Zed Seselja (ACT, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

Senator Hanson-Young says it is not a Greens view of the world. It is. It is a Greens-Left view of the world. I was not going to quote Bob Carr yet, but I will. Bob Carr, a former senator in this place, said: If you want to embrace the Greens-Left-Fairfax-ABC position, you are going to go backwards at the next election.

He said that there should be no daylight between the Labor Party and the Abbott government on asylum seekers. He made it very clear, and Bob Carr was right on that point. Bob Carr was wrong on a lot of things, but he was right on that point. Unfortunately the Labor Party in opposition has not taken his advice, and that is part of the reason we are having this debate and part of the reason that Scott Morrison has had to respond—because of the way the Labor Party combined with the Greens to abolish temporary protection visas, which I will come to in a moment.

Let us be absolutely clear. When we hear the Greens talking about the number of people in detention, let us remember that when the Howard government left office there were no children in detention. After six years of a Labor-Greens government, that has radically changed, and that is the fundamental problem that the coalition now has to address. It is not because we take some relish in this—we have to do this. This is an issue of significant national importance.

It did not have to be like this, because the policies of the former Howard government worked. The Labor Party, in conjunction with the Greens, egged on by the Greens and supported by the Greens at every turn, sought to dismantle that effective refugee program. When you dismantle it, you get negative, adverse consequences—as we have seen—that involve thousands of people taking the dangerous journey. Unfortunately, we know more than 1,000 people have not made it to Australia and have perished at sea trying to come to this country because the policy settings changed and the former government opened up a situation where the sugar was back on the table. Bob Carr and others in the Labor Party have recognised this—at the very end Kevin Rudd tried to recognise this—but Labor in opposition is taking a different approach, and they took it when they disallowed temporary protection visas.

I will go the point of temporary protection visas. The government acted swiftly to ensure that none of the 33,000 people who arrived in Australia illegally by boat under Labor's watch and were yet to be processed will be granted a permanent visa, despite the Greens and Labor disallowing temporary protection visas. Unlike Labor and the Greens, the coalition will never act to honour the promise of a people smuggler by providing their customers with permanent visas in Australia. We got to this point after Labor and the Greens voted to disallow temporary protection visas, in defiance of the mandate for this measure from the Australian people. Minister Morrison used his powers under section 85 of the Migration Act to immediately cap the number of onshore permanent protection visas available to be granted in 2013-14 at the 1,650 issued prior to the swearing in of the Abbott government. The government's actions mean that no further permanent protection visas can be granted to any onshore applicants this financial year, thereby denying permanent residence to any of the 33,000 people onshore in Australia who arrived illegally by boat on Labor's watch and honouring our promise to the Australian people.

That is where we have been forced by the reckless actions of the Labor Party, combining with the Greens in this chamber, to prevent the coalition from taking the necessary steps to get our migration program back under control. That is what the Australian people expect, and that is what the Australian people deserve. We have seen what happens when you lose control. We have seen the unprecedented cost, the chaos and the tragedy. Under Labor, more than 50,000 people arrived illegally on over 800 boats and more than 1,100 people tragically perished at sea after people smugglers' boats sank. More than 6,000 children have had their lives put at risk by making the dangerous journey to Australia. More than 14,800 desperate people have been denied precious resettlement places under our Offshore Humanitarian Program because those places were taken by people who arrived illegally by boat. This is an important point to make when we hear the arguments from those on the Left, particularly in this case from the Greens, who now lament that there are children in detention, when they contributed to the policy mix that dismantled the program which left no children in detention. No children were in detention at the end of the Howard government under the policies that they opposed. They opposed them and then they sought to dismantle them. We now have the tragic consequences of that and now, as the coalition does its best to try and fix that, at every turn we are frustrated by those opposite—and that is fundamental here.

But, when we talk about the 14,800 desperate people who have been denied a resettlement place, that is absolutely at the heart of this argument and that is one point that the Greens cannot ever answer, because the first question you have to ask yourself is: do you put a cap on the number of refugees that Australia takes? Ninety-nine per cent of the population would say, yes, you have to have a cap. We can have legitimate arguments about what that cap should be at any given time, but I would make the case that Australia has always been generous in the number of refugees that it takes. We can argue at the margins about how many that should be, but we have always been generous by international standards in how many we take.

If you agree that you have to cap it and if you agree that it is not unlimited and that there has to be a cap and that it has to be managed, then you must manage it. That is the fundamental difference between the coalition's approach and that of those opposite. That means having a suite of measures which says to people: 'If you get on a boat, if you take that dangerous journey, there won't be a permanent settlement in Australia at the end of it. That is not the way to come to Australia.' There are many more refugees in the world than we can take and therefore we have to make choices, and when we see the Greens' view of the world prevailing it is the people smugglers who get to choose. It is they who are choosing who comes to this country; it is not the Australian people and it is not the Australian government. It is not done on the basis of need; it is done on the basis of who can get to this country.

That should not be the basis of your immigration program or your humanitarian program. It should not be on the basis of who is able to make it by boat to this country. So the coalition has made it very, very clear that if you come illegally you will not get permanent settlement in this country. That is the only way we can properly manage this issue, because as soon as you change that equation—as soon as you say, 'If you get here you might get an advantage over those who are waiting in refugee camps'—then people will take that journey and they will do it in their thousands. We were told by the Labor Party, when they started dismantling the process, that the reason the additional arrivals were coming was push factors. They were arguing that it had nothing to do with the policy settings of the Australian government, that it was all about external factors—as if there were not push factors during the Howard government, as if there was not significant unrest in other parts of the world that was pushing people.

Unfortunately, there are always push factors. There are many parts of the world which are not peaceful. There are many parts of the world where people are persecuted for all sorts of reasons. So there are always push factors, unfortunately, and that is one of the reasons why we have to have a generous refugee program. But the Labor Party argued that it was just the push factors and it had nothing to do with the policies. Well, we know that they were wrong not just because of the experience and not just because we can point to the statistics of how many people arrived by boat after they changed the policies. We know they were wrong because they acknowledged it by changing their policies. They acknowledged that policies in Australia actually do matter, that there are pull factors, that there are incentives. People smugglers do respond to the policies of the Australian government, and when we get it wrong, as the Labor Party did with their Greens coalition partners, the consequences are tragic: the people smugglers respond, and more people get on boats. That is the legacy that Scott Morrison and Michaelia Cash and the Australian government are now seeking to deal with.

I think there is a particular aspect too of the Greens' position on this which does need to be highlighted, and I know the minister did highlight it. It is this issue in relation to the disallowance of temporary protection visas and the consequences of that. The consequences now are that the work rights that would have flowed under temporary protection visas do not exist. They do not exist, so the Greens, along with Labor, have voted for a situation where these thousands of people who are in this country are now in a situation where they cannot work. Anyone who gives that a moment's thought will see the kind of social consequences that can go with that. That is another legacy of getting it wrong. That is not compassionate.

Senator Hanson-Young interjecting—

You have made the decision. The Greens have made the decision that temporary protection visas, which would have allowed work rights, are not going to be allowed. We see the false compassion.

Senator Hanson-Young interjecting—

It is not compassion. Your policy is not compassionate. The Greens' policies lead to people getting on boats. They lead to people getting on boats, and they have voted for a situation where these thousands of people have been drawn here by that dismantling of those policies and they are now confining them to a situation where they will not have work rights. That is the policy that they have now put in place through their votes in this Senate chamber, and the squawking we hear across the Senate is reflective of the shame that they should feel for the policies that they have advocated. The Greens have advocated them; the Labor Party have implemented them when they were in government; and our job now is not to follow that view of the world. As Bob Carr rightly said—Bob Carr got it spot-on with this issue; he got it spot-on—the Greens' left view of the world is not the way to go; it is not the way that a responsible government goes. We do expect that from the Greens. They will always advocate for those irresponsible policies. The Labor Party have chopped and changed on this issue. They chopped and changed in government, and they appear to be chopping and changing in opposition.

In conclusion, I simply restate that we now need to be able to get on with the job. The coalition have a mandate to stop the boats and to regain control of our migration program and of our humanitarian program. That is the task that all Australians of goodwill want to see. We do not want to see people getting on boats. We do not want to see people perishing at sea. We do not want to see people languishing in this country without work rights. We want to have a controlled migration program. That is what we need to do, that is what we should be allowed to do, and the kinds of stunts we see with bills like this from the Greens do not assist that. That is why this bill should not be supported.