Concetta Fierravanti-Wells (NSW, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

Thank you, Mr Acting Deputy President O'Sullivan. The amendments make it clear that such a person will be taken never to have left the migration zone and will continue to be subject to visa application bars—that is, they cannot apply for certain visas in Australia.

Schedule 2 changes will broaden the channels by which the Department of Home Affairs can provide documents to people, by adding the facility of an online account. It does not limit or remove any of the existing methods. There are other, minor amendments relating to the refund or drawback of duty in circumstances where a person has been paid a refund or drawback that they were not entitled to. Also there are changes to the passenger movement charge regime and other minor technical changes to wording in two provisions of the Customs Act.

However, what is clear is that those opposite will seek to propose amendments that will challenge the effectiveness of our border protection system. Today we are seeing Labor team up with the Greens to give the green light to people smugglers. This is what the people smugglers have been waiting for. Here we have Labor putting at risk our border protection regime. This is an astonishing move by the Leader of the Opposition and those opposite. The last time Labor joined with the Greens on border security, 50,000 people arrived illegally, 8,000 children were placed in detention and, tragically, 1,200 people were drowned at sea. There is nothing compassionate about a policy that will ensure boat arrivals start again.

The advice from our intelligence agencies is very clear: any weakening of our current border protection policies will reopen the people smuggling trade, and we will once again be facing deaths at sea. This government will not allow this to happen. You don't get children off Nauru by putting more children on Nauru. It has been the coalition government's policy. We got all the children out of detention and we have closed 17 detention centres in Australia. In fact, there are more medical staff on Nauru than there are children. Every child who requires specialised medical treatment is getting it and has been transferred without compromising security. We have been doing this quietly and in a very appropriate way.

Therefore, any deal with the Greens would go against everything that Labor has been saying for five years, proving yet again that Bill Shorten and the Labor Party cannot be trusted when it comes to border protection. Remember Kevin Rudd's promises before the 2007 election that they would turn back the boats. The moment he became Prime Minister, the opposite happened. The people smugglers were back in business and we saw the 1,200 deaths at sea—and they're only the ones that we know about.

As Minister for International Development and the Pacific, I have had the opportunity to visit Nauru and to see for myself why Nauru is called the Pleasant Island. Today I would like to outline some of the lies and misrepresentations that those opposite have been peddling about this issue. The people of Nauru are warm, friendly and hospitable, so I find the description of the people of Nauru by those opposite contemptuous and offensive. Nauru has a population of approximately 12,000 people, made up of an indigenous Nauruan majority of about 10,500 people, predominantly of Micronesian origin; about 500 or 600 expats, including Australians, New Zealanders, Chinese, Indians, Filipinos and those from other Pacific island states; and approximately 1,000 asylum seekers and refugees.

Let me outline to those opposite what is actually happening on Nauru. When I visited, I toured Nauru Secondary School and the adjacent learning village site. There are about 10 schools on Nauru and over 3,000 students. Compulsory education begins with preschool. Students study towards a Queensland Certificate of Education, and QCE teachers are based in the Nauru secondary school system. There is also a centre for disabled children and youth of all ages, which I also had the privilege of visiting. The government of Nauru manages all the schools through its Department of Education. All children on Nauru attend schools. There it is no distinction between Nauruans and non-Nauruans. They travel together on the school bus. I actually saw it. There is one road that goes around the island, and we were stopped behind the school bus that stopped and picked up children, irrespective of whether they were Nauruans or non-Nauruans.

Australia contributed $11 million to the construction of buildings at the Nauru Secondary School, which opened in 2010. Since 2010, Australian support to the Nauruan education sector has contributed to increased enrolment rates and qualified teachers and the introduction of a new national curriculum that enables graduating secondary students to receive a Queensland Certificate of Education. We've done school refurbishments and we've constructed a new secondary school.

In 2017-18, Australia finalised an almost $3 million contribution to phase 2 of the Nauru Learning Village, which incorporates all higher education agencies in a single area, including the University of the South Pacific, technical and vocational training and a community library. This new campus, designed specifically for youth and adult education, aligns with Nauru's own TVET strategic plan. Of course, it is also disability-friendly and, again, open to everyone on the island.

I also visited the Nauru Lifeguard Service, which is supported by lifesaving groups here in Australia. Of course swimming is a popular pastime on Nauru, although there are very few suitable locations. It was great to meet the local lifesavers. The service is now part of Nauru's National Emergency Service and employs both Nauruans and refugee residents on its staff.

I spoke to local Nauruan business people, including expats. I was advised by the local bank manager that there are about 8,000 bank accounts in a population of 12,000—that is a considerable number of bank accounts—including hundreds from the refugee cohort. I attended an amazing Anzac Day dawn service attended by a cross-section of the whole island's population.

I visited the Nauru hospital. Following a fire at the hospital in August 2013 that destroyed four of its buildings, Australia contributed $11½ million to the hospital redevelopment project. The project was managed by Australian Border Force and implemented by their contractors. The Department of Immigration and Border Protection and Australian Border Force provided $16 million in funding. Phase 1 comprised the construction of new medical and surgical wings. Phase 2 was completed in 2017 and included new X-ray machines, a CT scanner, a new paediatrics ward, a pathology laboratory, water storage facilities, sewerage treatment and backup power generators and connection to demountable buildings which house dental and pathology laboratories. These facilities are comparable to services that I have seen in Sydney.

DFAT's broader support for the health sector in Nauru is provided in the form of direct grant funding of around $3 million a year to support the Nauru health sector strategy and provision of key health services on the island. We also usually provide advisers through our PACTAM program to assist capacity building on Nauru.

I visited the Nauru community resource centre, an Australian government funded project in partnership with the Nauru Department of Multicultural Affairs. Open to all residents of Nauru, it houses the main offices for the Department of Multicultural Affairs settlement staff, community liaison officers and service providers who assist local and refugee communities and provide a space for community meetings and functions. The centre aims to develop greater collaboration and interaction between Nauruan and refugee communities and is increasingly becoming a site for local community events.

At that time, I spoke with staff of the Australian NGO—non-government organisation—providing support to the government of Nauru to provide case management services to refugees in Nauru, with some staff drawn from the refugee community. I recall the conversation with one young woman who wanted to come to Australia. I explained to her why this was not possible. She told me that people in Australia had told her to wait for the change. And I asked her, 'What do you mean?' And she said, 'Change of government'. So that's the story that the Greens and others are peddling on Nauru: 'Just wait for a change and then you'll be able to come to Australia.' It is clear that those opposite, hell-bent on their own publicity, are giving false hope to people on Nauru. They are creating the impression things can change and they are giving these young people false hope. They are the ones creating the angst. They are the ones playing with the lives of these people and holding out false hope for them. They are the ones distorting the facts and creating the mental angst for their own base political purposes.

What does not emerge is that many in the refugee community are getting on with their lives. They are part of the community. They have started businesses. For example, a young man from Iran started a restaurant from his home, and it has now become a very popular place to eat and meet. Or there are the Iranian ladies who have started nail and beauty shops and now provide services which were not previously available. Many have met local Nauruans, now have families on the island and are well settled. As I drove around the island, I saw for myself what has been provided for the refugee community—often of a standard that is much better than for the local Nauruans. While some of the contractors that I spoke to operated out of the dongas, the new housing was being constructed for the refugee community.

Often those opposite wish to portray children behind wire fences. Well, one of the biggest problems on Nauru has been that dogs roam around the island. Regrettably, the introduction of aggressive dogs into the dog population has resulted in more dog attacks. Indeed, on my visit, a young disabled girl had been mauled by a dog and later died. Fences are crucial for protection purposes.

Many of the local contractors and businesses employ members of the refugee community. All of this highlights the lies that the Greens and their fellow travellers have been perpetrating for years. The false assertions brandished by those opposite that Nauru is a hellhole and it is a place of misery, death and torture that destroys innocent people is blatantly wrong and only used for base political purposes. The Greens assert that Nauru is unsafe for women and children and sending them back would be torture. That is blatantly wrong and only designed to sensationalise the situation and denigrate the people of Nauru.

So it was not surprising to see the article written by Paige Taylor in The Australian of 16 November entitled 'Refugees Pick Nauru Over US'. I want to pick up some crucial facts out of that article. It says:

Forty of the 300 refugees who left Nauru to resettle in the US have contacted the island nation asking to come back because life in America was harder than expected, the Nauruan President has revealed.

The President goes on in this article to talk about life on Nauru. The author of this article was afforded a visit to the island. Indeed, it's interesting to see that Ms Taylor, who has written about and covered asylum seeker issues for years and witnessed many things as part of this, has been able to write this piece in a very independent manner. In fairness to the people of Nauru, many of whom I met during my time as Minister for International Development and the Pacific, it is very important that this be said about their island home. In this article the President of Nauru talks about the benefits that have come to his island home as a consequence not only of the refugee processing centre. He states that regional refugee processing has outweighed the hurt of being labelled a prison and a hellhole in the international media. He says his people's history of exile and persecution made them sympathetic as a nation to refugees and that claims that the government mistreated or neglected refugees were untrue and painful.

He said, 'We try and understand the situation because there are people that have their own political agendas overseas and want to attack us because of our involvement in the process centre and our partnership with Australia, so we get caught in the middle.' He said, that few people outside Australia understood that refugees move freely around the island, they owned businesses, including a barber shop and a café, and worked for his government and have fallen in love with locals. He then goes on to outline further some of the work that people on the island are doing; indeed, the article gives cogent examples of the Afghan nurse and the paediatrician working at the Nauru hospital. It shows locals. It also looks at other works or other things that the refugees are doing on the island.

Australia is a country of migration and, since World War II, we have welcomed about 7.5 million migrants to this country, including about 850,000 under our humanitarian program. Today we are one of the most culturally diverse yet socially cohesive nations on earth. Our success as a migration country has been because we have had an ordered migration program. Order in migration and migration processes is vitally important. It is fundamental to the security and stability of any country; therefore, it is important that you do have strict rules on migration, about who comes in and out of your country. This is a fundamental issue.

Therefore, I come back to the point that I started my speech on—that is, yet again, we are seeing history repeating itself. Those opposite said before the 2007 election, 'No, no, we're going to stop the boats; we're going to turn boats back,' and then we saw their legacy—50,000 illegal people arriving, 8,000 children placed in detention and, tragically, all those deaths at sea. So by doing what they are doing, they are green lighting the people smugglers again. That girl in Nauru was telling me, 'Let's wait for the change,' because they've been told: as soon as the government changes, that is the green light for the people smugglers to be back in business and that's what the amendments of those opposite will do.