Brett Mason (Queensland, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

Any suggestion that Australia would agree to an arrangement which would see refugees returned to a country where they face persecution is wrong. Citizens of other countries who are persecuted by their governments should, in an ideal world, always find safe haven. This country has a very proud record of that, particularly since the Second World War. After revolution in places like Hungary and Czechoslovakia, and after the Indochina war, this country took many refugees—I might add, despite Mr Whitlam’s objection to taking Vietnamese refugees. Under Mr Fraser, this country did take them, and it was one of the best things we have ever done as a community.

At present throughout the world there are millions of people who are homeless and many millions of people dislocated by war. There are refugees on nearly every continent. I remember back in the early nineties when I was working with the United Nations on the Thai-Cambodia border I spend much time among them. Many of those refugees wanted to live in Australia—and, indeed, many do.

In this country we take about 13,000 refugees each year from all around the world, and that makes us perhaps one of the most generous receivers of refugees in the world on a per capita basis—about second behind Canada, I think. My friend Senator Bartlett mentioned Nauru and offshore processing. There might be some objection taken about the time it took to process some of those people, but in the end everyone’s applications were processed—the vast majority successfully—and they were dealt with fairly. There has been no objection about the process undertaken in Nauru. But there is a problem when people arrive by boat. Why? Because a business has been spawned: people-smuggling. It is a business that imperils desperate people on the open sea and lines the pockets of money-hungry people smugglers. People smugglers prey on the poor and the very desperate. They have done it for years and continue to do it. This government is committed to maintaining a strong and determined focus on protecting our borders and ensuring that Immigration, Customs, the Australian Federal Police and the Australian armed forces combine to do just that.

I think it would be useful to go back in history and look at how many individuals arrived by boat in the years prior to Australia’s tough border security policies, in particular on offshore processing. How many people fell prey to people smugglers before the new arrangements—in particular on offshore processing—came into force? It is good to report to the Senate that there has been a dramatic reduction in the number of unauthorised boat arrivals. The people-smuggling business has fallen on very hard times since the Howard government adopted tough policies against unauthorised immigration. The figures speak for themselves. In 1999 there were 3,722 unauthorised arrivals by boat in Australia; in 2000 there were 2,939; and in 2001 there were 3,751. In this regard 2001 is an important year because that is the date at which the Howard government’s offshore processing policy came into force.

What were the effects of these measures? What sort of impact did these policies have on this particular dark form of human trafficking? Until this time, each year there were on average 3,000 to 3,500 people arriving on our doorstep. I remember the debate in the party room, in the parliament and in the public. It was all about how terrible the offshore processing would be—that it would undermine our obligations under refugee conventions and that it would undermine our human rights obligations. There was enormous discontent throughout the community. But what has happened? In 2002—and that was the first calendar year after the Howard government’s measures went into effect—the number of unauthorised arrivals by boat in Australia fell to zero—yes, zero. So we had, on average, over 3,000 in the previous three years—in total about 10,000 unauthorised arrivals. In 2002, the year after the new policy came into effect, there were zero. So no people struggling across the ocean were taken advantage of by people smugglers—no people putting themselves and their families at risk; no people falling prey to people smugglers—unlike the three previous years when 10,000 people did so. In 2002 there were zero. Is that because desperation throughout the world was somehow eclipsed? No. It was simply because this government put on record the fact that it would not allow people smugglers to succeed. It has been one of the most successful border protection policies of this government. It has been a marvellous achievement.

I must say, though, we do not get much credit for it—for the lives that the government saved by people not putting themselves at risk across the open seas; for saving the poor and the desperate from the clutches of people smugglers. We did not receive any gifts from the opposition, the Greens or the Democrats for that. No—we were seen as heartless. And yet, when that policy came in, there were no people placing themselves or their families at risk from people smugglers—not one in 2002. Those lower numbers mean lives were saved, because the people-smuggling criminals care not a whit about the wellbeing of their cargo. Anything that might encourage this form of human trafficking would constitute a subversion of our policy’s purposes and a perversion of its moral intent

Anyone who is the subject of persecution by their government deserves the protection of other countries. It has been a very proud record of the coalition—and, indeed, in many cases, the Australian Labor Party—of protecting those people. I cannot help but think that this country has done so much to protect refugees throughout the world since World War II. As we speak, people are being processed in refugee camps throughout the world and they will be resettled here in Australia. We do not do it because it necessarily serves our national interest in the immediate sense. We do it because it serves humanity’s interest, and it does. That is why we do it. In conclusion, the people smugglers who exploit the hopes and dreams of impoverished people are criminals, pure and simple. It is Australia’s humanitarian responsibility to do what it can to stamp out that trade, and we should do it.