David Feeney (Victoria, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

This is the third occasion in recent weeks that I have had the opportunity to rise in this place and speak about opposition motions of this kind. The wording of all these motions has been much the same and that reflects the fact that the political motivation underpinning them is exactly the same: they are all trying to extract some cheap political advantage from the issue of asylum seekers. Once again, we all understand exactly what this is about: this is yet another pathetic attempt by those opposite to divert attention from Malcolm Turnbull’s weak and discredited leadership and from the opposition’s deep and continuing divisions over critical issues of policy. Once again the opposition is trying the oldest and the dirtiest scare tactic available in Australian politics, the tactic of whipping up fear about immigration as a diversion from the deep policy divisions that split their own ranks.

Senator Fierravanti-Wells described the government’s position with respect to border protection as an absolute shemozzle. I will give her at least one thing: she is equipped to know a shemozzle when she sees one because she works in the midst of one, and that of course is the parliamentary Liberal Party. Even for an opposition that has got itself into as deep a political mess as that one over there, this is nonetheless indicative of a cheapening and coarsening sense of the Australian body politic and what makes for good political discourse. Making appeals, whether overt or covert, to racism and xenophobia is always a dangerous and dirty tactic. It has a long and discredited history in Australian politics. Until recently we thought we had seen the end of this tactic, but desperate times have called for desperate measures amongst those opposite and sadly this was not the case. This is apparently an opposition which cannot see a gutter without clinging to it in the event of its own political catastrophe.

Once again we have seen Senator Fierravanti-Wells cling to the language of queue jumping, so it is important in the first instance to have a look at some of the key facts that are germane to this debate. With respect to the Oceanic Viking, a vessel filled with refugees sent out a distress signal while it was in international waters. Notwithstanding the fact that they were in international waters, they were within what is internationally understood to be the Indonesian safety and rescue zone, so of course it was the responsibility of the Indonesian authorities to seek to provide assistance to that vessel consistent with the conventions of the sea. By virtue of the fact that an Australian naval asset was closer to the point of crisis than what Indonesia was able to offer, we received a request from the Indonesian government to provide assistance, and of course we did so. No-one opposite has yet been brave enough to get up and suggest we should have done anything else, but they have on occasions been on the cusp of doing just that.

So we are not talking here about queue jumping. We are talking here about the fact that asylum seekers rescued at sea in the Indonesian safety and rescue zone were returned to Indonesian waters and an Indonesian port by an Australian vessel. Fundamentally, what we have here is a situation where Australia has done everything it could, should and must do in these kinds of circumstances: respond to a request from a friend and ally, respond to a distress signal at sea and conform with the standards that are appropriate to a seafaring nation like ours. Those are the facts. Notwithstanding those facts, those opposite are determined to whip up frenzy and fear. Senator Fierravanti-Wells said immigration is about order and process, and she is right. It is about order and process, but it is about some other things too. It is about conducting ourselves in a manner that does honour to our nation and it is about treating people humanely and fairly. Labor offers a policy in the immigration sphere which provides not only process and order but also humane and proper treatment of asylum seekers.

We are not surprised that the opposition are persisting with this desperate, grubby, divisive tactic, because their political fortunes are at a very low ebb, and I fear this is the only issue that remains in the cupboard that unites them. On every other important question being debated in the Senate, those opposite cannot come forward with a unified position. This is the one debate on which they can offer up a common front, because they are united by fear and they are united by a sense that their tactics will repeat their 2001 victory. This is what an opposition does when it has nothing else it can talk about because of its own internal divisions. They do not have anything to say to us about the economy. They abandoned the debt debate that they so woefully commenced earlier this year. They do not have anything to say to us about climate change. We know how hopelessly split they are on the question of how to deal with it in policy terms and how to deal with it in political terms. The opposition do not have anything to say to us about workplace relations. Their Work Choices remains a shame they dare not discuss. They do not have anything to say to us about infrastructure. The Liberals remain deeply divided on all of these critical questions and they have a leadership which is now too weak to wander into their party room and play a leadership role. They have a multitude of spokespersons giving different policy positions on everything. This really is the only debate left to those opposite, the last debate left to a discredited opposition.

This week, for instance, the Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme Bill will be coming back to the Senate. We are only a few weeks away from the Copenhagen climate change summit. Australia has seen an intense debate about this issue now for the last three years at least, yet the opposition still have not got to first base on this issue, the most important issue facing Australian legislators today. Those opposite cannot even decide if climate change is real. They cannot even reach an agreed position about whether it is anthropogenic. They cannot even agree whether there should be action on climate change. Mr Turnbull, Ms Bishop and Mr Hunt say that there should be action on climate change but, lo and behold, Senator Minchin told us on Four Corners last week that climate change is all just a left-wing conspiracy. Make up your minds and devote yourselves to the task of making up your minds so that you do not keep wandering into this place with these cheapened tactics on immigration and bashing asylum seekers. It does you no credit, it does this Senate no credit and it does Australian politics no credit.

Senator Minchin is now openly dissenting from the position taken by Mr Turnbull and is openly undermining his leader. I used to think those opposite were just determined obstructionists of the Rudd government and of our mandate to govern, but I was wrong. They are not just determined obstructionists of the Rudd government in the House of Representatives. They are determined obstructionists of their own opposition leader in the House of Representatives. The Senate Liberal Party team have exited the base—left the building—and are now roaming the halls of this place completely unguided. That is the kind of opposition we now have to deal with. We can barely work with them; Malcolm Turnbull has abandoned the task. We are now trying to negotiate in good faith with the opposition on the CPRS Bill while many prominent senators opposite insist that, even if we were to agree in those negotiations, they would be unable to support the bill. This is a party that cannot even agree on the basic scientific question of whether climate change is real or not.

The opposition would rather talk about anything but the real issues facing Australia today, and that is why we are talking about this motion today. They know that their opposition to the government’s measures to protect Australia from the effects of the global financial crisis was a mistake and that it has been proved wrong by subsequent events and the continuing economic data that pours into this place. They know that their decision to vote against our national building infrastructure and schools modernisation programs was a terrible mistake. That is why opposition senators can still be seen at the photo opportunities and the launches and will still try and make their way into the ribbon-cutting sessions, notwithstanding the fact that they opposed those measures here. They are getting that message from their own electorates every day. They know how fearful their fate will be at the next election, and that is why they cling to this raft with far more desperation than an asylum seeker does.

They know that their inability to develop a coherent policy on climate change is causing great anger in the business community because the stability and certainty the business community look for from Australian legislators and regulators is impossible while those opposite remain the unguided missiles that they are. They know that on all of these important issues they are out of touch, out of step and out of tune with the Australian people and even with their own supporters. That is why the opposition is so keen to take up the Senate’s time with these endless, repetitive, silly motions on asylum seekers, the one issue remaining in the pantheon that you can find agreement on—or mostly.

But, since the opposition wants to talk yet again about asylum seekers, we on this side are very happy to do so. We are not in the least embarrassed about this issue, on which we have a strong record, a record we are proud of—a record of strong border protection combined with a sensible and pragmatic understanding of what is required in this field. We will treat people with dignity and in a manner consistent with our international obligations. We will not engage in the sort of meaningless brutalities that so often punctuated your time in office.

When we came to office, we found nothing less than a policy mess in this sphere. We found a policy of dumping asylum seekers on remote islands with great political fanfare, detaining them for months or years under very harsh conditions and then quietly allowing most of them to settle in Australia when the heat had died down. That is right: we found a policy of giving asylum seekers these temporary protection visas, which those opposite trumpet as such a policy success and as the great deterrent, yet when we look at this great deterrent that TPVs allegedly were we see that in fact 90 per cent of those people given TPVs were eventually allowed to settle in Australia—that is to say, TPVs not only were not a deterrent but were a completely useless instrument. They did not do anything that other instruments could not do. We found a policy of secret deals with previous Indonesian regimes, as the former foreign minister, Mr Downer, confirmed in his usual smug way in an interview just recently. These secret deals left thousands of people in limbo in Indonesia, waiting years to be processed and for a determination to be made about their status. So, before you get too unctuous with the government about the so-called Indonesian solution, take a careful look at your own performance in this area.

The opposition likes to boast that the cynical, opportunistic mishmash of a policy pursued by the Howard government deterred people smugglers and eliminated the unauthorised arrival of asylum seekers by boat into Australian waters. It is a myth and it is a nonsense. There was a fall-off in boat arrivals between 2001 and 2005, but that can be clearly attributed to international events, most spectacularly the invasion of Afghanistan at the end of 2001, with the subsequent repatriation of millions of Afghan refugees living in camps in Pakistan and Iran, and of course the overthrow of Saddam Hussein’s regime in Iraq. These had far more to do with Australian statistics in those years than any of the grandstanding that was attempted by the Prime Minister of the time. But in 2005, as the security situation in Afghanistan and Iraq deteriorated, the number of refugees from these countries began to increase again. From 2007 this trend was reinforced by the upsurge in fighting in the civil war in Sri Lanka, which culminated in the conquest of the Tamil areas by the Sri Lankan Army earlier this year.

Senator Fierravanti-Wells quoted with great glee the utterances of the Sri Lankan Ambassador to the UN, who of course was proclaiming that pull factors were a critical factor in the decision of Sri Lankan asylum seekers to make their way here. Let us try to add some important facts to this debate. Fact 1: it is a tiny fraction of Sri Lankan asylum seekers who make their way to Australia. We can see statistically that the vast majority of them are moving elsewhere, into India, Pakistan, Europe and Canada. But did you expect the Sri Lankan Ambassador to the UN to say anything else? Did you imagine that the Sri Lankan ambassador would have declared that push factors were the critical issue and that the conflict zone had generated asylum seekers? Of course not. You are quoting a government representative defending his own government. Congratulations. But, as a debating point in this place, it is useless.

The opposition keeps trying to argue that the rise in boat arrivals followed the changes that this government made and was therefore caused by them, but this government was elected in late 2007 and our changes were made in 2008. The rise in arrivals, however, began in 2005. It has taken place independently of changes in policy in Australia and it is consistent with the enormous rise in asylum seekers around the world—a rise of which we and our shores have seen only the tiniest fragment. But that has not dissuaded those opposite from trying to make a political meal out of it.