Dana Wortley (SA, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I rise to take note of answers given by Senator Vanstone during question time today in relation to the Legal and Constitutional Legislation Committee report on provisions of the Migration Amendment (Designated Unauthorised Arrivals) Bill 2006, tabled on Monday, and statements made by the minister.

The government does not want to proceed with the recommendations of this report. It wants the bill to go through this parliament without adopting the recommendations. That is clear. We have a government-dominated Senate inquiry which considered the government’s proposal to process all unauthorised boat arrivals at offshore detention centres. The government-dominated committee received 136 submissions and held a public hearing before preparing its report. The recommendations contained in the report received unanimous support from the committee members. But now the government does not want to adopt the committee’s No. 1 recommendation, which is:

In light of the limited information available to the committee, the committee recommends that the Bill should not proceed.

This is the simple and clear recommendation of the committee: that the bill should not proceed. Why does the government not want to adopt the recommendation? One cannot help but wonder about the discussion that may have taken place last night, or perhaps even this morning, between Prime Minister Howard and his Minister for Immigration and Multicultural Affairs, Senator Vanstone. Was it a discussion about why, according to the government, this bill must proceed, how much significance should be given to appeasing Indonesia and how much the people of Australia should be told about its elected government appeasing the Indonesian government?

It seems that the Prime Minister and his immigration minister have different points of view, because yesterday in the House of Representatives Prime Minister Howard was asked a question by Labor’s immigration spokesperson, Tony Burke, about the government’s intention not to adopt the committee’s recommendation. The question read, in part:

... why won’t the Prime Minister listen to Australian parliamentarians as much as he has listened to Indonesian parliamentarians?

The Prime Minister’s response was:

These policies have nothing to do with listening to Indonesian politicians.

That is not the view of everyone in the government, and some of them are even prepared to go on the record. Last night, only hours after the Prime Minister’s statement to parliament during question time, his Minister for Immigration and Multicultural Affairs, Senator Vanstone, appeared on the ABC’s The 7.30 Report, saying:

Well, I think, as you say, it is indisputable we’ve taken into account the concerns of Indonesia.

Here is a further quote from Minister Vanstone:

Yes, we are taking into account what the Indonesians want because they’re very helpful to us on border protection.

Well, that is a revelation. The government is changing our laws because Indonesia wants it to. The immigration minister has admitted that Indonesia has influenced this legislation. This morning in an interview on AM, this question was put to the minister:

... Australia is listening to Indonesia, but does the release of Abu Bakar Bashir indicate that Indonesia wouldn’t listen to Australia in this way?

The minister’s response was that we have to follow our law, they have to follow their law. That is the point, Minister. The Howard government, through this bill, is making changes to our law. You even reiterated this in the interview when you said it is a change to our policy. There was no demand for these changes from Australia. But on 15 May, one month before the tabling of the Legal and Constitutional Legislation Committee’s report, the Indonesian foreign minister stated that he had been assured by Australia that Australia would not accept individuals processed on Nauru even if determined to be refugees and that this ‘solved the issue’. Following the meeting, Minister Downer said Indonesia was ‘pleased with the Australian government’s changes to processing of asylum seekers who arrive by sea’. Under the proposed changes made by this bill, refugees could be held indefinitely. (Time expired)

Question agreed to.