Kerry O'Brien (Tasmania, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

Thank you for your protection, Mr Acting Deputy President. The fact of the matter is that this opposition is treating the arrangements as if it is some human bargain—as if a person-for-person arrangement is a fair trade. This is not about a trade. This is, on the one hand, this govern­ment accepting Australia as a developed country with substantial resources has the capacity to receive refugees who have been through the appropriate process—and, after all, wasn't that the proposition which the former government advanced as justifying the Pacific solution? This government is saying: 'Let's get the UNHCR working in Malaysia. Let's get the UNHCR involved in Malaysia—and the IOM. Let's get an assessment of people who have been waiting there for years'—and we are told there are over 93,000 of them—'and let's make a small contribution and accept 4,000 of them and for Malaysia to make a contribution to what has been agreed on a regional basis in the Pacific region, and that is: let's find a way to disrupt the people smuggler arrangements which lead to a train of people moving from Sri Lanka, Afghanistan, Iraq, Iran through this region looking for sanctuary, predom­inately in Australia.' So there is nothing wrong with the government's proposal to find a way to get the Malaysian government to become involved in a regional solution to disrupt the activities of people smugglers. But, of course, we are reminded of the coalition's Pacific solution—we were told that all we had to do was pick up the phone and we could have returned to it. We could have made an arrangement with Nauru about what was once perhaps but is not now a ready-to-function destination for potential refugees.

What did the UNHCR say about the Pacific solution anyway? I think it was Richard Towle, the spokesman for the UNHCR who said:

Australia was obviously looking at ways to divest itself of some of the responsibilities of dealing with refugees.

That is: the former government was seeking to divest Australia of its responsibilities to deal with refugees. That is what he said. He went on to say:

The countries that were negotiated, Nauru and PNG at that time, did not have a refugee issue of their own and largely became places were Australia was able to manage its own protection responsibilities under the convention.

So it was not a regional burden-sharing arrangement at all. It was much more of a responsibility-shifting arrangement. And that's why we think they are not only philosophically but also in the way they were implemented they're quite different types of arrangements.

He said the latter reflecting on the proposed arrangements, those to which there has been in-principle agreement between the Australian government and the Malaysian government. I say again: Australia is in the position to accept refugees and there are refugees who satisfy the test and are waiting for an opportunity and looking for an opportunity to come to a country such as Australia. Over many years Australia has accepted its responsibility. I believe—unless someone tells me this is not the case—that this is a bipartisan policy between the opposition and the government. We both agree that this country has the capacity to accept refugees, has a responsibility to accept refugees and is prepared to accept refugees who go through a process of seeking asylum from outside of our borders.

What has this put in place? It puts in place arrangements where, on the one hand, those refugees languishing in Malaysia will get an enhanced opportunity to come to Australia if they satisfy the necessary tests. On the other hand, people smugglers, particularly in Indonesia, will be faced with the problem of convincing those who hitherto would have paid the money to come to Australia that in fact they are not paying the money to go backwards and end up in Malaysia. Self-evidently, that is a proposition which will cause a great deal of trouble to the people smugglers in Indonesia.

Of course it was the government's hope to negotiate such an arrangement with East Timor. I am happy to say that, although East Timor does not find itself able to move down that path, Malaysia does. The government has also announced that it has in train discussions with other countries about broadening the scope for such a policy, because, at the end of the day—and I think this was also the policy of the coalition—this problem is not just an Australian problem; it is a problem for the region. There are refugees in Indonesia. There are refugees in Malaysia. In the future, one suspects, there will be refugees looking to go to countries such as Papua New Guinea as their economy improves, particularly as the mining sector grows and there is more wealth and opportunities there. There will be other islands in the Pacific which will be seen as destinations for refugees.

So it is a regional problem and it is a problem that is developing. It is a problem that is not going to go away just by Australia trying to shift its responsibilities, as the Pacific solution did, by shifting those people to places of detention in Nauru and PNG with no other solution available.

The fact that the UNHCR and the Malaysian government have embraced this approach, given Malaysia's history on refugees, shows just what a substantial breakthrough this arrangement is and just what sort of deterrent this will be for the people smugglers in the future.

On 8 February, the UNHCR spoke about the previous Nauru situation and the then closure of that centre the UNHCR said:

… in our view, today's closure of the centre on Nauru signals the end of a difficult chapter in Australia's treatment of refugees and asylum seekers. Many bona fide refugees caught by the policy spent long periods of isolation, mental hardship and uncertainty – and prolonged separation from their families.

The reality was of course that many of those people ultimately found their way either to Australia or New Zealand. So all that that arrangement did was defer the inevitable—that genuine refugees would find a location and that, being in our region, the likelihood was that it would be Australia or New Zealand.

I note Senator Scullion talked about the cost of arrangements with Malaysia. We were paying substantial amounts of money to the Nauruan government and the government in PNG for them to operate facilities on our behalf as well as paying for the cost of the operation. So let them not say on the one hand that we are spending money on arrangements with Malaysia, when they spent money, on just the same basis, when they wanted to locate refugees in Nauru and PNG when they were in government. So it really is a bit hypocritical of those who would argue that we should not be paying that money, when one looks at the performance of the previous government.