Catryna Bilyk (Tasmania, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I will try again. I understand why there might have been a point of order taken, because I do not think the opposition really want to hear this—they do not want to know what the true facts are. Once again, they are being malicious and fearmongering and completely disingenuous with regard to the UNHCR figures. The data that the opposition immigration spokesman, Scott Morrison, is using, is actually from an incomplete UNHCR report. We need the opposition to learn to deal with facts—to read their reports and make sure they understand them—and to make sure that they are not just fearmongering, trying to scare people. I will get to the reason they are trying to do that in a moment.

That UNHCR report was not published on the 15th, and final figures for asylum applications in 2009 were still to be determined. But that did not stop the opposition. We know that what they really want to do is reintroduce the disgraced ‘Pacific solution’ to detain asylum seekers. In a radio interview with 2GB on 2 February, the opposition’s immigration spokesman, Scott Morrison, said:

We have no problem with finding alternative offshore detention arrangements, whether that’s in another country or within another excised Australian territory. The government has said no to that. I mean, that’s what they should have been doing for the last six months when they knew that the boats were surging. They should have been looking for an alternative offshore destination, as we did—we had Nauru and Manus.

Under John Howard’s so-called Pacific solution, 1,637 people, including 452 children, were packed off to Nauru and Manus Island, where the average length of stay was 501 days, or approximately one and a third years. This is what the opposition want to do again. The longest length of stay was 1,958 days—more than five years. The opposition ought to be ashamed of themselves for that issue alone. Of the 1,637 people detained in the Nauru and Manus facilities, 1,153, or 70 per cent, were ultimately resettled in Australia or another country. Of those, 705 were resettled in Australia.

The Howard government’s Pacific solution was condemned internationally and did nothing to foster regional cooperation on people-smuggling or promote international cooperation on providing protection to refugees. In its submission to the Senate Legal and Constitutional Legislation Committee on the Migration Amendment (Designated Unauthorised Arrivals) Bill, the UNHCR expressed concern that the Pacific solution detracted from Australia’s international responsibilities. But we do not hear the opposition mentioning that at all—‘No, we’ll just forget; we’ll go back to scaremongering.’ Why can’t they get their facts right? It is beyond belief that they come in here and try to scare people.

Their latest claim, as I said, uses selective data and ignores the truth about their own record. The highest number of boat arrivals on record came under John Howard’s Liberal government in 2001, when 5,516 people arrived in 43 boats.