Concetta Fierravanti-Wells (NSW, Liberal Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Immigration and Shadow Parliamentary Secretary Assisting the Leader in the Senate) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I move:

That the Senate take note of the answers given by the Minister for Immigration and Citizenship (Senator Evans) to questions without notice asked by Senators Fierravanti-Wells and Scullion today relating to border protection.

I rise once again to speak about what is fast becoming an absolute farce: the plan that this Prime Minister billed as his so-called Indonesian solution. It is now becoming an utter shambles. I cannot help but quote the comments of my colleague Tony Abbott yesterday evening on Lateline. Much has been said in the last few days about the former government’s Pacific solution but can I say, as Mr Abbott has said, ‘John Howard found a problem and created a solution; Kevin Rudd found a solution and has now created a problem.’

The opposition of course has been prosecuting its case in relation to this for quite some time. But now, finally, it is good to see that the media in this country is picking up on the issue. One only has to look at the blaring headlines in the daily papers over the last few days to see that. I will quote some of them: ‘Ad hoc solution no long-term answer’; ‘PM’s Indon plan all at sea’; ‘Local fury strands Rudd plan’; ‘Boat stand-off pressures Prime Minister’; and ‘Rudd isn’t clear on asylum seekers. How can voters make sense of it when his statements remain so confusing?’

We now have this situation where the Oceanic Viking has sailed over 2,000 kilometres. We have this absolutely chaotic situation where we really do not know what is going on. What this is showing is that this government’s plan is actually not a plan—it is a boat-by-boat situation and it seems to lurch from boat to boat. In fact, it is really just improvisation. We seem to go from one crisis to the next. One only has to read the press to see that even refugee advocate groups are now criticising this government. Last week at estimates the Ambassador for People-Smuggling Issues told us that it is his role to take a cross-government perspective on issues pertaining to people smuggling. He told us on 22 October:

We have not actually sat down with the Indonesians yet to negotiate what this framework will look like and what forms our support will take.

The day after, we had this $50 million tab being put on this so-called plan, which is effectively outsourcing our border protection policy failure to the Indonesians.

Of course, pressed on the issue, nobody in the government can give us any details in relation to it or tell us what the cost of this would be. The home affairs minister simply does not want to talk about it, and he probably does not know. Chances are that this $50 million so-called plan has been hatched somewhere in the Prime Minister’s office and there have been some frenzied calls to the Indonesian President, and all of a sudden it is being billed as a plan.

There is a hypocrisy about this. I pick up this point from an article by Piers Akerman in which he shows the hypocrisy. I see Senator Faulkner walking out. Senator Faulkner has been very keen in estimates to press the issue of engagement. Regarding the Senate select committee October 2002 report into a Certain Maritime Incident, Senator Faulkner was happy to prosecute and wanted to know all about Indonesian engagement, including the possible limits of disruption policy, and he asked a wave of questions. It was all very well then. The hypocrisy is that now that we ask for details the government is just shutting down on the issue.

Michael Forshaw (NSW, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I have been in this Senate long enough to remember the events that occurred in 2001.

Julian McGauran (Victoria, National Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

You’re still suffering!

Michael Forshaw (NSW, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

And I have been here long enough to know that most of what Senator McGauran says in interjections should be ignored, so I will ignore him.

Concetta Fierravanti-Wells (NSW, Liberal Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Immigration and Shadow Parliamentary Secretary Assisting the Leader in the Senate) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Senator Fierravanti-Wells interjecting—

Alan Ferguson (SA, Deputy-President) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Order! Order on my left!

Michael Forshaw (NSW, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Mr Deputy President, the previous speaker was listened to in complete silence. Senator Fierravanti-Wells said that former Prime Minister John Howard found a problem and created a solution. I remember that when the Tampa appeared and rescued the people who were in danger of drowning we were told, and the Australian people were told, that their parents had thrown their children overboard. Of course, we remember that that turned out to be one of the greatest lies to be perpetrated on the Australian public, and it was used maliciously and malevolently in the election campaign, including by the then Minister for Defence, Mr Reith. So do not lecture us about the problems of dealing with asylum seekers. We were here. We drew attention to the disastrous and cynical policies that you followed when you were in government.

You criticise the current government for talking to the Indonesians about resolving these issues, when many of the people who are seeking to come to Australia are paying people smugglers to get here. We are seeking to negotiate and work with the Indonesian government on many of the people who are transiting. We get criticised for that, but what was the approach of the previous government? They did deals with Nauru and other Pacific countries and essentially said, ‘Take the problem off Australia’s hands.’ That was the approach of the Howard government and the previous ministers in charge of this portfolio. The old adage in the law is: if you are going to complain come with clean hands. The current opposition do not have clean hands on this issue. Their hands are absolutely dirty when it comes to dealing with this.

This is a serious issue. We recognise that, and that is why, when the opposition were in government, we worked with them on such issues as the excision of certain islands from our migration zone and on an approach which recognised that Christmas Island would be an appropriate location for the processing of boat people, and that is what is currently happening. Nobody denies that this is a major issue and a major problem for the country. We are seeking to deal with it in a humane way, but also in a firm way, to ensure that the people who are seeking to come to Australia are not allowed to enter willy-nilly. Rather, we are seeking to work in a regional way to enforce our borders and, at the same time, to work through the mechanisms that have been established internationally, through the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees and others, to ensure that genuine claimants are treated appropriately.

I also recall the images that so starkly illustrated the former government’s policy—those children behind the razor wire. They were some of the most disgraceful pictures of people incarcerated in this country. Eventually those places had to close because, finally, the genuine liberals within the Liberal Party recognised it was an inhumane policy and agreed to stop it. Of course we abolished TPVs, temporary protection visas. You supported us. Now you raise the spectre of those TPVs but, when put to the test, you are not prepared to say you will bring them back. This is clearly a major problem. We are dealing with it. For the opposition to try to lecture us about the inhumanity of this is the height of hypocrisy.

Judith Adams (WA, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise today to take note of answers given by Senator Evans. Mr Rudd’s border protection policy is in complete chaos. As ever, he is all talk and no action. It appears that Mr Rudd has no solution in Indonesia or anywhere else for the border protection policy chaos he has created. The Prime Minister still has 78 asylum seekers stranded at sea on the Oceanic Viking because of his failure to recognise the consequences of his own decisions and to provide a new and sustainable solution. All week the opposition has been asking questions of the Prime Minister about his role in the Oceanic Viking fiasco, and he has been washing his hands of it.

The minister in his answer at question time today said he was confident these people will be disembarking in Indonesia in the near future. I was horrified to read on the Australian news website at lunchtime today:

The standoff creates a dilemma for Australian officials, with government sources confirming any forcible removals from the Oceanic Viking would be the responsibility of the Australian crew, and not Indonesian police.

It is understood Indonesian police have no authority to act in such a fashion aboard an Australian ship, leaving the 30-odd crew aboard the Viking the task of evicting any intransigents.

This is of great concern to me. As part of the Australian Defence Force Parliamentary Program, last year I spent a week in the Torres Strait with Border Protection Command, under commander Rear Admiral Allan du Toit. I really wonder if the people on HMAS Wollongong whom I spent time with thought that they might end up having to do something like what the 30 personnel on the Oceanic Viking may have to do. It just beggars belief.

I will go to Michelle Grattan’s comments today:

Australia obviously has no control over the detention centre to which the people are bound and it has to rely on the international agencies to try to ensure the people are treated decently. For a Government spruiking its humane approach, this is, at best, awkward.

Well, where do we go from here? This Australian ship has been floating around in the ocean for over a week and we still have no idea who is in control of the issue. Presumably it is the Prime Minister, but he says he cannot recall the directives and sequence of events. So, if he is in control, he must be completely and utterly out of control. Who is really dealing with this issue? The foreign minister has today not ruled out the use of force to remove the Sri Lankans from the Oceanic Viking. That is why I asked: will it be up to the 30-man crew on the Oceanic Viking to do this job?

Mr Rudd and Labor must now acknowledge that they have a huge problem and they should stop trying to spin the boats away. Labor are conflicted, divided and confused on border protection, and the people smugglers know it. The arrival of the 45th boat and 2,069 people since August 2008 demonstrates that Mr Rudd and Labor’s policy of winding back our border protection regime has failed. The coalition’s record on border protection speaks for itself, and it is well known to the Australian people and the people smugglers. The Rudd Labor government has gone soft on border protection and the people of my state of Western Australia in particular are very much taking notice of this. The former Howard government’s tough stance on border protection speaks for itself. The boats stopped coming and people smugglers had to look elsewhere.

Jacinta Collins (Victoria, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I am glad that the opposition have chosen to focus on this issue in taking note of answers today, because there are a number of myths that hopefully, if I get the time, I will be able to highlight. But before I do that I want to reflect on the surprise that I think the Senate as a whole should have that the opposition have chosen to take on this issue in the way that they have. Senator Forshaw quite clearly highlighted some of the history here and the point that the opposition do not have clean hands in this matter.

I want to refer to a couple of issues that are relevant to what was raised by some members of the opposition. Firstly, we all need to be reminded, as Senator Forshaw mentioned in the context of the Tampa, that it was the previous government, in the lead-up to a federal election, during the caretaker period, under the caretaker convention, that quite cynically changed our approach to asylum seekers arriving by sea—and put enormous pressure, Senator Adams, on Australian Defence Force personnel. I participated in our first Defence Force Parliamentary Program. I was on the HMAS Adelaide. I know full well how our Defence Force personnel felt about the pressures they were placed under by the Howard government. So the opposition does not have clean hands, and the hypocrisy that has arisen in the debate so far astounds me.

I want to refer to a summary, since Senator Fierravanti-Wells talked about the fact that she was glad that the opposition was now getting headlines on this issue. As if it is about press headlines! Where is the compassion in this debate? How can the opposition stand up here today and say what they have in relation to asylum seekers and feign compassion when they are talking about cataract surgery—feign that compassion is about them arguing that funds should go there rather than to the stimulus package—and then get up here and talk about the asylum seeker debate in the way in which they have? It is not about press headlines.

Yes, Senator Adams, this is an awkward situation, but let us look at why it is awkward. It is awkward because Sri Lanka has just emerged from a decades long civil war which cost tens of thousands of lives, uprooted hundreds of thousands of Sri Lankans and left an economic divide between north and south, east and west. There are currently 250,000 Tamils from the north of Sri Lanka in camps for internally displaced people. You suggest that the ‘strong Howard government approach to border security’ solved these problems. Of course it did not. Of course, the intensity of these types of international issues is going to shift or vary over time. But the myth that the Howard government approach to asylum seekers is what reduced the number of people seeking asylum internationally is just laughable.

Let us look at some of the more intelligent media reflection on this issue. For instance, while flying up to Canberra on Monday I saw the Financial Review and I set aside an article by Geoffrey Barker. The conclusion to that article gives the more intelligent, reflective response, I think, to the current situation—a situation which is indeed, Senator Adams, awkward. No-one denies that it is awkward. In an article headed ‘PM’s policy an easy target’—thus the debate by an opposition looking for easy targets today—he concludes:

Rudd’s approach is not perfect. But it does try conscientiously to balance humanitarian obligations, toughness and political acceptability.

I do not apologise for being part of a government that seeks to balance humanitarian obligations with a tough border security policy. I do not try to argue that it is not awkward and that it is not difficult. There is nothing that is not awkward or difficult about the displacement and the political unrest amongst our neighbours. But we do have obligations internationally to seek to assist these people. That we do so, or seek to do so, in partnership with Indonesia makes an enormous amount of sense. The Rudd government was being accused by Senator Fierravanti-Wells of shutting down on this issue— (Time expired)

Mary Fisher (SA, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

It is not only shutting down on this issue. There is also sophistry on this issue because the longer this government is in power the more unauthorised boat arrivals we face. There have been 45 unauthorised boat arrivals in the 14 months of this government. The more this government is in power, the softer this country seems to be on border protection. The government realises that, despite trying to say it is tough on border protection, the public is awakening to its being soft on border protection. So what does the government decide to do? It decides to create a distraction, a decoy, because it does not want the news to be about the unauthorised boat arrivals. It wants the news to be something else. So there is spin over substance; there is spin and a decoy. Last night in Sydney the Prime Minister delivered a speech to the Business Council of Australia. It was called ‘Building a big Australia’. What he did not say is that his government is intent on building a big Australia through unauthorised boat arrivals—

Jacinta Collins (Victoria, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Go for it, Mary Jo!

Mary Fisher (SA, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

He spoke instead—

Alan Ferguson (SA, Deputy-President) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Order! Senator Collins, I did hear you say that others were heard in silence, so I guess you should allow Senator Fisher to be heard in silence as well.

Mary Fisher (SA, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

In building a so-called big Australia, he spoke instead of a national strategic plan—national planning for our major cities to keep them, for example, developing in an environmentally friendly way—and, in keeping with this national government intervention in its nationally consistent strategic plan, he proposed to tie infrastructure funding to the states with compliance with this nationally consistent plan. The Prime Minister, tripping over himself in his eagerness to deliver the spin over the substance, and in delivering speed over substance, forgot to check and made mistakes. He forgot to check the detail of his Building the Education Revolution plan and the detail of his National Broadband Network plan under Minister Conroy.

In talking about a national strategic plan for building cities under this federal government, he forgot that in his government’s haste to roll out the Building the Education Revolution his government is presiding over state Labor governments creating nationally inconsistent rules to help the Building the Education Revolution happen in a hurry—and exempt from local planning laws. For example, in my state of South Australia—and yours, Mr Deputy President—Pulteney Grammar School demolished a bluestone building built in 1875 without having to go through the normal planning processes to do so. It did this to make way for the Prime Minister’s Building the Education Revolution. Trees of significance have gone. How is that environmentally friendly? How is that consistent with any national strategic plan and with national BER funding?

In Tasmania, our Senate Select Committee on National Broadband Network heard that in its haste to roll out the NBN, this federal Labor government is proposing to allow the state Labor government to exempt certain infrastructure building from local planning laws. This is to facilitate the hurried rolling out of the National Broadband Network in Tasmania. Where is the nationally consistent plan? How is it environmentally friendly to do that in a way that allows construction for the National Broadband Network to be 70 per cent aerial cables—

Alan Ferguson (SA, Deputy-President) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Order! Senator Fisher, I would remind you that the motion before the chair is about taking note of answers given by Senator Evans to Senators Scullion and Fierravanti-Wells. I do think you are straying a bit far from the intent of the motion to take note of those answers.

Mary Fisher (SA, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Thank you, Mr Deputy President. You bring me back, as does the government with spin over substance—because the longer Labor is in government, the more unauthorised boat arrivals there are to ‘build a bigger Australia’. The longer they are in government the more they are in haste to deliver less real substance in policy delivery. And, in the case of Minister Conroy, there is so much haste with the National Broadband Network that he delivers commercial-in-confidence information. More haste, less speed! There is certainly less broadband speed from Minister Conroy. The longer this government are in power— (Time expired)

Question agreed to.