Christopher Back (WA, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

The point that was made in my presentation was that the spouse of one of those people had already been denied access and she was on the vessel at that time.

I conclude with the observation that Australia is a very, very generous country when it comes to accepting refugees. It is my understanding that we are only second to Canada on a per capita basis in our acceptance of refugees. The point has been made and laboured, and has to be made yet again: for every person who comes in through the back door, who fails to apply to come Australia as a refugee in the normal way and who is accepted into this country, there is a person who has been a legitimate applicant waiting in a refugee camp elsewhere in the world actually being up for a longer period of time.

When I first came into this place there was derision from those on the other side about the amount of money that the Howard government had spent on Christmas Island—derision of that fact because at that time there was no great need. What do we see now? We see not only Christmas Island overfilled with asylum seekers but also a cost which will surely be blowing out. I think from last night’s budget, if I am correct, another $1 billion has been allocated to this whole exercise; yet the scenario continues that little action is being taken at the root cause—not attacking sufficiently the very people smugglers who are the genesis of this whole program.