George Brandis (Queensland, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

What Tony Burke said, as you interjected, Senator Ferguson, was absolutely wrong. It is also absolutely wrong, as Mr Burke and now Senator Hurley have suggested, that the 457 visa policy has in fact encouraged unlawful boat arrivals. The truth is the opposite. Since the Howard government adopted in the second half of 2001 the border protection policy administered by the joint task force of ADF personnel known as Operation Relex, what we saw—as Senator Ferguson knows better than anybody else in this chamber—was the sudden surge in unlawful boat arrivals abate. After December 2001, at the end of a six-month period during which there had been approximately a dozen attempted illegal entries into Australian waters by these people at great personal peril, there were none—not one.

Every one of the people who sought to make the Australian shoreline in those suspected illegal entry vessels put themselves and their children in the peril which, tragically, those who embarked on SIEVX suffered. The boats were run by people smugglers. They were leaky fishing boats that were filled beyond capacity and they sailed through choppy seas. They were always a danger to their occupants. The tragedy of SIEVX was bound to happen as long as the people smugglers got the encouragement to believe that they could make it to Australia. What SIEVX tells us is how timely and necessary the Australian government’s policy was. (Time expired)