Matt Thistlethwaite (NSW, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I speak in opposition to this motion on border protection. I do so because this government has done more than any other government in modern history in Australia to protect our nation's borders. This government has done more than any other government in modern history to develop a workable, long-lasting, sustainable, regional solution to what is a very difficult and emotive area of public policy—a solution which, in our view, would prioritise an approach to a humanitarian intake of refugees to our nation. Such an approach would give priority to the principle that the Australian government has the right—as many other nations in the world have—to control our immigration intake. What have we seen from the opposition on this particularly important area of public policy? Nothing more than blatant opportunism and blatant opposition for the sake of opposition—a complete trashing of the notion and the tradition that the government should have the right to control the intake of immigrants to this nation. That is a right which has been established over many, many decades in our great Federation.

The Gillard government is committed to strong border protection and an orderly migration program. That is why we have maintained the excision of offshore islands and maintained an offshore processing regime and mandatory detention of irregular maritime arrivals for rigorous health, security and identity checks. Australia's borders are well managed and they are secure. Labor established the Australian Customs and Border Protection Service to provide a single point of accountability for the 15 government agencies directly and indirectly involved in maritime border security and to ensure that all agencies are coordinated to respond to the full range of border threats. These new arrangements have worked effectively, with better coordination between agencies now guided by Australia's first comprehensive strategic border management plan. This plan ensures that border security agencies operate as a coherent whole working towards joint rather than individual agency priorities.

Labor has invested more than any other government in protecting our borders and detecting unauthorised boats. Over the last two budgets we have invested more than $1.8 billion towards stronger border and aviation security and, indeed, combating people smuggling. Labor has also increased investigatory and intelligence resources in the AFP People Smuggling Strike Team. We funded the Customs and Border Protection Service and the AFP to work with their law enforcement counterparts in countries including Indonesia, Pakistan, Malaysia and Sri Lanka. We have provided $24.8 million to help our regional law enforcement partners stop the business of people smuggling, including extra boat patrols, surveillance aircraft and communications equipment for the Indonesian National Police to detect and disrupt people-smuggling ventures in Indonesian waters.

Under this government, more than 200 people have been arrested and prosecuted in Australia in connection with people-smuggling ventures. That is 200 people who are not involved in this insidious trade of asking vulnerable people to risk their lives on the open ocean. In addition to that, we have had more than 100 arrests in other countries in the region based on the work of our law enforcement agencies in cooperation with those areas. In cooperation with our regional counterparts, Australian agencies have disrupted more than 200 people-smuggling ventures, with more than 5,000 foreign nationals prevented from coming to our shores by illegal means. In 2010, we introduced tough new people-smuggling offences. They included penalties of up to 20 years imprisonment and mandatory minimum terms of up to eight years. We legislated to give ASIO enhanced powers to investigate people smuggling and other serious border security threats and to collect foreign intelligence about people smugglers and their networks. We have also cracked down on remittance dealers being used to finance people smuggling.

We believe in a border protection policy that is an effective deterrent to people smuggling. We believe that to provide an effective deterrent we need to work with our regional partners. We need to establish a regional architecture that ensures that people do not make these dangerous boat journeys and potentially end up on the rocks at Christmas Island. To ensure this we have been working with countries in the region to put in place strong people-smuggling laws. We welcome moves in several countries, including Indonesia, to criminalise people smuggling.

Labor supports strong border protection and increased opportunities for genuine refugees. The focus of our policy is prioritising genuine refugees who have been identified by the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, who have been sitting in camps for up to 10 years. Those that have been identified as genuine refugees are the priority of Labor policy. Since 2007 Labor has detected and intercepted more than 99 per cent of boat arrivals before they have reached the mainland. We have overseen the offshore arrests of more than 270 people-smuggling suspects. We have invested in eight new Cape class patrol vessels, strengthening our fleet of 18 ships and 17 aircraft devoted to working on tackling this difficult public policy issue. We have reached agreement with Afghanistan and the UNHCR on returning unsuccessful Afghan asylum seekers. We have worked with the Malaysian, Pakistani, Thai, Indonesian and Sri Lankan police to break up people-smuggling rings.

Importantly, we support genuine refugees. This is evidenced by the fact that Australia will increase its humanitarian visa program to 14,750 people a year should the new legislation be passed. We believe that the claims for protection of those who can afford to pay a people smuggler are no greater than the claims of those who cannot afford to do so.

There are 15 million refugees throughout the world. We need a regional solution to what is very much a regional problem. Australia will always only take a small share of the world's asylum seekers. What we have done through the Bali process is to set in train a regional process here which takes into account the nearly 100,000 asylum seekers in the Thai camps, which takes into account those waiting in Malaysian camps and which tries to recognise that we have got to shut down this insidious trade of people smuggling. The Bali process remains the only grouping in our region which comprehensively addresses the challenges of people smuggling and human trafficking.

Labor's border protection policies deliver. They deliver a fairer and orderly migration system for an increased refugee intake and for secure national borders and enforcement of Australian laws. Labor's policies aim to break the people-smuggling business model and discourage dangerous boat journeys before they start.

In the wake of the High Court decision, the Gillard government did what any good government would do. We acted quickly, we acted decisively and we took the advice of experts. We came up with amendments to the Migration Act which are workable but which importantly re-establish the principle, the tradition in Australia, that the government has the right to control its border protection policy, that the government has the right to control the numbers of those that come to our nation as refugees. It is consistent with a policy approach set down as a tradition by governments of the past but also consistent with international practices of many governments which are signatories to the United Nations convention.

To do this we offered amendments to the Migration Act that were workable—the clearest possible deterrent to people smugglers. This did involve an agreement with Malaysia as the principal architecture for ensuring this. We believed that this would send a clear message not to get on a boat, because you would not end up in Australia. It is a genuine regional solution made under the auspices of the Regional Cooperation Framework. Importantly, it was shaped with the cooperation, guidance and involvement of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees. It did have the potential to improve conditions for refugees throughout the region and it would have seen an increase in Australia's humanitarian intake. Most importantly, it would have re-established that principle that the Australian government has the right to control our borders and the intake of immigrants to our nation.

In the wake of this announcement, what did the Leader of the Opposition do? He made it very clear that he simply does not care about the lives of innocent asylum seekers. He is more interested in petty political point scoring. Meanwhile, the lives of women and children are being risked on the open seas. By opposing the government's efforts to amend the Migration Act, the Leader of the Opposition effectively gave a green light to the insidious trade of people smuggling. The people smugglers responsible for these boats have obviously received the Leader of the Opposition's message. As long as the opposition blocks these amendments to the Migration Act, it will leave open the possibility that the boats will keep coming, which would leave open the very real prospect of another— (Quorum formed)

As long as the opposition continues to block the very sensible amendments proposed by the government to the Migration Act, it will leave open the possibility of the boats continuing to come. That, of course, leaves open the very real possibility of another Christmas Island incident. We simply cannot allow that to occur. We all saw the terrible footage of those involved in that tragic accident. When I saw the footage of that crowded boat being battered against the rocks in the ocean, and women and children being flung overboard and hanging on for their lives, I, like many, felt an overwhelming urge to dive into the water and help and protect those people. But of course we could not.

I have spent 26 years as a surf lifesaver, and that is the sort of thing you have nightmares about: watching a tragedy unfold before your eyes but being able to do absolutely nothing about it. We on this side believe that there is something we can do about it. There is something we as a nation could have done to ensure that vulnerable people do not end up in this situation, and that would have been to ensure the passage of the very sensible amendments to the Migration Act.

But what have we seen from the Leader of the Opposition, Tony Abbott? He has been blocking that effort. He might as well have been standing on the docks himself in those red budgie smugglers, ushering in the boats, saying, 'Come on in.' Usually, the red budgie smugglers are a sign of security. They are a sign of a person who is there to help—a lifesaver, a person with good intentions. But in the case of the Leader of the Opposition, when it comes to this very important public policy area, that could not be further from the truth. The opposition insists on making a mockery of this issue. Their refusal to face the facts and to accept the advice of experts is simply arrogant.

Let us be fair to those opposite: they are just blindly following their leader, just as they have done on the issue of the emissions trading scheme. They used to believe in emissions trading, but now most of them no longer do. Why? Because the Leader of the Opposition has changed his view. Now they are blindly following their leader on the migration issue as well. And they are too egotistical to admit that they are wrong on this and that they are not forward thinking. They will not re-establish the principle that the executive level of the government has the right to determine the immigration policies for our borders.

The government offered the advice of experts on this issue. We offered a briefing to the Leader of the Opposition from the head of the immigration department, Andrew Metcalfe, a person whom the former immigration minister, Amanda Vanstone, has described as a 'first-class public servant'—a first-class public servant, dispensing wise advice to a government. He offered the advice to the Leader of the Opposition, and that advice was quite simply that Nauru will not work. But what does the Leader of the Opposition do? He ignores the advice of experts. The Leader of the Opposition has been told on several occasions that Nauru is not a workable alternative policy. Nauru will not work, because it is too costly, because it is an ineffective model and because it is not an effective deterrent to people smuggling. It will not stop asylum seekers risking their lives or the vulnerable getting on those boats and paying people smugglers, and it will not stop that trade to this country.

Here they all are, struggling to make this argument. Nauru does not break the people-smuggling trade. We know that from the facts. You simply have to look at the statistics. About 68 per cent of those resettled from Nauru were resettled in Australia. A massive 95 per cent of those resettled from Nauru ended up in either Australia or New Zealand. In terms of the Pacific solution, 96 per cent of those resettled from either Nauru or Manus Island ended up in Australia or New Zealand. We also know that 61 per cent of those resettled from either Nauru or Manus Island settled in Australia alone. The opposition refuse to accept the current estimate on the cost of Nauru as a processing centre, which is about $1 billion in operational costs alone. The Leader of the Opposition refuses to accept that Nauru is ineffective and expensive. The opposition know it and they just will not admit it.

Then we had the issue of 'boat phone'. What a wonderful public policy response that was to this very difficult issue! Tony Abbott, the Leader of the Opposition, would simply get on the phone and turn the boats around. He failed to understand that the nature of the problem had fundamentally changed and that unfortunately we are not dealing with civil human beings here. What did those who involve themselves in people smuggling do in response to that? They simply disabled the boats. They punched holes in them and allowed people to potentially drown, and they potentially put at risk our armed services and those involved in coastal protection.

The UNHCR made it abundantly clear that the Nauru solution just involved dumping Australia's problem on small Pacific islands. It is quite clear through this motion that Nauru will not work, that those opposite do not care about border protection, that those opposite fail to understand— (Time expired)