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

I rise in support of the Migration Amendment (Protection and Other Measures) Bill 2014. I start with a quote from then Prime Minister John Howard in a speech delivered on 28 October 2001:

National security is … about a proper response to terrorism. It's also about having a far sighted strong well thought out defence policy. It is also about having an uncompromising view about the fundamental right of this country to protect its borders, it's about this nation saying to the world we are a generous open hearted people taking more refugees on a per capita basis than any nation except Canada, we have a proud record of welcoming people from 140 different nations.

He went on to make the statement:

We will decide who comes to this country and the circumstances in which they come. And can I say on this point what a fantastic job Philip Ruddock has done for Australia.

Today, of course, that is strongly endorsed. He went on to contrast some comments of the then Leader of the Opposition, who indicated to him that the last thing that the opposition leader or Australia wanted was a negative, carping opposition on this particular matter. Of course, soon afterwards that is exactly what the then Leader of the Opposition went on to do when he led voting against the Border Protection Bill. He subsequently reversed this position and voted in favour of the bill. What is interesting and what brings us to where we are today is that Mr Howard said of the Leader of the Opposition in that speech:

… while the debate was going on in the Senate many of his colleagues were darkly muttering if we win the election we'll change it.

It took another six years after October 2001, but of course that is exactly what happened. That is why we have ended up in the circumstance in which we find ourselves today.

What is it that the Australian community expect of us as law-makers? I think it is very interesting and necessary to reflect on this as senators in this debate. I think Mr Howard put it eloquently—and I have not heard too many disagree with him—that deciding who comes to our country and protecting our borders must be a very, very high priority for government. Deciding who comes and who stays is an important priority accepted by the wider community. Providing for genuine refugees and avoiding queue-jumping—a point to which I will return—and providing security for Australian citizens, Australian residents and visitors to this country have always been a high priority, but the events of the last few months have further emphasised that fact. The unfortunate necessity of having heightened levels of security in and around this building now points to that fact. For those who think that that is an overreaction, one need only go back to the shocking events in the parliament in Ottawa, Canada late last year.

The previous speaker, Senator Bernardi, spoke eloquently about stopping the people-smuggling trade. It is an evil, vindictive, rotten trade, which was stopped. There is a need to treat people fairly and to differentiate between those who are, I would say, economic opportunists and those who are genuinely at risk. We need to minimise the risk of loss of life at sea, especially of children, including those who are unaccompanied—and I will return to that also.

Assimilating genuine applicants into Australia's society is another need. We are a nation built on the efforts of migrants. We need efficient processing as quickly as is possible so that those who are found to actually be genuine refugees eligible to come into this country can be assimilated into our community, can get jobs and can make that contribution that they want to make and that many, many migrants over the generations have made before them. We need to weed out those who are here illegally for whatever reason and by whatever mechanism they have got here. We need to ensure fairness towards our own citizens, our own older citizens, our homeless citizens and residents. We need to make sure that there are adequate services, housing and employment for our own as well as those coming to the country, and, of course, encourage people to work in our rural and regional areas, to which I will refer later in this contribution.

It is necessary to have people understand the scale of the challenge. I will provide some statistics. From 18 September 2013 to 17 September 2014—the first year of the Abbott led coalition government—there were 23 ventures involving illegal maritime arrivals, totalling 1,265 people. In the 12-month period from September 2012 to September 2013, there were 401 ventures, involving 26,543 people. That is from 23 up to 401, and 1,255 as opposed to 26,543. Since December 2013 there has been one people-smuggling venture, carrying 157 people, who—under the coalition's policy as stated leading up to the election—were transferred to an offshore facility.

The longest period without a successful people-smuggling venture under the previous government—after such ventures were stopped under Mr Howard—was 61 days, when Senator Chris Evans was minister for immigration. That reduced from 61 to 23 when Mr Bowen became the minister for immigration. Then it became a revolving door, and the longest period of time between arrivals with Ministers O'Connor and Burke was six days, after a period under the Howard government in which this rotten trade of people smuggling had been weakened and stopped.

It is the inevitable conclusion, with those statistics, that the policy established by Howard, with Ruddock as his minister, had been successful. Mr Howard, in a speech of October 2001, said that many in the Labor Party in the Senate were darkly muttering, 'If we win the election, we'll change it,' and indeed they did. We then ended up with a circumstance where more than 50,000 people arrived illegally on more than 800 boats. So we went from two people a month under the Howard government to 3,000 a month under the Rudd, Gillard and Rudd governments. And the number of people in detention or on bridging visas increased from a total of four in 2007 to more than 30,000. We know that 1,200 perished at sea. Senator McEwen—who is in the chamber—and I were participants in an Operation Sovereign Borders exercise in Darwin, out of the Larrakeyah Barracks, last year. We were speaking to Naval personnel who were involved in that process, and they were certainly of the view that, regrettably, there were more than that 1,200 who perished.

What was the cost of that whole exercise? The budget advertised over that time increased by $11.6 billion, under the then Labor government. When it comes to children—because they are particularly relevant to this discussion—more than 8,000 children had their lives put at risk by making this journey. Of course, some people would be so desperate that they would want to send their children unaccompanied. We can all understand, as parents, how desperate a decision that must be, but we can also understand how much greater risk would apply to those children.

That is where we found ourselves in advance of this legislation. I recall in Senate estimates in 2010 asking the then immigration secretary how many people were arriving by air as opposed to by sea and how many people coming into Australia by air could arrive without either a passport or necessary documentation. The answer of course is—successfully—nil, because you cannot get through the airport if you do not have the necessary documentation processed to allow you to come, for whatever purpose you come. I then said to him, 'How many are arriving by sea without adequate documentation?' He said, 'The majority.' I said, 'How is that happening?' He said, 'They either lose their passports or they have them taken off them by bullies or indeed they never had them in the first place.' I remember saying to him, 'Secretary, those people have a problem, don't they?' He looked at me and he said, 'No, Senator Back; they haven't got a problem.' I said, 'Well, who's got the problem then?'—because many of us who travel overseas know that, if you try to get into another country without a passport or the necessary documentation, you certainly have got a problem and you stay there until such time as you either rectify it or you are deported. He said, 'They haven't got the problem. We have got the problem.' I asked him further, 'If we've got the problem, why is it our problem?' He said, 'That's how the whole thing is structured under the government processes at the moment.' So there lies the issue. I said, 'What happens to these passports?' He said, 'They either get destroyed or they get sent back to the country of origin for somebody else to use the passport to attempt to get into this country.'

So where do we find ourselves? We find ourselves in a circumstance where genuine refugees—those about whom Mr Howard spoke when he said that we are, behind Canada, on a per capita basis the second most generous country for accepting refugees—continue to rot in asylum camps. Second generations, even up to third generations, do not get here because the numbers that we set are such that, as others jump the queue, they continue to wait. As I have said in this place before, it was put to me in Perth by a young Sri Lankan gentleman that there is a raging trade going on in the refugee camps, where a family might never know that they get near the top of the queue to actually come to this country, because somebody might come and pay the management of that refugee camp so that they replace the family that were near the top, and that family subsequently do not get here. That is what we had to stop and that is what this coalition government did stop. We came into government saying we would stop the evil trade of people smuggling. It took a little while. It took some effort on the part of Scott Morrison, and the process he put into place, but it has been successful. We now do not see these young people being put at risk, coming here in leaky boats in cyclone seasons such as the one we are experiencing off the north-west coast and, indeed, the southern coast of WA at the moment. We are not seeing that. That, surely, is something the Australian community must be very well pleased with and proud of: that we have stopped the process of people-smuggling from overseas to Australia.

What are we looking at with this protection and other measures bill? As has been previously said, it was in the last sitting period of 2014 that the Migration and Maritime Powers Legislation Amendment (Resolving the Asylum Legacy Caseload) Act was passed. In fact, it was on the last sitting day. It created temporary protection visas. It got children out of detention on Christmas Island—which the assistant minister, Minister Cash, had promised would happen in this place. And, of course, it introduced a fast-track system. The coalition is appreciative of the support of the then Palmer United Party—in fact, Senator Wang is still a member of the Palmer United Party—and of senators Day, Leyonhjelm, Muir and Xenophon. It was interesting to hear Senator Muir's comments, in his first speech the other day, reflecting on the time it took him into lend support to that. But he can be well satisfied that those children have been removed from Christmas Island; and I look forward to going to Christmas Island in early April to see for myself what the circumstances are in that place.

We know that this particular bill, the migration amendment bill, will seek to amend the Migration Act 1958 to further increase and enhance the efficiency and the effectiveness of onshore refugee and complementary protection. This is what the Australian community wants us to do. They want us to make sure that we have efficient, effective and cost-effective processes in place so that we can determine these matters quickly, having regard for the inevitable stress these people find themselves under. It is going to clarify the responsibilities of asylum seekers to provide and substantiate claims in relation to their visas.

The Australian community wants the government to act fairly. It wants the government to ensure that those people who are applying for protection and for visas have genuine documentation—that they do not go out there and corruptly obtain false documentation or create stories which are, in fact, not truthful. We want to be able to help those who are genuine—and we want to be able to send a strong message to those who are not that this country will not entertain or welcome that sort of activity. We want to make sure that claims that are made and evidence that is produced is valid and that it is produced at the first opportunity, not in some rotating and ongoing process.

It will create grounds to refuse a protection visa application when the applicant refuses or fails to establish their identity, their nationality or their citizenship, having regard for any contingencies in which they may have a case to present as to why they cannot produce that documentation. This is the way Australia and Australians act, and it is the way that the community wants our government to act. The fast-track application process established by the legislation passed on the last sitting day is dependent on removal of some of the statutory bars that find their way into this legislation. I will not dwell on the 'more likely than not' threshold because I know it is to become the subject of discussion, possibly with amendments to be moved.

I want to conclude my remarks, if I may, by referring to the establishment of the safe haven enterprise visas, which were introduced in the legislation that was passed in this place on the last sitting day of December 2014. In my view this is absolutely groundbreaking and fundamental. To remind my colleagues, and to inform those who are not aware of it, what it does is it rewards enterprise and enhances the strong regional needs, demands and desires of regional Australia with a new visa to be created called the safe haven enterprise visa. In essence, what this does is encourage somebody who is seeking protection in this country to work in regional or rural Australia with their family. It is a tremendous opportunity. We know very well that migrants in the past have found lives and opportunities in rural and regional Australia. Both my grandparents on the maternal side were Irish migrants—Irish farmers—and they started an Irish farming and agricultural dynasty. What is interesting about these SHEVs is that they will be an alternative temporary visa to the temporary protection visa. They will encourage people to live and work in rural and regional Australia and indeed, if they remain working in rural or regional Australia for a four-year period, they will then, as I understand it, be eligible to apply for a more permanent arrangement. One would think this is well and truly worth supporting, and I therefore urge my Senate colleagues to support the Migration Amendment (Protection and Other Measures) Bill 2014.