Guy Barnett (Tasmania, Liberal Party, Chairman of the Scrutiny of Government Waste Committee) Share this | Hansard source

I stand on this side of the chamber to support the Anti-People Smuggling and Other Measures Bill 2010 and to also concur and associate my remarks with those of Senator Back, Senator Cash and other coalition senators who have expressed their extreme concern about the way that the government is handling the boat people and the immigration system, and the fact that it appears based on all the evidence available that the government has simply mismanaged this situation, which is basically bordering on being out of control.

Before I talk more broadly about some of those concerns, I want to commend the bill before us, and refer to the technical and administrative reforms and recommendations made to this bill by the government and to the Senate Legal and Constitutional Affairs Legislation Committee report tabled just a few weeks ago. As the deputy chair of that committee, the coalition senators support the amendments that improve and streamline the federal government’s approach to anti-people-smuggling legislative efforts.

The bill before us amends the Migration Act to create new people-smuggling offences and harmonises the existing offences. It broadens the role of ASIO in gathering intelligence on people smuggling and other serious threats to border security. It increases the powers of law enforcement agencies to utilise surveillance devices and telecommunications intercept devices, and it expands ASIO’s powers to utilise telecommunications interceptions to collect foreign intelligence. There is a recommendation regarding the latter in the Senate report.

I thank the committee secretariat for the support in pulling this report together and the other members of the committee, including my fellow coalition senator, Senator Parry, and also the participating member, Senator Trood, on this occasion. We noted article 6 of the people-smuggling protocol. It does require state parties to criminalise people smuggling when it is committed intentionally and in order to obtain a financial or material benefit. We looked at article 19 of the protocol, which clarifies that the protocol is not intended to affect the responsibilities of states under the 1951 United Nations Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees, and we looked at the Bali process which kicked off in 2002, around the time of the Bali bombings.

I will come to the extent of people smuggling in a moment. It is a very, very serious issue and this is why, it seems to me, the government is out of kilter and the whole immigration system seems to be out of control. We noted in the budget last night that they plan to spend an extra billion dollars to try to alleviate some of the concerns, and that just confirms again, in my view—and I think in the view of many others—that the government has not got its act together. In terms of the recommendations in the Senate committee report, the coalition do support the reforms to expand the roles and achieve the objectives as we have indicated. There is a recommendation regarding foreign intelligence warrants, and that is recommendation 1, which states:

… that the proposed definition of ‘foreign intelligence’ in subsection 5(1) of the TIA Act should be amended to ensure that ASIO can obtain foreign intelligence warrants in relation to the activities of foreign nationals who are in Australia.

Now I want to come to the fact that the way in which our borders are being managed and mismanaged is out of control. It was confirmed last night in the House of Representatives, as I said, that the government plan to spend an extra billion dollars to try to fix the problem. It is a problem of their own making. The issue of waste and mismanagement is supreme. It is at the highest order. We had the pink batts fiasco where we saw—and confirmed in the budget last night—a billion dollars of taxpayers’ money go down the chute to try to fix that program.