Annette Hurley (SA, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Citizenship and Multicultural Affairs) Share this | Hansard source

I move:

That the Senate take note of answers given by the Minister for Immigration and Multicultural Affairs (Senator Vanstone) to questions without notice asked today relating to skills shortages and to detention practices.

Today we heard a lot more about the migration bill. I want to address the article by Greg Sheridan in the Australian today, which is titled ‘PM bungles response to Papuan asylum-seekers’. I most certainly agree with that headline but do not agree with too much else that follows. He correctly points out that the Labor Party instituted mandatory detention in remote camps for all asylum seekers, and the Labor Party, indeed, continues to support mandatory detention.

Mr Sheridan then goes on to support the Pacific solution by the Howard government and said that the Pacific solution did stop the flow of boats. What he does do, quite erroneously, is equate the Pacific solution with mandatory detention, when in fact sending the asylum seekers offshore was an expensive, difficult and, ultimately, unsuccessful way to deal with asylum seekers. What was successful—and the minister referred to it today in relation to Mr Beazley’s comments—was talking to governments in the region, such as the Indonesian government, and cooperating to get illegal immigration and people-smuggling stopped. That is what stopped the boats coming to Australia. That is what was responsible for stopping those boats and for stopping illegal immigration.

Mr Sheridan does not distinguish the fact that those initial asylum seekers had stopped in a first country and were then coming to Australia as a second country of asylum. He goes on to talk about the West Papuans as though Australia is not the first country of asylum. He talks about setting up a path of easy illegal immigration for those Papuans and refuses to recognise that, if they were illegal, they would have been returned. In fact, Australia found that 42 of them were genuine refugees. They remained in Australia because they came to Australia as their first country of refuge. If there is persecution in any country and people make it to Australia, why would we not consider taking them, instead of sending them offshore to an island and insisting they be sent to a third country?

Here again Mr Sheridan’s comments are not accurate. He is saying that if they are found to be refugees they will be taken into Australia or anywhere else. But the minister has made it quite clear that she will be seeking a third country, and the likelihood is that those genuine refugees will be held on Nauru indefinitely while there is a vain search for a third country. Why indeed, seeing Australia as the wealthy nation that it is, seeking immigrants, would any third country take West Papuan refugees instead of letting Australia take refugees? For Mr Sheridan to go on and talk about the Labor Party being xenophobic on this issue is quite wrong. As the minister rightly pointed out, Mr Beazley talked about cooperating with the Indonesian government to deal with illegal asylum seekers. Now he is saying that in this case we should not dance to the tune of the Indonesian government. I do not see why that is a xenophobic response. It is a recognition of the true difference between the original asylum seekers and refugees who are coming in from West Papua.

The government is trying, as Mr Sheridan suggests, to say that this is part of its normal border protection policy. It is not an extension of the border protection policy; it is excising our whole country in order to keep out possibly genuine refugees who have managed to make it to Australia. Mr Sheridan talks about walking over the border to Papua New Guinea; that is just a nonsense, and he should know that. (Time expired)