Natasha Griggs (Solomon, Country Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

My question is to the Minister for Immigration and Border Protection. Will the minister inform that House of the measures taken in the budget to provide education services to the children of illegal maritime arrivals on Christmas Island and what challenges these measures will address? How are the government's policies fixing the mess the government inherited on our borders?

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

I thank the member for Solomon for her question. She will be pleased to know, as I know all members on this side of the House are, that given that we have now had almost six months of no successful people smuggling ventures to Australia, it is saving the budget $2.5 billion. In addition to that, it is ensuring that we have freed up 20,000 places in our special humanitarian program over this year out to the end of the forward estimates. Further to that, it has freed up more than 1,000 places for women at risk, which we noted earlier today at the opening of Refugee Week.

What we found when we came to government was not that arrangement. We found something very different. By stopping the boats, we are able not only to get the budget under control and get the refugee and humanitarian program back under control and ensure it has integrity, but we are able to deal with the problems in the detention network and with the issues with offshore processing that were left to us by the previous government. Labor did leave us a mess. They left us a mess because $1.2 billion was the shortfall in funding for effectively implementing offshore processing. They announced it but they did not fund it. They are great on announcements—they announce surpluses that are never delivered and they announce offshore processing policies that were never funded.

In addition to that there was inadequate infrastructure for children—for families. After their involvement in those offshore centres they had processed no-one at all. Not one. More than 100 people have received decisions and recommendations now under the arrangements put in place in Papua New Guinea and Nauru—and there were no resettlement arrangements, none at all.

I am asked quite specifically by the member for Solomon about the issues on Christmas Island. I can tell you that at the last election the previous government had provided education to just 24 children on Christmas Island. There is a slight problem with that in that there were 140 primary-age children on Christmas Island at the time, and there were 425 children on Christmas Island at the time. That was addressed in this budget. There is $2.6 million to ensure that not just 24 children but every child held in detention on Christmas Island will go to school every single day. That is just one of the examples of cleaning up the mess. But the job is getting easier, because the number of children in detention is declining. The number of children right across our own networks and offshore is now fewer than 1,000. It has fallen by a third since the election. It has fallen by almost 50 per cent in mainland centres across Australia. You know how you get children out of detention? You stop the boats. That is how you do it. That is what this government is doing. That is why children are coming out of detention and that is why this government has been successful and you lot failed.