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

You can have the opportunity to respond, to put your view forward here, and you can say: ‘Yes, our border protection measures are 100 per cent right. Everything’s going fine and dandy.’ I can tell you, Senator Evans—through you, Mr Acting Deputy President Hutchins—that the Australian public do not think so. They are not happy pumpkins. They are worried. They are concerned about the numbers and the fact that our borders seem out of control. Senator Evans knows that. He knows that the government changed the policy in 2008 and, as a result, there has been a surge in the number of boat people seeking asylum who are coming to this country. There has been an average of three boats per week under the Rudd Labor government. They are the facts. Let him deny them and let’s see what he says about them, because we have the research. It is in the report. It has been referred to, I have tabled it, and there is a library research document which confirms the matter. It seems to me that the government are saying one thing and doing another.

Why shouldn’t the people in that community express concern? Apparently they had no notice of it or advice about it. Senator Brandis asked a question about this yesterday and Senator Evans’s responses in question time were very disappointing indeed. He was saying: ‘This is inappropriate and unfair. This occurred under the Howard government, and why should the people in the local community be advised?’ I think he has it wrong. I think they should be advised and communicated with, including local authorities such as local law enforcement agencies. They should be and they need to be. They are acting as if nothing ever happened in terms of the communication process. We would like a full explanation as to exactly what the situation is and how that could have happened.

I am not going to spend a lot of time on it today, but the fact is that Christmas Island is at boiling point. It appears as though this government have the red carpet out and are saying, ‘Come on down and come on in.’ The boats are arriving just off Christmas Island—not that far away. Now the surge has occurred to the degree that Christmas Island is overflowing. The government’s policy said ‘offshore processing’ but the fact is that that is now not the case. They have done a backflip.

Even the local member in Darwin has been commenting. In the NT News yesterday there was an article that said:

Darwin’s immigration detention centre is already over capacity just weeks after it started housing asylum seekers.

Goodness me! How do the people of Darwin feel about that? The article says:

The Northern Detention Centre has an operating capacity of 382 people.

But the centre has been forced to go into ‘surge’ capacity—offering a further 164 beds—to cater for the 430 detainees who reside there.

The fact is: it is out of control. This government have no idea what they are doing and how they are doing it. Their mismanagement of the whole immigration policy is an example of putting the cart before the horse, and it is very disappointing.

The report also says:

The Federal Government announced last month it would transfer detainees to the mainland after Christmas Island reached capacity.

That is exactly my point: this is another government broken promise. Of course, it is on the back of the ETS, the ‘great moral issue of our time’, and the backflip on that and other broken promises, whether they be GROCERYchoice or Fuelwatch, or whether they be the GP superclinics, of which there are only three that are fully operational. What a joke: they have announced extra phantom GPs superclinics—I think that makes 59 in total—when there are only three that are fully operational. That was a promise before the last election. There have been so many broken promises.