Concetta Fierravanti-Wells (NSW, Liberal Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Immigration and Shadow Parliamentary Secretary Assisting the Leader in the Senate) Share this | Hansard source

I rise to speak on this matter of public importance and have to say I just cannot believe the Minister for Immigration and Citizenship’s responses again in question time today and how he persists in this assertion that really there was no deal. Everybody in Australia knows that there was a deal, but he and the Prime Minister still persist in saying black is white and in trying to spin this as much as they can. I would like to pick up on a number of points that were made in the House. The Prime Minister, in this whole sad and sorry episode in relation to what has now become the shambles of our border protection and the breakdown of immigration policy, has not been honest and upfront with the parliament and the Australian people. With the ineptitude that we have seen in the Prime Minister’s handling of the relationship with Indonesia, it is not surprising to see that the President of Indonesia’s visit to Australia was cancelled. We have seen our Prime Minister hide behind spin, weasel words and his description of what is clearly a special deal as ‘non-extraordinary’. For a prime minister who craves control to now tell us that he knew nothing about this and nothing about the terms of the deal absolutely beggars belief.

The Prime Minister and the minister rail against comments in the Australian that are supposedly critical of them—and of course the Prime Minister dismisses the Australianbut I would like to point to the now growing tide of media commentary on this matter. Dennis Shanahan in the Australian on 18 November said that the Sri Lankans ‘will disembark because they have wrung a special deal from the Rudd government’. Greg Sheridan, again in the Australian on the same day, said:

For some bizarre reason Rudd keeps saying the people on the Oceanic Viking have not got a special deal. This simply defies the ordinary meaning of language and common sense.

Paul Kelly, again on the same day, said:

He seems to think almost any line can be spun and will be believed, even when it is nonsense.

Of course, the Prime Minister has this fondness for railing against the Australian as a so-called ‘right-wing’ newspaper, so let us look at other commentary. Tony Wright in the Ageand I would hardly call the Age ‘right wing’—said:

There was no special deal for the Sri Lankans, Rudd insisted.

Which, presumably, is why the last of them were content to leave the ship yesterday after refusing to budge for more than a month.

Annabel Crabb in the Sydney Morning Herald on 18 November said:

Against this crowded palette of lunacy, it’s almost possible to overlook lesser offences against human intelligence—such as the Prime Minister’s insistence that the Sri Lankan passengers disembarking the Oceanic Viking have not received any sort of special deal.

Annabel Crabb, again, said on 19 November:

A Denialist so shameless that he can stare barefacedly back at electors and his parliamentary opponents and deny, again and again and again, that a bunch of Sri Lankans currently being processed in record-fast time in Indonesia are not in receipt of any “special deal”.

In the Prime Minister’s own state, Dennis Atkins on 19 November in the Courier-Mail stated:

THE consensus view that the Rudd Government provided a special deal for the 86 asylum seekers on the Oceanic Viking is now stronger than the much-trumpeted world scientific agreement on the causes behind climate change.

Michael Gordon on 18 November in the Age said:

The truth is that the group was offered a special deal to leave the boat …

Of course, my favourite is the ABC. I do not normally rely on the ABC and I think senators know my record as far as the ABC goes but, goodness me, Prime Minister and Minister Evans, even the ABC’s Barrie Cassidy has said, ‘Just to say there is no special deal is silly.’

Even the Financial Review on 19 November said:

Mr Rudd’s refusal to give a straight answer to opposition questions on the asylum issue follows a consistent and unattractive pattern of behaviour.

The Prime Minister is in denial. Despite everything that has been said to us by the International Office of Migration, the Indonesian ambassador, the Sri Lankan ambassador, the New Zealand Minister of Immigration and even the Australian Federal Police, this Prime Minister still persists in denying that the changes to immigration and border protection frameworks in this country have resulted in pull factors which have now resulted in the arrivals that we have seen.

My question to Minister Evans today was about the current conditions on Christmas Island. At estimates it was made very clear to us that people would be moved from Christmas Island—in fact it is probably best if I quote Mr Metcalfe directly. He said:

I think the minister has made clear that, in the hypothetical, were a person brought to Australia before a protection visa had been granted to them, it would be at the end of the processing, where they were clearly on the pathway to a protection visa …

The point that I was asking the minister about was whether what we are actually seeing on Christmas Island at the moment is because of the sheer numbers of people and the conditions on the island. The difficulties that we are now seeing—on Saturday night we had a riot involving 150 men on the island—are symptomatic of a greater problem on the island. That is, in this perceived situation—no, not even perceived—we are seeing the reality that some asylum seekers are being treated more favourably than others and this is naturally creating more tension.

What we are seeing now with the situation on Christmas Island is that we are pushing them through a lot more quickly. The minister has assured us—at estimates we had assurances—that, no, security and other checks would be dealt with to the same standard. I am not sure that that is the case, because the minister today refused to even countenance that this fast-tracking system could result in standards not being met to the levels that we expect. The reality of the situation—what we will see—is that people are going to be fast-tracked through the system. This is now going to become the norm. People will simply land and, instead of waiting on Christmas Island until towards the end of the processing, they are going to be taken off Christmas Island very quickly and onto the mainland, which will have its own consequences.

The government says, ‘Yes, but we are only talking about a number of boats.’ There have been 54 boats since the government changed its border protection policies—and over 2½ thousand arrivals is not an insubstantial number—but what does that do for the broader picture of our immigration policy. What sort of message does that send out? Of course it sends the message not just for people smugglers who bring people out here on boats, but for people smugglers who are now in the rackets in relation to bringing people here by air. Today we see this article in the Australian, titled, ‘Refugees pay $40,000 to come by plane’. The article reads:

ASYLUM-seekers are arriving in Australia by air in numbers that dwarf boat arrivals, after paying people-smugglers up to $US40,000, for a package that includes airfares, false passports and forged Australian visas.

Do you know why that is happening? It is because we have laid out the welcome mat. We have laid out the red carpet. We have said in big bold letters, ‘We have softened our borders; we have softened our immigration policy.’ Therefore, it is open slather. When you dismantle the intricate framework that had become our immigration framework which was fair but firm under the previous Howard government through a whole series of changes—and the minister comes in here day after day but he does not tell the Australian public about all the changes that have been effected throughout his department, he does not tell us about the changes that have been made across 26 programs in his department, he does not tell us about messages that have been sent through the changes and the dismantling of the detention debt system, he does not tell us about the effect of the changes of the 45-day rule which means now that people will come here on visas—lo and behold, at a particular point in time they will turn around and say, ‘I’m going to claim asylum’ and then go through the whole process. Having worked in the past and done my fair share of immigration law I have watched these cases go on for years and years, clogging up our legal system, and that is what this means. This is the deception that the Labor government is perpetrating out there in not being upfront with the Australian public about the effects the dismantling of their immigration framework will actually have on the ground.

Recently, we had reports in the press about how well informed people are in places like Sri Lanka and Afghanistan about Australia’s immigration framework. Of course they are. They probably monitor it quite closely. The more we dismantle our system, the easier we make it and the more it is going to be a much faster system and a broader legal framework to enable people to take advantage of the situation and come in. Immigration has to be about order and process. We are a country of migrants. I am the daughter of migrants to this country. But millions of migrants came to this country and they came in through the front door. They came in in an orderly and organised manner.

This debate is about order and process. It is about the breakdown of order and process. It is about people. We have a system where we have a specific number that come in during a given year. Under our humanitarian program we are very generous. But every person that jumps the queue—people who have held our government to ransom in relation to what happened on the Oceanic Vikingwill be given preferential treatment. They are being given preferential treatment.

Today we see another example of how this is a special deal: the fact that we have specialists who have been flown in to help people specifically on this. I will not go through how I have asked for a series of documents to be produced. I would really like to see if the government is actually going to produce all the documents that I have asked it to produce, because I think those documents are going to show the extent to which this government has misled the Australian public in relation to the deal that it has done and, more importantly, the extent to which the Prime Minister knew about the deal and has, through his weasel words and his hiding behind quaint language, tried to evade answering the question. Of course, Minister Evans in this chamber has done likewise. He gets upset because I ask him the same questions. Of course he gets upset, because he does not answer the questions, so I will keep asking him, because the reality is that he is not being upfront with the Australian public and he is not being upfront with the Senate, and I am going to pursue that issue until I do get straight answers.

But, of course, in the end the reality is, as I said before, what we have heard from the AFP, from the Indonesian ambassador, from the UNHCR, from the asylum seekers themselves and from the Sri Lankan Ambassador to the United Nations. That is that it is the pull factors that have resulted not only in what is now a growing number—we have had 54 boats and over 2½ thousand people since the government dismantled its border protection framework—but in the fact that we are now seeing that increasingly we are going to get people coming in by plane and paying people smugglers for similar packages—the difference being that it is now US$15,000 by boat and US$40,000 by plane. So, if you can pay that, you will jump the queue.