Michael Ronaldson (Victoria, Liberal Party, Shadow Special Minister of State and Scrutiny of Government Waste) Share this | Hansard source

Speaking on the Anti-People Smuggling and Other Measures Bill 2010, it is difficult to decide which is the greater concern—the complete collapse of Australia’s border protection system or the Prime Minister’s bald faced attempt to deny the undeniable. The Prime Minister has spent the past 21 months trying to squirm his way out of the corner into which his failed immigration policy has painted him. But while the Prime Minister can run he surely cannot hide. The vain efforts by the Rudd government to duck responsibility for the asylum seeker debacle have long since passed from the realm of the ridiculous into the arena of the absolutely absurd. There are some things that are beyond the media black magic of even the Prime Minister’s battalion of spin merchants. Not even the steamroller tactics of Kevin Rudd’s press office can rewrite objective history. The record is clear beyond all reasonable dispute.

With much fanfare, the Minister for Immigration and Citizenship, Chris Evans, on 29 July 2008 announced a series of radical changes to Australia’s migration policy. The minister proudly proclaimed:

The Rudd Labor government will reform our immigration detention policies and the treatment of asylum seekers in a way that reflects the compassion and tolerance of the Australian community.

So the Rudd government abolished the detention of asylum seekers on Nauru—the so-called Pacific solution. Then Labor passed legislation that erased the debts imposed by the Commonwealth on those whose asylum claims were found to be without merit. The end result of this policy shift was as inevitable as it was predictable. Once again, people began to set sail in leaky, ramshackle boats and, once again, people began to die at sea.

The figures speak for themselves. The statistics provided by the Department of Immigration and Citizenship tell a story so clear it is crystal. During the years of coalition government, a strong deterrent border protection regime cut the influx of illegal immigrant vessels from a torrent to a trickle. During the 2007-08 financial year—the last before the Rudd government changed policy—only three boats, carrying 25 illegal migrants, arrived in Australian waters. But from August 2008 to the present date we have seen 122 boats carrying 5,624 people intercepted by our naval and Customs authorities. Just this Monday we saw two more boats arrive, bringing the total number since the beginning of 2010 to 54 vessels.

Because of this, the Christmas Island detention centre is overflowing, so the Rudd government is now spending $1.2 million to house 79 asylum seekers in a four-star hotel in Brisbane. I wonder what the 100,000 homeless Australians who are doing it hard on the streets every night think about that. $1.2 million to house 79 asylum seekers in a four-star hotel in Brisbane. On the streets of Australia tonight we will have homeless people, homeless Australians, sitting back and watching a government spend $1.2 million to house 79 illegal immigrants. The priorities of this government are highly questionable and should be questioned by the Australian community.

It is a simple fact of nature—one that the Prime Minister seems unable to grasp—that if you water down the deterrent against a particular behaviour you will get more of it. More is precisely what we now face in the form of an upsurge in illegal immigration vessels that began almost immediately after the Prime Minister emasculated Australia’s border protection regime. Labor sent a signal to the people smugglers and their clients that Australia is open for business. News that Australia was once again worth a go began to circulate through the global refugee grapevine and legions of illegal immigrants and asylum seekers responded by placing their lives at risk in rickety rust buckets that I would not take on a crossing of the Yarra much less on a high seas voyage. The people smugglers have become so brazen they now set sail directly for Christmas Island, aware it will be their destination anyway.

But equally as brazen has been the Labor government’s refusal to admit the obvious—that this entire debacle is a direct result of its failed immigration policy. Mr Rudd persists in his lame effort to defend the indefensible. He would have us believe that this massive increase in immigration has nothing to do with his gutting of Australian border protection. Sorry, Prime Minister, but, as opposed to the stream of spin spewing forth from your office, dates and numbers do not lie. Again, I will quote the statistics. From only three boats carrying a mere 25 people between 1 July 2007 and 30 June 2008—the last fiscal year the coalition was in government—the seaborne influx of illegal migrants has exploded over the past 20 months to reach 122 vessels bearing over 5,624 persons. As I said earlier, there have been 54 boats this year alone.

The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees does not lie either. Back in March, a representative of the UNHCR provided an interview to the Australian that completely undercut the Rudd government’s ongoing work of fiction on this issue. The UN official commented that the special deal cut by the Rudd government to defuse the Oceanic Viking crisis:

… was a form of queue-jumping … it was a bad practice. There are Sri Lankan refugees who have been sitting in Indonesia for some time. When you are faced with an emergency and have people demanding resettlement, the (UNHCR’s) position is you should not give in to that because it does give an incentive for people to try this irregular movement.

The UNHCR’s position is that you should not give into that, because it gives an incentive for people to try this irregular movement. There you have it straight from the mouth of the global expert on immigration who is commenting on how the Prime Minister’s special deal for illegal immigrants on the Oceanic Viking allowed them to play the system and win. The triumph of the Oceanic Viking illegals sent a clear message to the legions of aspiring boat people throughout the world. It confirmed once and for all that if you can outlast this wishy-washy Labor government your entry ticket into Australia is assured.

When the timing and extent of this radical upsurge are taken into account there can only be one rational explanation. Under the false banner of a fairer and more humane policy Kevin Rudd’s penchant for moral posturing led him to gut the coalition’s strong deterrent policy against illegal migrants. The people smugglers and their clients rightly interpreted ‘fairer and more humane’ to mean ‘weaker and less rigorous’. The announcement of Labor’s changes to the Australian asylum seeker policy in 2008 triggered the onset of an illegal immigration crisis that shows no signs of abating. It was all done in order that the Prime Minister and his ministers can pat each other on the back and tell each other how morally righteous they are.

I wonder how many people will have to lose their lives in rickety, unseaworthy boats before the Prime Minister and his immigration minister will admit the obvious. It will be more than a few, I fear, because the Prime Minister is in a state of denial. Like a cat up a tree the Prime Minister has climbed so far out on a limb that he is unwilling to make a backwards move. Rather than lose a little political face the Prime Minister prefers that people continue to jeopardise their lives in ramshackle boats on the high seas. This is crass political cynicism at its worst. This is nothing more than crude political calculation garbed in the empty guise of high-minded moral rhetoric that endangers the lives of people less fortunate than us.

The bill we are debating at present is just another fig leaf that the Rudd government is attempting to drape over the tattered rag of their immigration policy. It is just the latest in a series of ill-conceived bills and measures motivated more by election year panic than by rational policy. We have already seen the arbitrary decision by the Rudd government to impose a moratorium on asylum applications from Afghanistan and Sri Lanka. While the questionable legality of this policy will be ultimately tested in the courts one thing is certain: it has not worked. The boats have continued to come. And now we see this bill, the Anti-People Smuggling and Other Measures Bill 2010, which is more of an attempt to immunise the Rudd government from political criticism than to come to honest grips with the problems caused by Labor’s botched policy.

It is not that the coalition is opposed to harsher penalties for people smugglers, I hasten to add—far from it. A tough criminal justice policy is a central pillar of Liberal faith. People smuggling is a vile trade that exploits the hopes and fears of people who are at their most vulnerable. Longer prison terms alone will not quash the people-smuggling trade any more than they quash the drug-smuggling trade. As long as there is demand for the services of people smugglers there will always be those willing to provide it. As the coalition demonstrated during its time in government, the only way to address this problem effectively is to make Australia an unattractive destination for asylum seekers who have the money and motivation to jump the queue by taking to the seas. Australia is a ‘field of dreams’ for millions of poor and oppressed people throughout the world. Like the movie of the same name, if you build it they will come. The problem is that the policy the Prime Minister has built is ill-conceived and dangerous.

We are indeed the lucky country and we have a moral obligation to provide refuge to those who are suffering from oppression and persecution. But the 13,000-plus humanitarian visas that Australia grants each year should be allocated on the basis of need rather than nerve. Our help should go to those who are most deserving, not to those who have the financial means to cut corners and the mindset to cheat the process.

The Prime Minister’s botched border protection policy can be added to the growing list of disasters and debacles that Labor has inflicted upon Australia over the past 2½ years such as the home insulation debacle; the rort ridden school construction program; and the massive debt burden Kevin Rudd’s profligate spending has loaded onto the backs of taxpayers. The damage inflicted on Australia by this bevy of Labor incompetence extends beyond squandered millions. The government has also cost lives. I view the behaviour of the government on this policy as probably one of the worst derelictions of responsibility from any government in recent history. This change of policy was premised not on the back of concerns for this country and not on the back of legitimate concerns about what an appropriate border protection policy is. It was on the back of a series of statements and comments by the present government prior to and immediately post the last election. It was designed only for crass political purposes. I suppose you have to acknowledge that, in that regard, it has been spectacularly successful.

I again ask the question, as I have asked it time after time in this place and indeed in the other place many years ago: what responsibilities does this government have to those people who do not have the money or, as I said earlier, the nerve to come to this country? What about those people the UNHCR were talking about who have been waiting their turn legitimately in Indonesia and elsewhere? On what basis does this government, if they are running a line that this is a humanitarian response to an issue, justify their actions on the back of a so-called humanitarian response? What is humanitarian about providing a change of policy which allows people to break the law?