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

My question is to the Minister for Immigration and Border Protection and it concerns the fate of over 700 men in the Manus Island camp, most of whom have been found to be refugees. Two weeks ago the PNG Attorney-General said his country would not allow you to simply close the detention centre on 31 October and leave the men behind for PNG to look after. It's been revealed in the Senate that last Friday you flew to PNG to meet with Prime Minister O'Neill to discuss the crisis. Have you struck a deal with PNG? If so, what's in the deal? And in what country will the men be resettled? Or is your plan just to leave these men in limbo, create a powder-keg situation and then use force and violence against them?

Peter Dutton (Dickson, Liberal Party, Minister for Immigration and Border Protection) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I thank the honourable member very much for his question. He asks: what is our plan? Our plan is to clean up the mess created by the Greens and Labor. That is our plan. This government did not put people on Manus and Nauru, but our job is to get them off, and get them off we will. We've struck a deal, as you're aware, Mr Speaker, with the United States, and I acknowledge the work of the Prime Minister and then President Obama, as well as President Trump now, so that we can move people—as a priority, the women and children—off Nauru and, in a secondary way, move the people off Manus. We've announced that we want to close Manus by 31 October. We are on track to do that, but we'll continue to work with the PNG government, because ultimately the PNG government, under the arrangement signed by Mr Rudd, the then Prime Minister, and Prime Minister O'Neill, the arrangement was that those people would stay on Manus and those people who had been determined to be refugees—the deal struck by Labor and the Greens and the PNG government is that those people would stay in PNG. I just remind the member of that aspect of his question.

The fact is: we will do whatever we can, not only to get people off but, most importantly, to make sure that we don't have new boat arrivals. Since the commencement of Operation Sovereign Borders, we have turned back 31 boats. Had those 31 boats got through, we would be dealing with the same mess that Labor presided over when they were in government—that is, 50,000 people arriving on 800 boats. And, to the great detriment of the reputation of the member who asked this question, I might say, 1,200 people drowned at sea on his watch, so I will not take some sanctimonious positioning from the Greens in relation to this issue, and we won't take a lecture from the Labor Party either.

In government, those opposite put 8,000 children into detention. We on this side have removed 8,000 children and closed 17 detention centres. But let me make this prediction, because the Leader of the Opposition has still not learnt the lesson: it is still obvious to all Australians that, if Labor were elected tomorrow, they would undo the policies of this government, people would be back on boats, kids would be back in detention, and people would be drowning at sea. So not only are we cleaning up Labor's mess but we are making sure that we stare down the people smugglers.

When the Labor Party and the Greens were in government, they had not a clue how to deal with the problem. We will not fall for those same mistakes and we will remain resolute because what it allows us to do is to have a very compassionate intake of those people who are genuine refugees under the refugee and humanitarian program, including the 12,000 Syrian and Iraqis that we took in over the last couple of years, which would not have been possible, the Australian public would not have supported that decision, had the boats still been arriving.