee Harbour. The MP took the opportunity to look into the matters of persons who are illegally bound for Australia and to obtain first hand information regarding the preventive measures the Navy is implementing.

Also along with Commodore de Silva was Captain Sujeewa Seneviratne and Captain Rohan Lelwala. They accompanied me on my visit to Trincomalee Harbour. Trincomalee is interesting and necessary to this debate because Trincomalee is one of the best natural deepwater harbours in the world and from there many people leave by boat bound for Australia. Trincomalee Harbour services the economic zone of Sri Lanka, an area of some 118,000 square kilometres, so it is not an insignificant amount of land.

The briefing that I received from the navy is quite comprehensive and took a considerable amount of time to prepare. I will not go into the full detail of it, but I will mention some of the issues. They have given me details of boats engaged in human smuggling that were arrested by the navy in the financial year from July 2012 till now. The number of boats is 52 and the number of people involved is 2,279. Why this is so crucial to the debate is that the Sri Lankan navy are not only doing something about stopping people leaving but turning them back when they get to sea. They are not allowing them to go to Australia if they can detect them. The boats are very hard to detect. They are generally wooden and they go out to sea for some miles, pretending they are going fishing. They have the nets and the fishing hooks on board. I went over these boats and saw how they leave out of the sight of radar and the navy. They are then fed by smaller boats with their tragic human cargo.

This briefing is so comprehensive that it gives a huge amount of detail about each boat. Here are some of the details about human-smuggling activities from 10 July 2012 to 30 September in this area. I know I will not be allowed to table this, so I will just show it to you, Mr Deputy Speaker Adams. This is the sort of information that was given to me. This is a picture of a boat and the people that were taken back from the boat after it was turned around. The information is broken down into the date and the area where the boats were turned around, the details of the trawler and the details of the emigrants, as they call them, and their ethnic origin. For example, the first boat, on 10 July 2012, was called the Sinhale 07. It carried 37 male Tamils, two female Tamils, one of whom was pregnant, two children and two Muslims. Despite what a lot of people think, it not just Tamils who are leaving Sri Lanka; there are Muslims and there are Sinhalese. The area of Trincomalee actually has a 41 per cent population of Muslims.

I will not go through the details of all these boats. I would love to table this document, but it would not be permitted, I suspect. I will just pull out the details and pictures of a few boats as we go through. For example, on the Kavindi, on 20 August this year, off Pigeon Island, there were eight Sinhalese, along with 26 male Tamils, one female Tamil and four children. There were a total of 39 on that boat. On the Prasansanee Duwa, there were six Sinhalese, 34 male Tamils, one female Tamil and three Muslims. I could go through the details of all these boats, but I have not got time. I want to go to the most recent, the ABI, which was intercepted on 29 September, the night before I arrived. There were 36 people on that boat—seven Sinhalese, 25 male Tamils, four female Tamils, seven children and one Muslim male.

I was taken over these boats, and the tragedy is that most of them are unseaworthy. They are coastal shipping boats. They are not designed to go the massive distance to Cocos Island or Christmas Island. While I was in the harbour, the boat in this picture was severely listing. The navy told me that after two days at sea, in any sort of seas, that boat would have sunk and the entire tragic cargo would have been lost. This is the tragedy of this whole situation.

These boats are leaving regularly but the Sri Lankan navy is finding them and bringing them back. Out of the whole cohort, there were 2,135 males, 66 females and 78 children. There were 1,846 Tamils, 124 Muslims, 307 Sinhalese and two Indians. They came from all over Sri Lanka. There were 27 boats in the harbour which had been apprehended by the Sri Lankan navy. As I said, I was taken over the boats and the conditions were inhumane—one toilet for all the people on board. I can show you the picture, Mr Deputy Speaker. This toilet is a bit of plywood perched over the edge of the boat—for males, females and children. It is just unbelievable, if you want to talk about humanitarian considerations.

The navy identified the people smugglers in the briefing they gave me and described how they have brought them back and dealt with them. What the people smugglers do is organise a point of assembly, a point of departure to the final destination, and organise the logistics and financial transactions. The navy, once they arrest them and bring them back, provide the people with food and water. They escort the craft to shore, give the people medical check-ups, look after the children, provide separate washing facilities for the women and interview the personnel. They hand the personnel to the CID. The CID forward the people who are caught to the courts, and they keep the boats in safe anchorage until there is a court ruling. The personnel are handed over to the CID and not to the police because there is a separate maritime unit available to the CID on that base to conduct inquiries into these activities. This unit maintains databases on these activities. The unit has direct links with the Australian Federal Police.

Let us find out what they do when they are caught. Crew members or facilitators receive a jail term of one year or less. Organisers get the same—one year or less. The passengers, as they are called, are fined between 5,000 and 10,000 rupee, which is something like $10. Why would you only fine them that amount? It is because they are very poor people generally.

Why do they undertake this journey? The financial prospects—they are economic migrants—are a pull factor to Australia; they want to join the rest of their family; or they have had a briefing from personnel already in Australia about why they should undertake the journey and misinformation by interested parties for their advantage—in other words, the Tamil diaspora organisations in Australia. They are going now because they are trying to miss the monsoon. They believe that, if they can get to Australia, the long legal procedures involved in processing asylum seeker claims in Australia are to their advantage, and they know about the success rate once you get to Australia: if you can get to Australia, you get to stay there.

In the last few minutes of my speech I want to talk about the fact that I was able to go and meet those last 36 people in the gym on the navy base. There was a young Tamil gentleman there who spoke perfect English, so he was able to interpret for me to the whole range of people on that base who were being detained from the night before. Interestingly, when I spoke to all of them with the interpreter, they all had a different story to tell. One had been a public servant and had resigned from his job. One had been a local fisherman. He was Sinhalese, a young man with a young wife and a five-week-old baby being breastfed as we were talking. There were a whole range of people.

I want to make this point: when I was speaking to them, not one of them said to me that they were going for humanitarian reasons. I want to repeat that: not one of them said that they were taking this journey for humanitarian reasons; they all said that they were going because their job prospects in Australia were better. The fisherman said that the job prospects in Australia were better. The public servant said that his job prospects in Australia were better. I said to them, 'Why are you doing this, because you will not get a visa?' Several of them had disabilities like withered arms and dwarfism. I said, 'You won't get a visa.' The fisherman broke down and cried because he suddenly realised that he had been lied to by the people smugglers. They had sold their houses to take this journey. It is a US$2,000 deposit and the balance when you get to Australia.

The Sri Lanka navy are doing their job. They are turning the boats back at sea, and they are making sure that when the people get back they are rehabilitated. How do I know this? I went to Kilinochchi and met with the IOM, the International Organization for Migration. They said that they receive these people and they help resettle them, and there are no threats of torture or abuse, as is claimed in Australia by those who want to make mischief in this area. I spoke to the UNHCR in Kilinochchi, and they said the same thing. They are helping resettle the people who come back by boat, and they are helped by the Sri Lankan government. There are no humanitarian issues on the part of those people leaving and there are no human rights issues for the people who return to Sri Lanka by boat.

This is a tragic trade by, in many cases, the rump of the LTTE, the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam, essentially, trying to re-establish a power base here in Australia. This is a cruel trade in vulnerable people who do not know any better, and they are being totally misled. As I went further through the north of Sri Lanka to Jaffna, I had people saying to me: 'Oh, you're Australian. I'm going to Australia.' I said, 'Why are you going to Australia?' 'Well, I can get a job there,' said the waiter in the restaurant in Jaffna. 'What would make you think that you would get a visa when you got to Australia because you're a waiter?' 'Oh, I'm told that once you get to Australia you can get a visa and you can earn so much money.' That is the situation, and that is why they are coming. So many people were telling me wherever I went in the north, particularly amongst the Tamil population, that they intended to come to Australia by boat because they could get jobs. But I repeat: not one told me that they were coming for humanitarian reasons.

So, when we talk about this evil trade in human smuggling, we are not talking about the fact that—

Honourable Members:

Honourable members interjecting—

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

The minister missed out Sri Lanka? He mentioned it three times. Yes, Indonesia could do more. Unlike Sri Lanka, Indonesia does not try and turn back boats in its economic zone. Sri Lanka does, and Australia could do the same. We are setting a terrible precedent in acquiescing to a country like Indonesia which is not very interested in helping us to turn around and stop this evil trade in humanity. I congratulate the Sri Lankan government on the great work that they are doing. We should be putting more resources into helping them stop people coming in this way to Australia, which will cost many of them their lives.

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

The question was that the motion be agreed to. To that motion an amendment was moved by the member for Melbourne. I will put the amendment question first. There being more than one voice calling for a division, in accordance with standing order 133(b) the division is deferred until 8 pm.

Debate adjourned.