George Brandis (Queensland, Liberal Party, Shadow Attorney-General) Share this | Hansard source

'What about the children?' I hear Senator Hanson-Young ask. Yes, Senator Hanson-Young, what about the children who would be alive today if the Howard government's policy of putting the people smugglers out of business had not been abandoned with your support?

As I said at the start of my remarks, we are glad that the Labor Party has seen sense. It took Air Marshal Houston and his committee to bring them to see sense but we are glad that the Labor Party has seen sense by restoring the Nauru processing centre and the opposition will of course support the motion moved by the government. But it gives us no joy or pleasure that it has come to this, that the government, through its hubris and stubborn pride, delayed for so long reinstating policies which for so long it refused to accept because they had been policies embedded by its political opponent. It is a shame but nevertheless the government has at last seen that it was wrong and that John Howard was right.

Senator Hanson-Young got that part right, that the government had seen that the Pacific solution denounced, condemned and anathematised for so many years by the Labor Party was right and that the Labor Party's approach for all those years was wrong. I suppose in a spirit of generosity one gives credit to an opponent who eventually acknowledges they were wrong and their opponent was right, but this is not a political game. This is a decision of policy choices on which people's lives depend and therefore we on the opposition benches implore the government: if you are prepared to take that important first step and reinstate Nauru, take the remaining steps which so far you have not been prepared to take and reinstate temporary protection visas so that no people smuggler will ever be able to say even to a credulous client, 'I can guarantee you a permanent resettlement in Australia,' because even the most credulous refugee will know that at most they will get a temporary protection visa. We implore the government as well to strengthen the deterrence of people smugglers by adopting a policy of turning boats around. We acknowledge that that will rarely be possible but there have been occasions in the past when it has been possible and the fact that there is the threat that that might happen is itself part of the deterrence of people smugglers.

I want to finish by saying a word about temporary protection visas because there has been a lot of foolish and ignorant talk about the justice of temporary protection visas. The temporary protection visa which was issued by the Howard government to asylum seekers gave, as its name suggested, those people protection. It gave them a right to stay in Australia for a period of years and if at the end of that period, a three-year period, the circumstances in their country of origin from which those people were fleeing had not improved, so if the peril from which they fled had not abated, they were entitled to renew the temporary protection visa and if on the expiry of that period again the circumstances in their homeland were unimproved they could renew it again. So the temporary protection visa gave to refugees everything that a genuine refugee can legitimately ask for under the refugee convention; that is, protection from persecution in their homeland for as long as the circumstances of that persecution remain. Now I struggle to see what is wrong with that. I struggle to see what is unjust about that. The very definition of a refugee in the refugee convention is a person driven out of their homeland by the justified fear of persecution. A genuine refugee is not a person who leaves their homeland because they want to; a genuine refugee is a person who leaves their homeland because they have to. If you were a genuine refugee who had left your homeland involuntarily and under the threat or fear of persecution, you would want to return home if that fear had gone away—for example, if there were a regime change in your homeland, if militias who were responsible for persecution had been brought under control, or if a change in the political circumstances that caused you to flee from your homeland had gone away, you would want to go home. Everybody wants to be in their own homeland. So a genuine refugee has nothing to fear from a temporary protection visa. If they still face the risk of persecution, they are protected for as long as they need to be. But, if the risk of persecution has disappeared, then they no longer need to seek refuge. Why on earth the government would not adopt this just measure, which complies with the refugee convention and whose only effect is to act as a disincentive to people smugglers, is beyond my comprehension.

This has been a bitter debate. The bitterness is in part, no doubt, a product of the frustration that people have felt at the intractable nature of this problem. But at last—way too late in the piece but at last—the government is grasping towards a solution by adopting one of the three elements of the Howard government's demonstrably successful policies. It is not too late, Senator Bob Carr. It is not too late for the government to complete the job and embrace the other two elements of the Howard government's successful policies. But I fear that the half-heartedness that lies at the heart of this Labor government continues to dominate this debate.