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

The President has received a letter from Senator Parry proposing that a definite matter of public importance be submitted to the Senate for discussion, namely:

The Rudd Government’s failure to control our borders.

I call upon those senators who approve of the proposed discussion to rise in their places.

More than the number of senators required by the standing orders having risen in their places—

I understand that informal arrangements have been made to allocate specific times to each of the speakers in today’s debate. With the concurrence of the Senate, I shall ask the clerks to set the clock accordingly.

Gary Humphries (ACT, Liberal Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Citizenship) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I am very pleased today to support the matter of public importance that Senator Parry has proposed. The opposition knows, the government knows and the Australian people know that the federal government’s border protection policy has comprehensively and utterly failed. The never-ending procession of small boats limping across the sea between the north shores of Australia and Indonesia and elsewhere has spoken eloquently to Australians about this government’s powerlessness in dealing with this major challenge to its capacity to determine who comes to Australia and under what circumstances. The embarrassing failure of this government is going to resonate more and more profoundly in the days and weeks leading up to the next federal election. It is plainly clear that we as a society no longer exercise any control over that flow of people, and we jeopardise our capacity to contribute to a sensible, balanced approach to the care and treatment of refugees when we leave in place a policy of this kind.

The problem is that back in August 2008 the government swallowed its own propaganda. It decided then that it would relax the strong border protection policies of the former government. It decided that the policies which had deterred people smuggling and people smugglers for so long—policies like offshore processing and temporary protection visas—were no longer necessary and that it could relax the ‘hard line’, as the government put it, taken by the former government and still achieve a relatively small number of arrivals by boat, allowing Australia to focus its humanitarian resettlement program on other areas. However, as we now know, the result of that change of policy was almost immediately catastrophic. The boats, which had virtually ceased to arrive between 2001 and 2008, began to arrive in huge numbers. Within days of the announcement by the Minister for Immigration and Citizenship, Senator Evans, that a new, more compassionate policy was in place, the boats began to return. And a torrent it certainly was.

The first boat came on 30 September 2008, the next on 6 October, then 20 November, then 28 November, then 3 December, then 7 December, then 16 December and so forth. The year 2009 began no more auspiciously. Boats arrived on 18 January, 14 March, 1 April, 7 April, 8 April, 16 April, 22 April, 25 April and 29 April—and another boat arrived on the same day, 29 April. The policy of strong border protection was falling apart before the very eyes of the Australian people, and the Australian government appeared to be absolutely powerless to do anything about it. The torrent of boats had resumed and, sadly, that torrent continues to this day.

Since the government announced the relaxation of its policy in August 2008, there have been 139 boats and 6,496 unauthorised arrivals—and counting. If those opposite continue to maintain that it is just a coincidence that those numbers have been so large, look at the results of the policy that was put in place by the former government in 2001. In 2002-03, there were no boats. In 2003-04, there were three boats. In 2004-05, there were no boats. There was an average of only three boats each year between 2001 and 2008 when the policy was changed. Today we see an average of three boats arriving every week. That is not a coincidence. It is not a consequence of international turmoil and conflict; it is a consequence of this government’s decision to relax a policy which had deterred people smugglers and which today continues to be flouted and ignored by those people who trade in human misery by conveying people across the sea in small, unseaworthy boats. This is clearly a failed policy. It is a policy which is on its knees and has lost the confidence of the Australian people, as opinion polls clearly indicate, because the government is too paralysed by indecision to confront and change a policy which it knows is no longer working.

That is not to say that the government has not tried to change the policy. It knows the policy is on its knees, and it wanted to do something about that several weeks ago. On 9 April, the Minister for Immigration and Citizenship announced that a new policy was being implemented which would deal with what the government regarded as an unacceptably high number of people coming from certain countries. The government announced that from that time it would freeze the applications of Afghanis and Sri Lankans for a period of time between three and six months and that it would decide later whether it was appropriate for those arrivals to resume. It clearly acknowledged with that announcement that it had a problem. People were seeing the passageway between other countries—particularly Indonesia—and Australia as essentially open and that there was no deterrent for people to use the services of people smugglers. Yet that policy change has also been a failure. It has failed to deter those people smugglers and those who use their product. Since that announcement on 9 April, there have been 33 boats carrying almost 1,500 people. The evidence that a change in circumstances in both Afghanistan and Sri Lanka is sufficient to warrant the kind of freeze the government has put in place simply does not exist. It is simply not available.

At least in the past the government was able to point to the fact that a majority of the people who were arriving by boat were genuine refugees. They were people who deserved to be treated compassionately by the Australian community because, even though they came here in circumstances which perhaps were less than desirable, they were still genuine refugees. Unfortunately, what the Senate estimates committee examining the Department of Immigration and Citizenship heard in the last few weeks undermines even that argument quite comprehensively. As members who peruse the budget papers will see, the cost of offshore asylum seeker management is to rise from $149 million this year to more than twice that amount—$327 million—next year, even though, according to the government’s calculations, the number of unlawful arrivals is expected to fall from 5,000 or so to just 2,000 arrivals next financial year. Why the increase in cost despite the fall in the number of people arriving? The answer the committee was given was that the government expected a significant increase in refusal rates—which of course pushes up the cost for those people who have to be processed even though they have been refused refugee status.

In fact, looking at the figures, it is clear that more than half of the people the government expects to arrive in 2010-11 will not be considered genuine refugees. So the question has to be asked: what is the point of keeping in place an increasingly expensive policy—a policy whose cost is rising precipitously every year—when fewer than half of the people who arrive by boat to be treated through the processing system in Australia actually turn out to be real refugees? What a comprehensive failure of policy on both counts: it is not tough and it is not compassionate, despite what the Prime Minister said just a few weeks ago when announcing his change in policy.

Perhaps, however, the most powerful reason for rejecting this failure of a policy is that it lacks compassion. It has a deadly consequence. The policy which builds into Australia’s immigration policy a role for people smugglers actually encourages people to use their product. What is their product? It is passage on small, unseaworthy boats across the seas to Australia’s north. We know that those journeys sometimes end in tragedy. Reportedly, 18 months ago some 100 Afghanis perished at sea. More recently, five people drowned and probably another boatload of people died—170 or more who have perished in this way. That is the consequence of this government’s policy, because this government’s policy says, ‘We want people to use the service of people smugglers.’ That is the reason this policy should be rejected. It is not tough, it is not compassionate and it does not lead to an orderly and fair system for treating refugees. It is a failed policy.

Carol Brown (Tasmania, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I am happy to rise to speak in today’s MPI motion, because it gives me the opportunity to set some of the facts straight in the asylum seeker debate. Unsurprisingly, those opposite have once again chosen to play politics with this serious issue. As Minister Evans has highlighted a number of times, those opposite are far more interested in taking the low road with this issue. Increasingly, those opposite are travelling the low road with their tactics for political purposes.

Maybe those opposite need to stop and have a look at their own record, especially when it comes to children in detention. It was those opposite who presided over a policy that put children behind razor wire in high-security detention centres. Under the former Liberal government, thousands of children were held behind barbed wire at Nauru and at detention centres around Australia as part of the Liberal Party’s failed Pacific solution. But this government, the Rudd Labor government, has long held the policy that children will not be detained in immigration detention centres. So, upon coming to government, Labor enacted this commitment. We scrapped the failed Pacific solution that those opposite persisted with and we abolished the unjust temporary protection visa regime, implementing a more humane asylum seeker and refugee policy, including the abolition of the ineffective detention debt policy.

Those opposite seem content to peddle the same old tired lines. All those opposite seem to be interested in is scaremongering and political grandstanding—and, of course, reintroducing their failed Pacific solution, which includes reviving the cruel temporary protection visas. We know these approaches do not work, because there were a number of push factors that those opposite had to deal with when they were in government which resulted in a significant increase in the number of people seeking asylum in Australia.

As Minister Evans pointed out when Mr Abbott announced a return to the Pacific solution:

Temporary protection visas are a cruel hoax. They do not work and they do stop the boats.

After the Howard Government introduced TPVs in 1999, nearly 8500 people arrived by boat and more than 90 per cent of these people are now living in Australia.

The Pacific Solution also failed, with more than 70 per cent of those detained on Nauru and Manus Island ultimately being settled in Australia or elsewhere.

Mr Abbott claims that he will ‘turn the boats back’, but the fact remains that under the Howard government only seven boats were turned back and no boats were sent back after 2003. It has been reiterated time and time again by those of us on this side of the chamber that the Rudd Labor government remains committed to maintaining tough border protection policies.

As was announced earlier this year, the government have made changes to the way asylum seekers will be processed in Australia. We have announced the suspension of the processing of new asylum applications from Sri Lanka and Afghanistan. This allows more time for further improvements and stabilising of conditions in Sri Lanka and Afghanistan. These changes will ensure that Australia only accepts those asylum seekers who have genuine claims for protection, because not everyone who flees conflict is a genuine refugee.

As Minister Evans, Minister Smith and Minister O’Connor highlighted at the announcement of these changes, ‘the UNHCR is reviewing country conditions in both these countries and related guidelines for refugee status determination’. In light of the change in circumstances of these countries, the government has suspended processing new asylum seeker claims from Sri Lankan nationals for three months and for a period of six months for claims from Afghan nationals. These processing changes will be reviewed at the end of their respective periods.

The Rudd Labor government has also recently passed through this place the Anti-People Smuggling and Other Measures Bill. The new legislation will strengthen Australia’s people-smuggling laws. It will allow the Australian Security Intelligence Organisation to specifically investigate people smuggling and other border security threats. The bill will deliver additional offences to target those who finance people-smuggling activities. The bill will also deliver stronger penalties to those involved in people smuggling.

Those opposite are determined to revive their disgraced Pacific solution to detain asylum seekers. The Pacific solution exercise was costly, ineffective and nothing more than a political stunt introduced by those opposite on the eve of an election. And now, even after it failed so miserably, those opposite want to bring it back. That’s right: the Leader of the Opposition remains committed to the inhumane, failed Pacific solution.

The Rudd Labor government pledged to put an end to the Pacific solution and that is exactly what we have done. I hope we never see a return to the Pacific solution. As we know, it did not solve the people-smuggling problem. A number of push factors were the cause of the increase of boat arrivals then and, as those opposite are aware, there have also been a number of push factors increasing the number of asylum seekers in recent times.

Between 1999 and 2001, under the watch of those opposite, we saw 12,000 asylum seekers arrive. In 1999 we saw the arrival of 86 boats with 3,721 asylum seekers onboard, in 2000 we saw the arrival of 51 boats with 2,939 asylum seekers onboard and in 2001 we saw the arrival of 43 boats with 5,516 asylum seekers onboard—and that was after the introduction of TPVs. This influx of asylum seekers was because of the brutal regimes in Afghanistan under the Taliban and in Iraq under Saddam Hussein, which meant that large numbers of people were fleeing these countries to seek asylum. So push factors, like they were between 1999 and 2001, are the major reason for increased numbers of people seeking asylum in Australia.

The UNHCR’s latest complete publications are its 2009 Global report and Global trends documents. These publications make clear that forced displacement remains a massive global challenge. There were 43.3 million forcibly displaced people worldwide at the end of 2009, the highest number since the mid-1990s. The number of refugees returning home with UNHCR support in 2009 was the lowest in the last 20 years. The number of asylum seekers worldwide in 2009 increased by nearly 150,000 compared with 2008. One of the reasons for this increase was the high number of asylum claims from places such as Afghanistan.

The Rudd Labor government has not, as those opposite claim, gone soft on people smugglers. Today’s MPI is nothing more than an attempt to score cheap political points and to create a fear campaign. Since coming to office the government have maintained a tough and stringent border security regime. In this year’s budget we announced $1.2 billion to bolster and strengthen Australia’s border security. This will include investment in eight new border patrol vessels and the strengthening of aviation security. On the weekend the Minister for Home Affairs, Brendan O’Connor, announced that the procurement process for the eight new border protection vessels has now begun. The minister has highlighted that these vessels will be:

… larger, more robust and have a greater patrolling range than the Bay class vessels that they will replace. They could also accommodate more crew members.

We will provide $42.6 million over four years to meet project implementation and enhanced operating costs for these new border protection vessels, $32.9 million over four years for investment to work with Indonesia to better manage the issue of people smuggling in the region and $15.7 million over two years to ensure the continued presence of a dedicated vessel at Ashmore Reef.

These measures, plus many others, build upon the $654 million investment in last year’s budget to combat people smuggling. We have also maintained the procedure of sending asylum seekers to our offshore detention centre at Christmas Island for processing. We ensure that all asylum seekers who arrive on unauthorised boats are sent to Christmas Island for the appropriate security, health and identity checks. These are all measures that were in place under the previous government, and in fact the Rudd Labor government has enhanced the border security protection processes for Australia. (Time expired)

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

The problem with following Senator Brown in this matter of public importance debate is that you do not know where to start. Her speech was full of intellectual errors and a lot of it lacked honesty. Let me just sum up the other side’s case in this. They have utterly failed in the most basic responsibility of a government to provide security—in this case, border security. That is what we are debating today: the Rudd government’s failure to control our borders. Whatever side of the fence you are on or whatever your political colour, a government has a basic responsibility to ensure security for its people and for its borders. This government have failed in this fundamental responsibility.

The minister in charge, Senator Evans, can run from his responsibility, as he does daily in this place, but he cannot hide. This minister, who represents the government, is probably the most incompetent and dangerous minister in the government. That is saying something when you consider Julia Gillard and Peter Garrett.

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

Order! Senator McGauran, you must refer to people by their proper titles.

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

Ms Gillard and Mr Garrett. Senator Evans’ ministry deals with people’s lives. When you take up the responsibility of the office of the Minister for Immigration and Citizenship it is not going to be easy and you always know that you have to make tough decisions—it is the role of any minister. Certainly when we were in government we had several immigration ministers whose daily chores were probably harder than those of a lot of other ministers, but there is a responsibility to process, which creates fairness in that ministry.

But Senator Evans has run from that responsibility. He has dispersed the responsibility. The Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet has in fact stripped this minister of much of his responsibility. What the Prime Minister has not stripped from him he has confessed to handing over to his own department. His own department will make the crucial decisions that the minister was voted in and appointed to make. He swore his oath of office at the Governor-General’s residence that he would make—

Joe Ludwig (Queensland, Australian Labor Party, Manager of Government Business in the Senate) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Senator Ludwig interjecting—

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

I thought ‘Mr Point of Order’ was about to say something.

Joe Ludwig (Queensland, Australian Labor Party, Manager of Government Business in the Senate) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I was just standing.

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

It was enough to throw me off, anyway! The minister swore his oath of office in regard to making decisions about permanent residencies, appeals and visa appeals. This is the job of the minister and he has delegated it back to his department. This is a weak minister and he epitomises the government’s weak approach to border security. On the minister’s weak decision making epitomising the government’s approach, remember the SIEV 36 asylum seeker boat that sank in international waters. No action was taken against those held responsible, despite the Northern Territory coroner’s assurance that the weight of evidence indicated who had created the fire on board the SIEV 36 that cost five lives. Those bad characters are still in this country and they have not even been charged. This minister has the authority to expel them from this country. This minister in the same matter allowed the Navy personnel who attended this incident to be pilloried in public by his political backers, who said that the Navy were much to blame for the incident. Nothing could be further from the truth and the Northern Territory coroner found as such. Yet the minister has remained mute. He has remained mute during the pillorying and remains mute in defence of the Navy.

His weakness in decision making is notorious in relation to the Oceanic Viking, where 76 Sri Lankans held hostage and blackmailed a nation. It was much to the astonishment of the Indonesians that we caved in; moreover, it was much to the astonishment of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, who declared the double-dealing as queue jumping. Even though ASIO advised that five of the Sri Lankans on board the Oceanic Viking were a security threat, they were still allowed into this country—and they are still here. This minister has given up on his portfolio. He never wanted to take on the difficulty of the portfolio in the first place.

It was reported in today’s papers that some Labor members are now getting a bit nervous about this issue, that their seats may be in doubt over this issue, particularly in the western suburbs of Sydney given Saturday’s by-election results. But they are just looking at the political effects of this. They have finally woken up to the political effects of this—not the moral effects, not the security effects. They have looked at this issue from day one through the prism of politics.

We read today that 200 more are on their way to Australia and that bureaucrats are looking at whether to reopen Woomera detention centre—that will be the advice to the government. They are suddenly getting politically nervous about this, but their concern about this is only political. They have made their decisions on political grounds and that is why they are in the mess they are in now.

The government’s first decision was to soften the laws in 2008 and since then we have seen a surge of boats. They only made that decision on grounds to appease a certain element who supported the Labor Party—a minority, I should add; not their base but some left-wing, naive noise-makers. They changed all the laws that worked that brought the boats to zero. They changed them on the grounds of politics. When reality hits and when we have had over 174 boats come to our shores with thousands upon thousands of asylum seekers, they decide to make some changes. But they are only political gestures. They keep their soft laws and they do not go to the source of the problem, and then they make the bizarre decision to suspend for six months the processing of Afghani and Sri Lankan asylum seekers. What a contradiction to it all. That decision has not stopped the boats from coming; it has made Christmas Island jam-packed full of unprocessed asylum seekers. Where is the humanity in that? It has now forced an onshore detention centre policy. That is what it has done. It is a contradiction to their policies and it is a political solution that simply has not worked. They talk about locking up children. They try that card, yet there are 450 children in the lockup as we speak. There are bureaucrats running around looking for onshore placements for thousands. There are extreme tensions and even violence inside detention centres. They have had to send extra Federal Police to Christmas Island to cover those tensions and possible riots. It is a volatile situation on Christmas Island. The minister is in the chamber. I wish he would get up and speak on this issue. He declared Christmas Island a white elephant. It probably was under the coalition policies, but it is not anymore. Bureaucrats are looking to open up Woomera.

The opposition claim that the government’s moral failure is threefold. Firstly, the government’s policies are giving succour to the people smugglers. The Prime Minister can rail all he likes against people smugglers and call them ‘vile’, but it is just water off a duck’s back unless he acts with firmness and undertakes policies that he knows will stop these boats and take these poor, desperate people out of the grip of people smugglers. That is the moral situation: choke off the trade. Secondly, there is the moral issue of the safety of asylum seekers. By introducing these soft policies, the government have simply seduced them to come across perilous waters, where we know many hundreds have been lost. They give them hope with their policies and they put them in the grip of people smugglers. Of course these people are going to take that perilous journey across the Indian Ocean, and many do not make it here. You ought to look at the morality of that. Thirdly, there is the moral issue about the queue jumpers. What about the thousands in refugee camps? What about the people waiting to come out here with their families? Even the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees called it ‘queue jumping’—they were his words. These are not terms we use; these are terms that the United Nations used. (Time expired)

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

I rise this afternoon to provide a contribution to this debate. I chair the Senate’s legal and constitutional affairs committee and I have done that for quite a number of years. We have gone through these arguments time and time again, but what is really disappointing—

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

Senator McGauran interjecting—

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

Senator McGauran—and I will take that interjection. The Australian people are getting tired of the low road that your party continually wants to take when it comes to asylum seekers, the low road in terms of trying to somehow demonise these people, suggesting that in some way they have no right and no entitlement to claim asylum and refugee status. You think that out there in the electorate this will get some political traction as you create division and racism in the community by trying to alienate people when in fact this country proudly accepts refugees under the international conventions that we have signed.

For some reason you want the public to believe that our policies are responsible for the number of people that are now coming here, without looking at all at the trends that are happening in countries overseas, the movement of refugees internationally and the part that Australia plays in this when we ought to in fact play a more significant role in this. This is of course on the back of celebrating International World Refugee Day over the weekend. I went to the Jingili Water Gardens in Darwin and I want to commend the multicultural council and in particular the Melaleuca Refugee Centre for the wonderful celebration of refugees in our Darwin community where people from mainly African nations and Burma were there with all of the community—probably a couple of hundred people there—endorsing and supporting these people who have made the journey to this country and have successfully claimed refugee status.

This opposition would have you believe that in fact we have abandoned policies that they put in place when they were elected. Apart from abolishing temporary protection visas, which I will go to in a minute, we have made some changes that treat asylum seekers and refugees in this country more humanely than this opposition ever did. It is with some audacity that we get question after question in this place, particularly about children in detention and the way in which refugees are treated under this government, after the way in which refugees were treated so inhumanely for 10 long years under the policies of the people opposite.

Since we have come to office we have dismantled the failed Pacific solution—and I notice the people opposite have resurrected the Pacific solution. I noticed that during estimates they launched their policy: nothing has changed in the policy except the date at the top; there is no substantial change to the way in which the opposition would treat international refugees seeking asylum in this country. Nothing has changed at all; it is a return to the past. They have simply changed the date at the top and want to rehash that as their policy as they go into an election. They want to dump asylum seekers onto some island in the Pacific or Indian oceans once they try and get assessment here.

They are going to resurrect the Pacific solution; we have dismantled it. We have abolished the temporary protection visa regime. We have introduced fairer work rights arrangements for asylum seekers in the community. We have twice increased the size of Australia’s humanitarian program. We have introduced fairer arrangements for asylum seekers on Christmas Island, including an independent review of decisions, access to migration advice and oversight by the Immigration Ombudsman. None of that was done under the coalition. People seeking asylum were treated appallingly by the people opposite. We have abolished the ineffective system of charges for immigration detainees and we have adopted a new values based approach to immigration detention.

Let me go to that approach for a minute. On coming to government we initiated immigration detention values. We set a high watermark for the way in which we believe people who are seeking asylum in this country ought to be treated. Seven key values were established to guide future policy and practice in immigration detention. Among other things, these values are about the length and conditions of detention, so we will not hold people in detention languishing for years and years at a time waiting to know the outcome of their application. We hold people in detention to look at their papers to assess security and health risks but we have values on that. Immigration staff are now guided by these values. We also look at the appropriateness of the accommodation and the services provided, and they are subject to regular review. People in detention will be treated fairly and reasonably within the law, and the conditions of detention will ensure the inherent dignity of the human being—something that of course was totally lost and forgotten under the policies of the people who sit opposite me.

Our view is very simple. We have signed international conventions. We have said that if people want to seek asylum in this country they have the right to do that. We have said that if someone’s claim for asylum is not legitimate then they will be sent home, and they are being sent home and we will continue to do that. We have a strong and fair, not unfair, policy on border protection and we believe it is the right policy for now and the right policy for the future.

The opposition believe that it is time for a fear campaign, which is being mounted almost daily by the people opposite me. It is mostly based on a series of untruths. The whole picture is never told. The facts are never revealed. They want to fabricate stories in the community that somehow our border protection policy has been weakened—it has not—and that we are somehow responsible for people who are trying to seek asylum in this country. They do not look at what is happening with international movements and trends, and the situations in the countries from which these people are actually fleeing.

Those opposite would purport that the figures suggest that we have had an increase in the number of people arriving by boat. We have not. The Howard government still holds the record for the highest number of boats and arrivals. The largest number of asylum seekers for three years over the last 15 years were in 1999, 2000 and 2001—under the Howard government. The highest number of boats arriving in Australia in any one year was in 1999—under the previous government—when 3,721 asylum seekers arrived in 86 boats. Under the Rudd government, to this point the highest number of boats to have arrived is this year, which now numbers only 65. The largest number of asylum seekers arriving in Australia in any one year was highest in 2001—under the previous government—when 5,516 asylum seekers arrived in 43 boats. The largest vessel to arrive in Australia under the Howard government had 359 people in it. The Tampa of course had 433 people on it.

Annette Hurley (SA, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

What about SIEVX?

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

We might get to SIEVX in a moment. I want to point out on the record that 90 per cent of those people have stayed in this country. We can show that, despite the filibuster from the other side talking about the lack of rights for asylum seekers who come here, those opposite would have a much tougher, much more inhumane policy than we have. What they do not tell the Australian public and what they do not want to reveal to the people in the community is that 90 per cent of these people were found to be genuine refugees and have stayed here. For example, 86 per cent of the people who were on Nauru have been found to be genuine refugees and are now living in and are part of this community. You never tell the community the full story and the full picture.

However, I want to talk today about the fact that this government has ensured that families and children are out of detention. I notice that today in the Northern Territory News the Country Liberal Party candidate for the seat of Solomon is whipping up the accusation that we are putting asylum seekers in public housing in the Northern Territory—a claim she has taken from an ABC website. It is a shame she did not pick up the phone and get the facts. Just like every coalition member in this place, that candidate was short on the facts and short on providing the right advice to the community. (Time expired)

Dana Wortley (SA, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I welcome the opportunity to speak on the Rudd government’s commitment to Australia’s border security. As the Minister for Immigration and Citizenship has said in this place, the government is devoting unprecedented resources to protecting Australia’s borders and developing intelligence on people-smuggling syndicates. We are working cooperatively with Australia’s regional partners to disrupt people-smuggling ventures overseas and we are subjecting people smugglers to the full force of Australian law. People-smuggling is exploitative and dangerous. People smugglers are motivated by greed and they work in sophisticated cross-border crime networks. They have little regard for the safety and security of those being smuggled, endangering their lives in unseaworthy and overcrowded boats.

Australia, under the Rudd government, has one of the toughest border security regimes in the world, with a system of extensive air and sea patrols, excision and offshore processing and mandatory detention of unauthorised boat arrivals and unlawful noncitizens who pose a risk to the Australian community. Those opposite know the government has acted and is acting to protect Australia’s borders. What we see again here today is an opposition reverting to its fallback position of scaremongering on matters of national security. When all else fails what do those opposite do? They play the border protection, illegal immigration and asylum seeker card. Unlike most of those opposite, this government recognises that tough border security needs to be balanced by fair and humane treatment of asylum seekers and others in immigration detention. That is what those opposite really appear to be objecting to.

There have been many accounts of the dreadful predicament in which detainees found themselves on arrival in Australia and of the struggle of refugee advocates to assist those in detention under the former coalition government. Many of these describe the conditions under which detainees existed during the years leading up to and including the coalition’s so-called Pacific solution. Those accounts are invariably relentlessly heartbreaking reading and inevitably refer to the political environment in which people were incarcerated indefinitely. They were numbed, isolated and dehumanised by word and deed. Worse even than this, children were born in detention, incarcerated behind razor wire and subjected to terrible sights and sounds, the like of which our own children have never experienced and I trust never will. Among the detainees were people suffering psychiatric problems as a result of war, trauma and deprivation, suffering significant mental health problems which could only have been exacerbated while they were in what often was long-term detention. It was indeed an embarrassment not only to those opposite—to the coalition—but to us individually and collectively as a nation. Consider over the years that those opposite were in government the sinking of SIEVX, ‘children overboard’, the Tampa, children behind bars, TPVs, desperate self-mutilation and hunger strikes—a national and international embarrassment. In 2000-01, 1,923 children were held in detention centres. The Australian Human Rights Commission found that in December 2003 children had spent an average of one year, eight months and 11 days in detention. It found that in October of that year more than 50 per cent of all children detained had been held for more than two years.

Consider the mistreatment of detainees under the Liberal watch, highlighted by a series of protests, riots and hunger strikes at Woomera from June to November 2000. Under the then Liberal government there were episodes of mistreatment, illegal detention and deportation, self-harm, psychiatric illness, breaching of our international obligations and demonising of people who had simply sought our help. As we know, to add insult to injury, many of those who were eventually released and allowed to join the greater community were actually billed for each day of their detention.

The values that underpinned this regime are not shared by the Australian people and they are not shared by this government. Labor’s platform on coming to office included a pledge to implement more humane detention policies and, with this, implementing strict and sophisticated border security protocols. Protecting Australia’s borders and airports from threats of terrorism, people smuggling, organised crime, illegal foreign fishing and the trafficking of illicit goods is a top priority.

The government has introduced legislation that reflects this, including the Anti-People Smuggling and Other Measures Bill 2010. This bill bolstered the government’s hard line and comprehensive approach to combating people smuggling by enhancing the Commonwealth’s anti-people-smuggling legislative framework. The bill ensures that people-smuggling activities are consistently and comprehensively criminalised, with a new offence for providing material support for people smuggling. The bill equips our law enforcement and national security agencies with effective investigative capabilities to detect and disrupt people smuggling. It demonstrates the government’s commitment to addressing the serious nature of people-smuggling activities and targeting those criminal groups who seek to organise, participate in and benefit from people-smuggling activities. Unlike the opposition, which for years incompetently ran border security as a politically motivated scare campaign, this government has always recognised the need to remember it is dealing with human beings here. Strong border security is vital and it can be managed humanely.

In July 2008 we honoured the commitment that we made prior to the election by announcing seven key immigration detention values designed to improve detention policy and practice into the future. The seven detention values include that mandatory detention is an essential component of strong border patrol. To support the integrity of Australia’s immigration program three groups will be subject to mandatory detention. They are: firstly, all unauthorised arrivals for the management of health, identity and security risks to the community; secondly, unlawful noncitizens who present unacceptable risks to the community; and, thirdly, unlawful noncitizens who repeatedly refuse to comply with their visa conditions.

The government does take border security seriously and it has made a $1.2 billion investment in border and aviation security. This includes a major investment in the purchase of eight new patrol vessels with improved surveillance and response capabilities and greater range to replace the current ageing Bay class vessels. The government will also provide additional funding of around $42.6 million over four years to meet project implementation and enhanced operating costs, $163.2 million over four years to continue initiatives to combat illegal foreign fishing, $32.9 million over four years for investment in work with Indonesia to better manage the issue of people smuggling within Indonesia and the region, and $15.7 million over two years to ensure the continued presence of a dedicated vessel at Ashmore Reef. I could continue with the investments that the government has made to ensure the protection of our borders, but my time is running out. We as a nation have a duty and a need to protect our borders from threats while protecting the rights of genuine refugees. (Time expired)

Scott Ryan (Victoria, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

It is during debates like this that I am tempted to put in a request for one of those ticker screens to go up on the wall of the Senate chamber next to the clock so that when we hear phrases like ‘playing politics’ and ‘fear campaign’ they can be translated from Labor spin for the benefit of the rest of the Senate into what they really mean. It is Labor code that means: ‘We have failed and we want to try to declare this debate off-limits. We don’t want to discuss this issue, so we will play the man. We will make ad hominem attacks on the opposition in order to somehow try to make discussion of this issue off-limits.’

This is because Labor knows that its policies have been a failure. There is a very easy way to tell this. Labor retains its commitment to tough language, as it always has, but its actions do not measure up and neither do the results. Senators Crossin and Wortley spoke of race and fear campaigns. It is the government that has targeted people of a particular nation. It is the government that has effectively targeted people of particular races by specifically suspending claims by Sri Lankans and Afghans. The only party to have spoken about something like that is indeed the Labor Party, so its hypocrisy knows no bounds.

Consistent with its past, as we have heard all afternoon today, the Labor Party spends more time talking about the opposition than government. It is as if it never left this side of the chamber. It cannot get past the discussion here today, just as there is in the community, of the Labor Party’s record in government—what it has done, the results of its policies and how it will be held accountable.

I say to you, Mr Acting Deputy President, that with its constant attempts to water down the mandatory detention policies—introduced as we all know by Gerry Hand, who I think was the leader of the left faction from my home state of Victoria—I can see that the Labor Party in five or 10 years will want to mount the case that mandatory detention is not working and therefore we can get rid of it. This is merely the first stage in a longer campaign. The government wants to appear to be tough, but tough language aimed at a domestic audience will not deliver the desired policy outcomes. It will not send a signal to the people overseas who market the product of people smuggling, who say to people, ‘Give me thousands of dollars and we will get you on an unsafe boat to Australia.’

The Labor Party has its policy the wrong way around. It is talking tough domestically and sending all the wrong signals overseas, whereas the appropriate measure would be to say to the people approved by the UNHCR waiting in various facilities and countries around the world, ‘We are a humanitarian nation and we have a generous resettlement program,’ but also to make it clear to people who wish to bypass that system that we are not going to tolerate our immigration policies being determined by the actions of people smugglers. But the Labor Party wants to talk tough domestically for political purposes. It throws around big numbers, as we have heard today. The cost next year has blown out to $327 million. It brags about $1.2 billion, but this is nothing but an illusion of activity. The money being spent next year is a reflection of its failure this year. On a test of this policy, it is more expensive, there are more boats arriving and there are more people arriving in unsafe circumstances. That is the result of the Labor Party’s policy and a sign of its failure.

We have only to recite the facts to show that Labor’s policy in this regard is a complete failure. The management of Australia’s borders has slipped markedly since Labor came to office. When the coalition left office in November 2007, the flow of unlawful arrivals was at a trickle, but we still had an active resettlement program for refugees from around the world. Fewer than 50 people were arriving at an average of only a handful of boats per year. Now, rather than an average of three a year, we are having three a week. Since Labor abolished temporary protection visas, the green light has effectively been given to people smugglers because, in the end, the people smugglers market a product. The promise of permanent residency in Australia is a product they have sold and it is a product they are continuing to sell overseas.

As well as the increase in the number of boats, we have a substantial increase in the number of people in detention, and this is continuing to skyrocket. When we left office, there were under 500 people in detention. There are now more than 3,500—seven times as many. On Christmas Island when the coalition left office, there were two detainees left, I understand. Now the detention centre is overflowing. The detention centre is being expanded by a tent city and it is overflowing. Two hundred and fifty detainees are living in tents, with over 2,500 people on the island. The Curtin detention centre is mooted for reopening to accommodate the surge in unlawful arrivals that have occurred on this government’s watch.

The Prime Minister is a man who likes to think he is supremely moral—more so than the average Australian. Climate change was once the greatest moral challenge of our time, but that was postponed because of political inconvenience. It is the same again with border security. Labor’s attempt to discriminate between asylum seekers based on whether they come from Afghanistan and Sri Lanka is unprecedented. They are subject to a processing freeze that effectively detains them, if not indefinitely, for a substantially longer period. Labor promised the contrary to this. They promised an end to indefinite detention and they abolished the temporary protection visas in 2008. But it is just another broken promise from Labor, just as their promise to stem the flow of boats has been. Despite the rhetoric and commitment to honouring our international human rights obligations, it is very hard to conceive of a way where suspending the processing of applicants from two nations is in any way compliant with these.

Time is short. The coalition does not have a debate with those seeking freedom; it has a debate with the government because there are always others who could come to Australia as well. The government constantly relies on push factors, but the truth is that in our world today push factors will never disappear. The coalition government faced push factors. What domestic Australian politics can address and what we can address in this place is pull factors. The government seeks to disregard pull factors and the results of its own policies in order to avoid responsibility.

We now know the abolition of temporary protection visas has been a failure; the numbers tell us so. On top of that, we had the Prime Minister’s special deal on the Oceanic Viking, a deal which he made sure he was not present for and has done everything he can to avoid answering for. As Labor seeks to define the coalition record in a statistically convenient way, the numbers cannot be fudged this much. Yes, the coalition faced a surge, but it introduced measures that ensured that surge did not continue. By the time we had left office, they were at a record low.

I am a strong supporter of our refugee and humanitarian resettlement program. Public support for it is critical to maintaining its continuance. I do not think it is an unreasonable expectation on behalf of the people of Australia that the Australian government will control who comes to our country and the circumstances in which they do. This public acceptance and this commitment by the Australian government underpin a very generous program of which Australia can quite rightly be proud.

I recently went to an anniversary celebration for the first arrivals of the Vietnamese refugees in Australia following the Vietnam War. This program in particular, a Liberal program, is something of which this country can be proud. It has benefited our own nation immensely, at least as much as it has benefited those who have resettled. One important thing: this most successful of resettlement programs happened with offshore processing. To say that offshore processing somehow has no place in Australian policy is to deny the success of that program only 30 year ago. The Labor Party stands condemned for trying to avoid accountability, for trying to prevent debate on this very important issue, and indeed for the failure of its policies combined with that attempt to stifle debate effectively leading to a long-term undermining of public faith in this very important component of our immigration program.

Steve Hutchins (NSW, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Order! The time for the discussion has expired.