George Brandis (Queensland, Liberal Party, Shadow Attorney-General) Share this | Hansard source

The purpose of this bill, the Anti-People Smuggling and Other Measures Bill 2010, is to deter people smuggling, to expand ASIO’s charter to include border security issues and to make related amendments to the Telecommunications (Interception and Access) Act 1979. The bill makes amendments to the Criminal Code and the Migration Act to increase the sanctions applicable to people smuggling; to the ASIO Act to include the protection of Australia’s territorial and border integrity from serious threats within ASIO’s statutory charter; to the Telecommunications (Interception and Access) Act and the Surveillance Devices Act to include people smuggling within the definition of a serious offence and thus permit the use of these tools to investigate allegations of people smuggling; and to align the definition of ‘foreign intelligence’ in the Telecommunications (Interception and Access) Act with the definition of that term in the Intelligence Services Act.

In relation to criminal sanctions, the amendments will create a new offence of providing material support or resources towards a people-smuggling venture; establish in the Migration Act an aggravated offence of people smuggling which involves exploitation or danger of death or serious harm; and apply mandatory minimum penalties of eight years imprisonment with a non-parole period of five years—the maximum penalty being 20 years or $220,000 or both—to the new aggravated offences and to multiple offences. The offence of providing material support does not apply to a person who pays smugglers to facilitate their own passage or that of a family member to Australia.

The fact that the bill recognises people smuggling as a serious threat to Australia’s territorial and border integrity—and therefore a national security threat—demonstrates by the government’s own admission the systemic failure of the Rudd government to confront the problem of people smuggling. These measures, which the opposition will not oppose, are piecemeal measures that have been brought forward by a government which found a solution and created a problem. Let it never be forgotten that, at the time the Rudd government was elected—two and half years ago—the people-smuggling problem had largely been solved. The arrival on Australia’s shores—and particularly on our north-western shores and on Australian offshore islands—of unlawful entrants whose passage is facilitated by people smugglers has been a problem in Australian history from time to time throughout our lifetimes. The problem grew acute in the late 1980s and in the 1990s—so acute that the then Howard government made a decision to take strong measures to stop the problem, to protect Australia’s borders, to secure our territorial integrity and, therefore, to protect our national security. Those strong measures—which my colleagues have described—were introduced by the Howard government in 2001. They followed, I might say, strong measures that had been introduced by a previous Labor government, during the Hawke-Keating period, including the policy of mandatory detention.

But it was the Howard government that got the mix right. From a crescendo of unlawful arrivals in 2000, the introduction of tougher-still policies by the Howard government in 2001 fixed the problem because it did the one thing no previous policy had ever done: it denied the people smugglers the capacity to sell a service to their clients. It denied the people smugglers the capacity to say to their clients: ‘We will guarantee you arrival on Australia’s shores. We will guarantee that you will be able to avail yourselves of Australia’s refugee assessment system, from which you are highly likely to receive a favourable outcome’. It took away from the people smugglers the capacity to sell that product.

What happened as a result? As a result, the people-smuggling trade died. This evil trade which plays dice with the lives of innocent men, women and children died. The number of unlawful boat arrivals from 2001 when the tough measures were introduced to 2008 when the tough measures were abandoned in a gesture of faux compassion—not real compassion—by the Rudd Labor government fell to approximately three per year.

Since the reversal of the Howard government’s policies in September 2008, the number of unlawful arrivals—the number of men, women and children whose lives are put at risk on the high seas between Indonesia and the north-west coast of Australia—has crept steadily and remorselessly upward so that now, in May 2010, an average so far of one unlawful boat every two days has sought to penetrate Australia’s borders. What a reversal from an average of three per year, or fewer than one every 100 days for nearly a decade because the previous policies worked, to a situation today in which we have approximately one unauthorised boat arrival every two days.

But it gets worse, because that rate of arrival is itself escalating. We have just been through the monsoon season—the season when, because of the turbulent weather and sea conditions in the Timor Sea, people smugglers are less inclined to seek to make the voyage to Australia. As anybody familiar with this area of policy knows, it is during the winter months that the numbers tend to spike. We are just going into the winter months now. If during what might be called the low season for people smuggling in the early months of the year the number of unauthorised attempted boat arrivals has escalated to one every two days, heaven alone knows what it is likely to be in the months ahead when the waters are calmer.

There have been 5,762 illegal arrivals in Australia since the Rudd Labor government weakened Australia’s border protection regime. In this financial year, since 1 July 2009, there have been 4,723 arrivals. That is 13 per cent greater than in any previous financial year in our history and, of course, this financial year still has more than six weeks to go.

As my friend Senator Ronaldson has said, the result of the government’s attempt to strike a compassionate pose by weakening the Howard government’s tough but successful border protection policies has been to relegate to the back of the queue thousands of deserving people who do not have the money to pay people smugglers US$10,000 or US$15,000 to secure a passage—people who are not prepared to put their own or their wife’s or their children’s lives in peril on the high seas to secure a passage to Australia, people who are not prepared to break Australian law in order to seek to enter our country unlawfully. Those thousands upon thousands of people waiting in refugee camps for a humanitarian entrance visa into Australia have been pushed to the back of the queue.

That is yet another reason why the so-called compassion of the Rudd government is so phoney. It is such a gesture. It is such an exhibition of moral vanity. It is supposed to be compassionate by authoring a policy which puts lives at risk, which encourages people to sell themselves and their families into the hands of people smugglers and to put their own and their family’s lives at risk, and at the same time punishes genuine impoverished refugees who are prepared to wait, obey Australian law and have their claim for humanitarian entry assessed in the proper way.

In 2008-09, the most recent financial year, Australia granted 13,507 humanitarian entry visas, of which 11,010 were granted to offshore applicants. In 2009-10, the current financial year, the refugee and humanitarian program has 13,750 places allocated, of which the offshore component is 6,000 people and the onshore component is 7,750 people. That ratio reflects the early and immediate response to the government’s policy change. The onshore component, which includes illegal entrants who made their way to Australia and sought to have their claims assessed within Australian territory, tripled, and the offshore component halved. Those entering the country illegally by boat were directly responsible for squeezing out more than 5,000 offshore applicants.

The coalition makes no apology for its belief that one of the elementary obligations of a national government is to keep the nation’s borders secure. Because Australia is a maritime nation and all of our international borders are maritime borders, we make no apology whatsoever for demanding and, when we had the opportunity to do so in government, for implementing tough and strong policies to deter people from embarking on unlawful voyages to Australia and to apprehend them and seek to return them when they did. That is entirely appropriate for a maritime nation which takes the task of protecting its own borders seriously. There is an issue of sovereignty here. A nation without the capacity or the willingness to protect its own borders sends a signal to the world that its borders are permeable, its national security is compromised and, in a profound way, it is incapable of defending itself. So there is an issue of principle and an issue of international law here.

There is also, as I have said—and as Senator Ronaldson said and Senator Bernardi said—an issue of real humanitarianism. How could we possibly countenance, as a civilised, liberal democracy, a set of policies which implicitly condone the conduct of people smugglers by giving them a tradeable commodity that they can sell to people with the wherewithal to pay their fee and secure this risky package? How could we as a civilised nation do that, knowing that it puts lives at risk and that it pushes genuine refugees who are prepared to observe Australia’s laws to the back of the queue? During the period of the Howard government, after that government toughened the policies in 2001, this problem was, for all practical purposes, solved. What happened in those years? The number of humanitarian entrants processed offshore in the orthodox fashion rose. Of those people in Australia today who have been in the desperate circumstances of being refugees, more of them have found a new home in this land as a result of the Howard government’s policies than as a result of the Rudd government’s weakened, new, falsely compassionate policies.

The year 2002, the first year after the Howard government toughened the policies, was a year of significant international turmoil. It was just after the 9-11 terrorist attacks and the invasion of Afghanistan. The Sri Lankan civil war was intermittently in full flight or in temporary ceasefire. Yet in 2002-03, not one boat arrived in Australia—not one—despite those so-called ‘push factors’. In 2003-04, there were three boat arrivals; in 2004-05, there were no boat arrivals; in 2005-06, there were eight boat arrivals; in 2006-07 there were four boat arrivals; and in 2007-08—within the time of the Rudd government but before the government weakened the policies—there were just three boat arrivals. In six years there were 18 boat arrivals, notwithstanding the turbulent international circumstances which elevated the push factors from both West Asia and South Asia. Yet look at the pass we have come to now as a result of the Rudd government’s catastrophic policy failure.

As I have said, the opposition do realise that this is a very, very serious policy crisis and the Australian national interest does need to be protected. For that reason, we will not oppose these measures but we regret the weakness of will, the cowardice and the policy confusion which necessitated these measures in the first place.

Presumably, one of the consequences of this legislation is that ASIO will need to be better resourced. Therefore, it must be asked what effect the expansion of its charter will have on its existing functions. In last night’s budget not only was there no new funding for ASIO but the agency was asked to find another $15 million beyond the efficiency dividend in so-called ‘efficiencies’ over the forward estimates. The Treasurer announced last night that the Rudd government has also slashed funding to the Australian Customs and Border Protection Service with a further $146.3 million of cuts over the next four years. Of the $1.2 billion announced in the budget last night to deal with border security, the government is actually denying resources to front-line agencies, including the very agency, ASIO, whose powers are being expanded tonight by this legislation to deal with this problem of the Rudd government’s own creation.

The opposition accepts that the amendments in this legislation are necessary. For that reason we will not oppose them. But we lament and regret the fact that they were necessary in the first place, as the direct result of confusion, cowardice and failure by the Rudd Labor government.