Amanda Vanstone (SA, Liberal Party, Minister for Immigration and Multicultural Affairs) Share this | Hansard source

The answer to your first question—‘Do both of these statements stand?’—is yes, they do. The Prime Minister quite clearly said, ‘We will decide who comes here and the circumstances under which they come.’ The government has made a decision about amendments it seeks to make to its migration legislation—and it is the government making that decision. It is making that decision on the basis of its concern to remain strong on border protection and to keep good and friendly relationships with our neighbours—who are indeed, in the region, partners with us in border protection and the detection of people-smuggling. There are two aspects to that. There is simply no inconsistency and no conflict.

We had a significant boatload of asylum seekers arriving onshore, and we obviously regard that as a serious challenge to our border control. It is the first time that we have had a boat of large numbers for a long time. Of course we would process them according to our international commitments but, as a consequence of that arrival, we had a look to see what we could do to further strengthen our border protection.

It is simply not a case of appeasing a foreign government. I make the point I made in here recently when Senator Brown was here when I pointed to the granting of 42 visas to Indonesian West Papuans when we knew very well that the Indonesian government were not going to be happy with it. That had been made very clear. The President of Indonesia had in fact rung up and sought, through the Prime Minister, a commitment that we would not give those visas—and we did. Why did we do that? Because we will live up to our international obligations under the convention. But we are not precluded from then saying, ‘A large boat arrival; we had better look at what other changes we could make.’