Louise Pratt (WA, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I welcome the opportunity to speak on this matter of public importance. However, I regret that the coalition have yet again demonstrated their utter inability to take a reasoned and credible approach to this issue. It is an issue of great concern to many Australians, an issue which affects the lives of some of the most vulnerable people on this planet and an issue that has significant implications for how our nation is perceived internationally, particularly by our regional neighbours.

As I have said previously in this place, this is an issue that confronts all developed nations and to which no nation is immune. Senators in this place should be well aware of this fact, but as some on the other side do not appear to have taken note of it, let me repeat the statistics for them. We know that worldwide 380,000 asylum claims were lodged in industrialised countries in 2009. The United States was the single largest recipient of such claims; it received nearly 50,000 and Canada received over 30,000. The European Union received 250,000 asylum claims in 2009, with France receiving over 40,000 of those claims, the UK and Germany about 30,000 claims each and eight other EU countries receiving more than 10,000 claims each. By way of comparison Australia received about 6,000 claims last year, so this number is low by world standards. The overwhelming number of asylum seekers still head towards Europe or North America.

This is a global problem, as you can see, with no easy solution. If there were easy solutions, some of these developed nations would have implemented them and we would not find, as we do, nations around the world wrestling with this problem. Not only is this a problem without easy solutions that confronts all nations; it is a problem that has been around for a considerable time. It is a problem that waxes and wanes depending on civil conflicts around the globe in particular. It was so with Vietnam, Sri Lanka and Afghanistan. For Australia, as for many other developed nations, the situation in Afghanistan has had and continues to have a direct impact on the number of claims for asylum. For example, according to the UNHCR, in 2009 Afghanistan became the main country of origin for asylum seekers in industrialised countries worldwide.

Here in Australia we also saw a surge in boat arrivals. Similarly, the last time Afghanistan was at the top of the global list was in 2001 when there was a surge in boat arrivals under the Howard government. So contrary to the myths perpetuated by the opposition, this is a problem that Australian governments, like other national governments, have struggled with for a long time. Finding permanent, sustainable solutions to this problem is not easy for any government and any honest assessment of the Howard government’s record on this issue would confirm this. But the coalition is not interested in any such assessment. It wants to pretend that there are easy solutions to this problem for its own political purposes. It wants to play on people’s genuine concerns about these issues. It is feeding their fears as it wants to play a knight in shining armour walking in on a white horse to slay the people-smuggling dragons. So we see the opposition advocating a return to Howard government policies which it claims solved the problem.

It is a great story, but it is a fairy story because the Howard government did not have a silver bullet—an instant, permanent, sustainable solution to this problem. Once again the facts speak for themselves. More than 240 boats carrying 13,600 asylum seekers arrived under the Howard government. Boats stopped coming because global circumstances changed. The Taliban regime fell at the end of 2001 and millions of Afghans were able to return home. The Howard government knew this. It knew that the boats had stopped because global circumstances had changed and not because it had discovered a failsafe way of keeping out boats.

How do we know that the government knew this? We know because in 2003 the Howard government started to build a detention centre on Christmas Island that cost $400 million. The Howard government was planning for more boat arrivals and yet despite all this the opposition want to return to the discredited and failed policies of their past. They maintain we can turn the boats back—a very hollow promise. Of the more than 240 boats that arrived under the Howard government, only seven were turned back. No boats were turned back after 2003 and the practical reality is there is nowhere to turn the boats back to. Also, to avoid being turned back, we have seen boats being sabotaged, putting Australian Customs and Border Protection and defence personnel at risk.

In fact, on turning boats back Mr Abbott wants to go one better than the Howard government, because there is Mr Abbott’s ‘boat phone’. Labor will not have a bar of any of this nonsense that would make bad policy even worse. We must support the judgment of the captains of our border patrols. When lives are at risk on the high seas, the last thing our troops need is the interference of Tony Abbott from a desk in Canberra. There is more: the opposition also want to reintroduce the failed temporary protection visa, but the temporary protection visas also did not work; they did not stop the boats and only three per cent of the 11,000 people granted one of John Howard’s temporary protection visas ever left Australia. Still, the list of failed policies that the opposition has put up for retrial goes on.

The opposition also want to return to the Howard government’s go-it-alone approach to offshore processing. I am glad that Mr Abbott at least agrees with Labor on the need for a regional processing centre. But, unlike Mr Abbott, Labor is committed to getting it right by establishing a regional centre with the cooperation of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees and in a country which is a signatory to the refugees convention. We will not shirk our international obligations and we will ensure that people are treated decently.

As I said, the problem of displaced people is an ongoing global problem, with a strong regional dimension, and it requires solutions that reflect this reality. That is why Labor supports, and is committed to, achieving a regional processing framework. A regional protection framework, including a regional processing centre, is the most effective and sustainable way to remove the incentive for people to undertake dangerous sea voyages. A regional processing centre will serve to deter irregular movement to Australia by sea, dealing a serious blow to the people-smuggling business model.

Minister Bowen has held talks with senior officials of the Malaysian government following positive and constructive meetings in East Timor and Indonesia. President Ramos Horta and Minister Bowen agreed that a high-level task force with Australian and East Timorese government officials would meet to put together a detailed proposal on regional processing, a proposal that both governments would consider early next year under the auspices of the Bali process. The Indonesian foreign minister agreed to make Indonesian officials available to Australia over the coming weeks to further develop the regional protection framework.

What differentiates this government’s approach on border protection and people-smuggling with that of the current opposition is that our commitment to engaging both with our region and the international community is a serious one. What differentiates us is that we do not believe in selling silver bullets or fairytales about simple solutions. We believe in doing the hard work required to find sustainable solutions to this complex, recurring global problem.