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

Mr Deputy President, thank you for the opportunity to comment on this discussion. Before Senator Sterle left, I was about to compliment his family, but unfortunately I will have to do it to his back. I quote the famous words of the then shadow minister for immigration:

Another boat … Another policy failure.

Who was that shadow minister? It was none other than now Prime Minister Gillard. Since then she has not had occasion to say it very often; she has not had occasion to get it out of the back drawer very often and say, 'Another boat, another policy failure.' Since the Rudd-Gillard government there have been no fewer than 229 occasions when the coalition might have got that equivalent document out from under the counter, because that is the number of boats, representing 11,472 people, since Labor came into government—people who have come to these shores through the process of asylum seekers on vessels. Why would I compliment Senator Sterle and his family? It is because he made the very comment which has been the underpinning of the Howard government and this coalition and which will be the underpinning of the Abbott government, when it is in government: that is, as Senator Sterle said, his father was invited to this country—and that is exactly what Australia wants, it is exactly what Australia will do and it is exactly what the Howard government said when the then Prime Minister said:

We will decide who comes to this country …

Mr Sterle Senior was invited to this country. This country, Australia, has a very proud record of accepting refugees. We have had thousands, tens of thousands, of humani­tarian refugees of the type Mr and Mrs Sterle Senior would have been.

What is also interesting is: when the Howard government stopped the boats, what was the decline in the number of refugees who came to this country on a humanitarian basis? The answer is nil. The numbers stayed the same. And what is of absolute shock and disgust to me, as I stand in this chamber, is the fact that people who have been through the UNHCR process, the very people who have been accepted as humanitarian refugees to come to Australia, are languishing in refugee camps in Africa, Asia and elsewhere, whilst others jump the queue. In the event that these people are genuine, let them be processed in the genuine way and let them join the queue—but at the end of the queue. What has been put to me recently—and, I think, very disturbingly—is that there is corruption in these humanitarian refugee camps, where people who would otherwise be getting to the top of that queue find, without their even knowing it, that their names are being replaced by others because of corruption being offered to those who are managing it. That is reprehensible, and that is what we must not allow to happen.

When he was the minister for immigration, Philip Ruddock invited the then shadow minister, Ms Gillard, to Nauru. She went to Nauru with him to have a look and, contrary to what Senator Sterle just said, people had the freedom to wander around that island. Did they go into their accommodation at night? Yes, they did. Were they locked up? Why would you lock people up on an island? Where would they go on that island? Philip Ruddock had the courtesy and the decency to actually take the shadow minister to Nauru on that occasion to have a look at what was going on. Nauru is not a signatory to the UNHCR. It is very willing to become so. Is Malaysia a signatory to the UNHCR? The answer, of course, is no, they are not. As one who was involved in business throughout the last decade in Malaysia, one who in fact had some association with prisons and detention centres—but I hasten to tell you, Mr Deputy President, not from the inside but consulting to the Malaysian government—I can say that it is not a place you would want to be. I remember that under then Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad, when he decided that they would remove illegals from Malaysia, they gave them 72 hours to get out of that country, and we saw footage, regrettably, of people being beaten as they were trying to get on boats at the ports in Malaysia to go back to countries like the Philippines, Indonesia and others. It would be an interesting question for people who are facing the prospect of leaving these shores under this new, ill-conceived scheme of Minister Bowen, to be asked if they would want to go to Malaysia or go to Nauru and be managed by Australians. It would be a very interesting poll, because I have absolutely no doubt where they would want to go. The Howard government had a problem and found a solution. The Rudd-Gillard government inherited a solution and have turned it back into a problem.