David Johnston (WA, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Defence) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I move:

That the Senate take note of the answer given by Senators Evans and Faulkner to questions without notice asked by Senators Humphries and Johnston today, relating to asylum seekers.

Incompetence in public policy is often very difficult to see, in a walking, living, breathing sense. Incompetence and ignorance are the principal ingredients that Labor ministers have, of recent times, been bringing to public policy. The government’s border protection policy is a classic example of a policy effected by an enormous amount of incompetence. Can I say that ceiling insulation, the solar rebate and solar hot water system schemes, green loans, school halls, the Auditor-General’s report on the NBN mark 1 and, of course, the emissions trading scheme, are but a few examples of gross public policy incompetence.

Border protection is another example of the simple ignorance of dozy and lethargic ministers with a complete lack of capacity to put themselves across the detail of the portfolio. This year 24 boats and 1,200 people have arrived illegally in Australia, in the last 10 weeks. This is all because the Rudd government dismantled the previous scheme inaugurated by the Howard government. The situation has become so dire and so out of control that we will shortly be processing people in Darwin.

The costs have blown out. By July of this year the government will have spent in excess of $230 million, in Christmas Island, which was not budgeted for. The total extent of this policy failure since August 2008 has been 92 vessels and 4,166 people. I pause to say that many of these people have traversed some 3,000 nautical miles from Sri Lanka. As of today, what is the government’s response to this matter? As of today, what is their policy initiative? Where is their movement to a solution to this policy? There is none. They sit there saying, ‘Mr Howard had the same problem more than eight years ago.’ That is simply an underlining of the level of incompetence and the level of disparagement of the problem and it shows a failure to perceive that there is a huge potential for a humanitarian disaster in the 3,000-mile air-sea gap between Sri Lanka and the north-west coast of Australia.

Just like in ceiling insulations where people’s lives have been put at risk through fire and electrified roofs, our Navy personnel have been exposed to extraordinary risks in dealing with these people. There is no better example than SIEV36. This is a risk they should not have had to bear. This is a risk that has put young Australian men and women in the Australian Defence Force at risk whilst they board illegal entry vessels and expose themselves to desperate people taking desperate measures. I was very disappointed that the minister did not know precisely, or have at his fingertips, the nature of the injuries sustained by those Navy people on board SIEV36 when it blew up and could not tell me their current state of health. I was extremely disappointed with that. Not only is this a policy failure; it is not a matter at the forefront of the consideration of this most incompetent and callous government.

Trish Crossin (NT, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise in response to the taking note of questions from senators opposite on asylum seekers. I am disappointed, Senator Johnston, you could not take up your whole five minutes on this most crucial and important matter that you believe is so central to your re-election at this coming federal election.

David Johnston (WA, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Defence) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I ran out of time.

Trish Crossin (NT, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I take that interjection. You finished with at least 31 seconds to go. You could not stand up and give us five minutes of why you believe the position you have taken. Let me just reiterate for the record, as I understand we have done a number of times in this place, that this government still has a policy of excision. This policy has not been changed from the last government to this government—that is, we still excise islands and people who are seeking to arrive here and claim refugee status are taken to Christmas Island. That policy has not changed. We also have a policy of mandatory detention. Once they are taken to Christmas Island, they are mandatorily detained for health, security and identity checks. That policy has not changed. They are processed offshore at Christmas Island. That is also a policy that has not changed. We maintain a very strong anti-people-smuggling stance. People who are seeking to enter this country by refugee status, if they are coming here by boat, can expect to be detained on Christmas Island as part of our excision policy, our mandatory detention policy and our processing offshore policy.

All irregular maritime arrivals are transferred to Christmas Island and, as I said, they are subject to mandatory detention, simply because that is a way in which we can manage health, security and identity checks. We know there is a range of facilities on Christmas Island. The most amazing facility on Christmas Island was that constructed under the Howard government at a cost of over $440 million. It caters for diverse groups. I have been there myself and have had a tour of that centre a number of times now. Family groups and unaccompanied minors are also accommodated on Christmas Island, but we have explicitly banned the detention of children from the immigration detention centre—something that is vehemently different from those who sit opposite who sought to still detain children in detention centres.

Let us have a look at the capacity of Christmas Island and the area to which the opposition would like us to go. On 14 March, there were 1,920 regular maritime arrivals and 23 crew accommodated on Christmas Island. Christmas Island can adequately accommodate this number of arrivals and, as part of the routine contingency planning, this government continues to increase the accommodation capacity on Christmas Island. The current overall capacity is over 2,040. Additional demountables were installed at the detention precinct in late 2009 to further expand the capacity by 212 beds. The capacity will be increased by 400 with the establishment of an additional contingency compound and these works are due to be completed fairly soon, in addition to the demountable accommodation currently used by staff at the Phosphate Hill facility that will be made available for detainees in the near future.

So what we are proving to the general public and to those opposite who refuse to accept, believe or listen is that there is capacity at Christmas Island and we are processing people on Christmas Island, developing the capacity we require. You heard Minister Evans say today that people on Christmas Island are being processed as quickly as possible, in around 115 days, to get their processing applications through. They are moved on, moved off or moved back. We have never shied away from the fact that if they are not genuine refugees they will be sent home. This is a much faster processing time than was ever experienced under the previous government.

We have always said that if there is a need to use the detention facility in Darwin it will be used. This is not news. I have heard Minister Evans repeatedly say that if the Darwin Immigration Detention Centre is needed it will be used to assist with the accommodation of refugees. (Time expired)

Nigel Scullion (NT, Country Liberal Party, Deputy Leader of the Nationals) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I should not be surprised by the response from those opposite on the issue of asylum seekers. Can you imagine them in a boat where there is water coming in through the corking? All they will do is hand out life jackets. All they seem to do is try to deal with the consequence of their failed policies. Australia is dealing with this policy failure that is ensuring people put their lives and the lives of their families at risk. They are ensuring the livelihoods of those people whose primary business role is to traffic in human misery. They are doing all right out of it—there are no worries about that. They are reading the brochures that say, ‘Come to Australia because we now have changed our policies.’ These guys opposite say, ‘The only issue with our policy is that we don’t have enough places to put them.’ What they are focusing on is: ‘Can we make Darwin bigger? We always knew they were going to go to Darwin.’ The only issue we are going to see from the other side is where we open up more detention facilities, because those on the other side are completely incapable of understanding that this is about policy and not about detention.

When the Howard government was in government we acknowledge that we went through this process. We had an increase in boats and we changed our policies. We said, ‘We are going to introduce some tough policies that send a clear message that if you are a refugee then you can go into any of the embassies on the way to coming here and seek asylum.’ We put in place processes to assist them with that. We started with a very large number of boats. I can recall that when I first came here, in 2001, we had 19 boats. The next year we had zero. The next year we had three. The next year we had zero. This is what happens.

So I would commend looking at a bit of history to the other side. Change your policies to make those policies disincentives and the people and the boats will stop coming. You have to put your eye on the right ball. You cannot just decide that your only policy response is to go and build bigger facilities. They talked about the Darwin detention facility. I had a little bit to do with that. There was a little bit of tension at the time that it was built. I was assured that this was a facility that was designed and built as a short-term processing facility for those people who came to Australian waters to engage in illegal fishing. That is was it was purposely built for. The level of security was up to exactly that stage.

I had someone ring me the other day who said, ‘When this opens up, Nigel, are those people who blew that SIEV up going to come here?’ I said, ‘Why are you concerned?’ He said, ‘Don’t you remember reading in the paper how they all walked out, went and had lunch or something, decided that it was all too hard and came back for supper?’ I said: ‘Oh, yeah. Well, I’m not really sure what they’ve done with the security.’ I said that I was sure that it would be all right.

This is complete and utter bungling. If they do not change their policy approach to this, we are going to see increasing numbers of vessels arriving in the future. I acknowledge that this is only a newspaper article, but this newspaper article from today and other media indicate that there may well be quite large numbers of people coming on a couple of boats. Darwin only has the capacity for 550, and that is if you include the surge capacity, which takes it up to 547. If any of these reports are correct—and they are going to be correct, because giving them a 30-day processing visa means that immediately they only have to wait 30 days to get to Australia, which is the outcome that they want and why they are coming—the process has to change. We are going to have more and more people and we are going to be wondering where to put them. But where to put them is not the problem. The sugar is the problem, as the Indonesians would tell us. We have policies that invite people to come to Australia.

It does not seem to matter what program we have—whether it is the ETS, the NBN, insulation, the tragedy of the SIHIP program in Indigenous housing, the Julia Gillard memorial halls program—all of them have been run with ineptitude. On every level, it is embarrassing internationally that every single program that those opposite have decided that they are going to put in place as one of their policies has failed miserably. They have not got the grunt to be able to manage these programs. Border protection, sadly, just grows on the line. We are now expecting another influx of people and all those in the Labor Party can do is flail around and say, ‘My god, I wonder where we’re going to put these poor souls.’ They had better find more and more accommodation, because without a change in policy the people and the boats will keep coming.

Mark Furner (Queensland, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Today, we heard questions from those opposite directed to Senator Faulkner about concerns expressed about a coroner’s report that is due out tomorrow. I found that quite perplexing, given that surely we are patient enough to see what sort of findings the coroner might deliver about that unfortunate event. I am more concerned, however, about the debate that the opposition is prosecuting, which seems to be consistent with the view that they took in 2001. At that particular election the then government used this as an election platform to run on. It certainly disturbed me when the placards of John Howard demanding that we say who will come to this country and on what terms were distributed during that election. I had friends going into the polling booths on that particular day disturbed by the type of position that the then government had taken. To this day, I take offence that the opposition is trying to prosecute that type of belief and scaremongering out among the public, regardless of the facts.

The facts are that, as indicated today by Senator Evans, the highest number of boat arrivals on record were under the John Howard Liberal government in 2001. Reflecting on those numbers, 5,516 people arrived in 43 boats. During the months of August and September in 2001, we saw more than 2,200 people arrive in 10 boats. All of us were present in the other place last week—in fact, a week ago today—where we heard from the President of Indonesia. In his speech, he gave a commitment to work with Australia in combating people smuggling. That is a true indication of the corroborative arrangements that the Rudd Labor government has with one of our closest neighbours to assist in combating this problem.

The problem is the people smugglers, not the poor unfortunates who in these boats trying to make it to our shores. No-one can blame them for wanting to take the trip from countries like Afghanistan and Sri Lanka. We have taken a stance. The stance is that, although we take a firm stance on people smuggling, we are guided by what is expected of us as a nation under UNHCR rules. We will ensure that we conduct ourselves appropriately and use mechanisms that are suitable for humane acceptance and processing of these people.

I will go to some of the history of people-smuggling. In particular, I want to reflect back on what former Liberal immigration minister Philip Ruddock said in 1999:

It is timely to remember that the use of people smugglers to get around a country’s rules about who can come and who can stay is a worldwide problem. Australia is not alone. We are also seeing large numbers of people seeking asylum in developed countries—people from the same groups as we are seeing in Australia. For example, Iraqi asylum-seekers are registered in 77 countries and last year—

which would have been 1998

there were over 34 000 applications for asylum lodged by Iraqis in 19 European countries.

So even back then there were problems associated with asylum seekers wanting to gain access to other countries throughout the world. It is not a problem that is going to go away overnight. It is a problem on which we need to work together and find a solution. The government is on the path to reaching a solution as to how we deal with it. In fact, if we look at the 2009-10 budget—and I recall that just yesterday Senator Evans spoke about the forthcoming budget, but if we look at 2009-10—an additional $654 million was dedicated to upholding the government’s strategy to combat people-smuggling as part of the Rudd government’s $1.3 billion strategy to strengthen national security and border protection overall. This government is serious about combating this problem, and we will continue to combat the problem to resolve this issue. (Time expired)

Alan Eggleston (WA, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

As both Senator Johnston and Senator Scullion said, the failure of the Rudd government’s border protection policy is just another one of the typical policy failures of this government—the pink batts story, where nothing was thought through or planned properly and which has turned into a disaster, and other policies of this government. It shows a lack of planning, a lack of commitment and a lack of real determination to solve the problem.

The boats do not lie. They are a continuous reminder of the Rudd government’s policy failure and refusal to accept responsibility for a problem of their own making. The people smugglers have wasted no time in sending another message to the Rudd government. Ninety boats have now arrived in Australia since the Rudd government first started rolling back the strong border protection policies inherited from the coalition government led by John Howard. The boats are now arriving at a rate of more than two per week.

Stephen Parry (Tasmania, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Might as well put a tunnel in.

Alan Eggleston (WA, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

As Senator Parry says, we might as well put a tunnel in. It would be so much easier than crossing the sea. Probably something like the Chunnel between England and France would do the trick, but it would be very difficult. Senator Parry, in making that statement, is pointing out that it is now very, very easy for refugees to make their way to Australia. There is no impediment at all; you just sail down to Christmas Island, you pull up at the wharf, you get put into accommodation, your claims are processed and in due course, it seems, you are allowed to stay in Australia.

Australia has a very good record of dealing with refugees. In the time after World War II Australia, along with Canada and the United States, took a lot of refugees from the displaced persons camps of Eastern Europe. We have a very fine and respectable record. But we have always had an orderly program of accepting refugees. We make sure that the refugees who come to this country have identity checks, checks of their police records to make sure that they are not kidnappers or murderers on the run and, of course, security and health checks. That is the way we should be conducting our refugee intake. But, unfortunately, rather than setting up an arrangement for the orderly processing of the people who want to come to this country as refugees, the Rudd government, it seems, has just opened the floodgates to people who are prepared to get in little boats and sail down from Indonesia and across from Sri Lanka.

I do not think that is good enough. The answer to this sort of problem is, surely, a regional solution. We need to be working with our regional neighbours: with Indonesia, with the government of Sri Lanka and with the governments of other countries in this region that the refugees are setting out from. We did have a fairly good arrangement with the Indonesians. They have always been willing and cooperative partners in combining with Australia to do their best to ensure that the number of refugees coming down here is minimised. But this program has failed. The Rudd government has unwound the fairly strict policies of the Howard government, and the people smugglers, on behalf of the refugees, see Australia as now having what amounts to an open door policy. They know that if they just put people in a boat and send them down to Christmas Island, those people will probably be given refugee status.

One must ask the cost of all this. What is the burden to the Australian taxpayer? We are told that there has already been a $132 million blow-out in the cost of processing illegal arrivals at Christmas Island and that it is going to cost a lot more to open up the Darwin detention centre. In fact, it is estimated that over the year 2009-10 the additional cost will be over $1 billion. That is quite outrageous. It is time the Rudd government got its act together to strengthen our borders and maintain the sort of security that the Howard government—(Time expired)

Question agreed to.