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

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

The Gillard Government’s failure to secure Australia’s borders and implement policies to combat people smugglers.

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

Gavin Marshall (Victoria, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Mr Deputy President, I rise on a point of order. You will note that, for this motion to be supported, it must be supported by four senators, not including the proposer, rising in their places, and I submit to you that this proposal is not supported.

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

Senator Marshall, we were just at the conclusion of a division and it would have been difficult for some senators to get to their places in time for them to stand in their places.

Opposition Senators:

Opposition senators interjecting—

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

Order! I saw at least four, but I could not look to see whether there were any more than four—but I did not have much time. So I will call it again. 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—

There were at least four senators standing in their rightful places, Senator Marshall, so I would suggest you be very careful when you take points of order such as that. 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.

Michaelia Cash (WA, Liberal Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Immigration) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Minister Carr’s disgraceful and completely unprofessional performance in question time today—in fact, it was put to me it was a performance that was unbefitting of a minister of the Crown—shows exactly why the coalition is debating this matter today. Those opposite have absolutely no answers at all to their failed border protection policies. Andrew Bolt, in his online blog on 12 November 2010, posed the following question: is Julia Gillard finished? I have to say, based on Minister Carr’s performance today, perhaps the question being posed by Andrew Bolt should have been: is Minister Carr finished? But the question was in relation to Julia Gillard—and I have to say: if we put that question to Bill Shorten, what do you think Mr Shorten would say?

Anne McEwen (SA, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Mr President, on a point of order: the senator persists in refusing to name members of the other place by their appropriate titles.

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

I apologise, Senator McEwen; I was engaged in another conversation and was not listening as closely as I should have. Senator Cash, you must refer to people in the other place by their proper title.

Michaelia Cash (WA, Liberal Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Immigration) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Thank you, Mr Deputy President. If we were to put the question to Minister Shorten, one can only imagine what his answer would be. It would be a resounding, ‘Yes, Ms Gillard, the current Prime Minister from the Australian Labor Party, is finished.’

Let us now look at the question in the context of today’s matter of public importance debate on securing Australia’s borders. Again, without a doubt, the answer to the question has to be a resounding yes because, when it comes to protecting Australia’s borders, Gillard Labor, just like Rudd Labor, has failed the Australian people. This government has shown that in the few short months since it was elected it has absolutely no agenda whatsoever when it comes to protecting Australia’s borders. This is a government that has clearly demonstrated to the Australian people that when it comes to irregular maritime arrivals it lurches from one problem to the next. This is a government that, just like the former Rudd Labor government, has no solution to the mess it created when it chose to roll back, in August 2008, the Howard government’s proven strong border protection policies.

Based on Prime Minister Gillard’s performance to date, the Australian people may well be entitled to ask: ‘Why did the Labor Party axe—or politically execute—former Prime Minister Rudd when Ms Gillard’s policies are worse than the former Labor government’s policies?’ The former Labor government was an absolute disaster when it came to border protection. Now, under Prime Minister Gillard, Australia’s border protection policy is in complete, total and utter tatters. To those on the other side who say, ‘No, no, no, it’s not in tatters; that is the coalition’s scaremongering on the issue of border protection,’ I say let us look at the facts. Let us look at the statistics in relation to irregular maritime arrivals, because the arrival of the latest boat, with 42 people on board, means that more than 9,013 people have arrived unlawfully by boat since the Labor Party changed the coalition’s strong border protection policies. This year alone, more than 5,978 people have arrived unlawfully in Australia. That is a border protection policy that is in absolute tatters.

What is even more interesting is that even the Labor Party did not actually believe that the numbers would be that high. We know this because in the May 2010 budget the government allocated $327.5 million for offshore asylum-seeker management—and here is the crunch—based on an estimated 2,000 irregular maritime arrivals for the 2010-11 financial year. That was an underestimation by any stretch of the word.

Mr Deputy President, do you know how many people have actually arrived in the four short months since this new financial year commenced? It is 2,320. And we know that the numbers will continue to rise. Did the Labor Party reflect that in the MYEFO? No. They are absolutely kidding themselves if they think that their budget forecast of 2,000 irregular maritime arrivals for the 2010-11 period is in any way reflective of the number of irregular maritime arrivals who are actually going to come here.

At the end of the day, it is the Australian people who will suffer because of Labor’s failed border protection policies. It is the mums, it is the dads, it is the taxpayers in Australia that are now going to have to brace themselves for a massive budget blow-out under this Labor government. That is because Labor’s costings do not reflect the true indication of the potential costs because of their immigration failures.

Australian taxpayers should be bracing themselves for a budget blow-out that could potentially be in the hundreds of millions of dollars. Despite their continued rhetoric—and we heard it in question time today: ‘We will be bringing the budget back into surplus’—that is an absolute fantasy. Based on just the potential budget blow-out from their immigration failures alone, there is no way that the Gillard Labor government can bring this budget back into surplus in the time frame that is referred to. What is so sad for the Australian people is that moneys that could have been spent by this government on building new hospitals, building new roads, on employing more doctors in rural areas, supporting our troops currently on missions overseas and helping Australian pensioners, will all need to be diverted to pay for the Labor government’s failures when it comes to border protection.

None of these failures need to have occurred. Why? The coalition have proved that it is possible to stop people-smuggling, that it is possible to stop the boats. We did this when we were in government. But this is the prerequisite: as a government you need to have the stomach to make some very, very tough policy decisions and then you need to have the guts to stand by those decisions. And that it is something the Labor government is completely unable to do.

It just gets worse and worse for the Labor government. Recently we have had the decision of the High Court which has absolutely slammed Labor’s processing system and has sunk any remaining credibility whatsoever in relation to Labor’s policies for processing unlawful maritime arrivals. The decision will no doubt open a door and the Australian people will now see a flood of appeals by failed asylum seekers. None of this was budgeted for in the 2010-11 costings. Yet again, this is another catastrophic example of Labor’s complete and utter failure to control Australia’s borders.

Again, the High Court decision need not have happened. Why? The government could have, and should have, considered the coalition’s Nauru option. Unlike the government’s offshore processing regime which is now in complete tatters, the coalition’s offshore processing regime on Nauru remains intact despite the High Court’s decision. The Labor government needs to swallow its pride and pick up the telephone and speak to the President of Nauru and discuss reopening the detention centre there. The coalition can only say it so many times. But the Labor government will not do that. And do you know why, Mr Acting Deputy President? Because the current Labor government—just like the former Labor government—do not have the stomach, they do not have the guts, to take the tough decisions when it comes to protecting Australia’s borders. Only the coalition is prepared to take strong action, tough decisions, implement strong and tough policies and then stand by those policies to ensure that we stop people-smuggling.

If you do not stop people-smuggling you do not stop people’s lives being put at risk. Those on the other side just do not seem to understand this. The coalition wants to stop people-smuggling. The coalition wants to stop people putting their lives at risk. To do that you need to implement tough policy. If Labor are serious about cleaning up the mess that they have created, they will restore the coalition’s tough immigration and border protection policy regime and stop the boats.

Doug Cameron (NSW, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Here we are again—Senator Cash in another strident performance. There is no substance. It is all about the rhetoric and the one-liners. I am always intrigued by the coalition and their love affair for the worst aspects of US politics. I suppose Senator Cash will be joining Senator Bernardi’s new Tea Party, his Australian Tea Party that is on about deregulation, no role for government in society and anti-immigration. That is the Tea Party and that is where Senator Cash and Senator Bernardi are coming from.

We have been lectured over the years about the supremacy and flexibility of the US industrial relations system. So what did the coalition give us? They gave us Work Choices. We have been lectured about the rugged individualism that dominates United States society, and that was used to attack collectivism and trade unionism in this country. We have been lectured about the supremacy of the market and the need to minimise or remove government from any role in society. We have been lectured about privatisation of health care, privatisation of education, privatisation of public infrastructure, and we are now been lectured on immigration.

But we have heard little of the historic immigration and refugee policies that assisted the US become a global powerhouse. You do not hear that. They want all the worst aspects of the US system but they do not want to pick up some of the great aspects of the US system. Immigration was welcomed and refugees were supported. Refugees were nurtured and refugees were accepted into the US society, the society that the coalition keep lecturing us about, but they never want to pick up the good aspects of the US society.

This historic set of values is epitomised in the inscription on the Statue of Liberty. I am not sure if any in the coalition actually know about the inscription on the Statue of Liberty. It is a sonnet written by Emma Lazarus in the early 1900s. It is well quoted and I want to quote it again. The poem on the Statute of Liberty reads:

“Give me your tired, your poor,

Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,

The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.

Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,

I lift my lamp beside the golden door!”

The coalition have demonstrated that they do not care about fairness, equity and justice when it comes to refugees. The coalition’s record on asylum seekers and refugees is not based on our international obligations or the recognition that many asylum seekers fear for their lives. It is based on promoting fear and discrimination against the most vulnerable, against those who seek to come to this country for safe refuge. There is nothing of the principle that resulted in the United States providing refuge and support for those who fled their native country in fear of their lives.

The coalition do not care about the tired and the poor. The coalition do not care about providing freedom to asylum seekers. There would be no lamp beside the golden door for refugees if the coalition had their way. The coalition would simply fuel the prejudices and the fears of Australians against those who need our help and our support, and nothing could have epitomised that more than the contribution to this debate by Senator Cash, the previous speaker.

Labor has been the party that has taken steps to protect those who seek asylum in this country. In government we have introduced a number of changes to refugee policy including the closure of the disgraceful offshore processing centre in Nauru. It was a disgrace, it was an international shame and it brought nothing but loathing of this country by people who care about refugees. We ended the temporary protection visa system that left refugees in uncertainty and in desperation. We introduced a merit based appointment process for the Refugee Review Tribunal. We abolished the 45-day rule bar on asylum seekers’ access to work rights and basic health care.

We increased the total Refugee and Humanitarian Program from 13,000 places in 2007 to 13,750 currently. We replaced the Howard government’s community care pilot with an ongoing program to support asylum seekers living in the community. There were also some reforms to immigration detention including: the development of New Directions in Detention, an outline of principles for the conduct of immigration detention centres; the abolition of the policy of charging immigration detainees for the cost of their detention; and legislative changes to increase penalties for those convicted of people-smuggling and providing material aid.

Some myths are being perpetrated by the coalition in relation to refugees and asylum seekers. We hear a great deal about illegal boat arrivals, detention centres and border protection. It is all spin. There is no threat to Australia’s borders, no flood of illegals and no influx of boat arrivals. There is a trickle, not a flood. The numbers in Australia are very small. In 2009 there were 2,497 successful visa applications, mostly from families. In Europe there were 286,680 applications, 114 times as many. In North America there were 82,270 applications, 32 times as many. Ten years ago there were twice as many asylum seeker applications as there were last year. All up, there are 20,919 refugees in Australia, a tiny fraction of the worldwide total of 15.2 million and less than one-tenth of one per cent of the Australian population. These are the facts; these are not the scaremongering tactics adopted by the coalition.

They are victims of circumstances outside their control. Refugees who apply for asylum are people who have been forced to flee their homelands. Many faced persecution and imprisonment and some faced death. Most have lost everything they own. They have come here to start a new life because we live in a country which is safe and secure. It is hard for us to imagine what it must be like for many refugees. Sadly, nearly one refugee in two is a child.

Everyone who comes into this country undergoes rigorous Australian government security checks. Those opposite should understand that refugees are fleeing from security threats, not creating new ones. They are not illegals. Refugees have jumped no queues, they have broken no rules and they are not illegals. Since when was fleeing persecution a crime? It is not illegal to seek asylum without a visa.

Ninety per cent of boat arrivals are genuine refugees. That was what happened under the Howard government. The boat arrivals were allowed in. That is the reality because they were genuine refugees. When refugees are granted permanent residency they have exactly the same rights and obligations as the rest of us, like obeying Australian laws and paying Australian taxes.

We have a long and proud history in Australia of helping refugees. Since Federation we have accepted more than 740,000 refugees, many of them hard-working Australians who have made Australia the country it is today, like scientist Dr Karl Kruszelnicki and Westfield founder and FFA head Frank Lowy.

The argument is: why do they come here? Can’t they go somewhere else? That is the position being put from across the floor. The answer is: overwhelmingly, they do. By world standards, very few refugees come to Australia. Other countries get far more asylum applications than we do. Sweden, a country with half our population, gets four times as many asylum applications. North America gets 13 times as many, and Germany gets 28 times more refugees. But the argument from across the floor is that we are being swamped. We are not being swamped. There are 15.2 million refugees worldwide, and we have 20,919. That is a tiny fraction; an equivalent of one-tenth of one per cent of the Australian population.

The argument we hear from across the floor is that they are a security threat. No, they are not. Everyone who comes here is required to undergo a rigorous Australian government security check. These refugees are fleeing persecution. They are fleeing security threats, not creating new ones. Anyone who does pose a security threat is not admitted to this country. We hear the argument that they are breaking the rules. No, they are not. Refugees are not jumping queues. They have broken no rules. When you are running for your life, there is no such thing as an orderly queue. There are no rules. Think about it: would you risk your kids’ lives because you are supposed to wait for a piece of paper? It is not illegal to seek asylum without a visa.

The argument is that they are a drain on the economy. We heard a bit about that from Senator Cash earlier. When a refugee is granted residency, they have the same rights and obligations as everyone else. The Australian economy has been built on the back of immigration. Most people who come here as refugees seeking protection are so grateful that they end up giving back to this country much more than they ever take. We are told that we are splitting at the seams and we cannot take any more. It sometimes seems that way, but this has nothing to do with people who apply for asylum. Every year our population increases by around 300,000. Asylum seekers account for only 2,497. That is less than one per cent.

Then there is the argument that we do not get to decide who comes in and that our borders are now broken. We do decide who comes in: almost everyone who comes here does so by the usual migration channels. Everyone who applies for asylum is individually assessed by the Australian government. Remember: only people who can prove that they are fleeing persecution get a visa.

How fair dinkum are the coalition? We recently had the shameful spectacle of the coalition parading around the country during the August election campaign shouting, ‘Stop the boats,’ as if their bellicosity alone would somehow miraculously stop asylum seekers arriving in this country. According to the best estimates available, as recorded by the Parliamentary Library’s background note on this subject, somewhere between one and four per cent of asylum seekers arrive in Australia by boat. The other 96 to 99 per cent of asylum seekers arrive in somewhat more comfort, aboard Boeing and Airbus jet aircraft operated by the world’s leading airlines. They arrive at our airports with a valid visa, usually a tourist visa, and then apply for asylum at a later date, while living and often working in the community.

So why is it that the coalition cannot be found shouting, ‘Stop the 747s,’ ‘Stop the A380s,’ or ‘Close the airports’? The reason is the coalition are not actually fair dinkum on this issue. They have no interest in a workable policy that meets the test of fairness and humanitarian concern. They are only interested in dehumanising and scapegoating asylum seekers and refugees, and that has characterised the coalition and diminished them for the last decade. Who could forget the refusal of the then immigration minister, Mr Ruddock, to even acknowledge the humanity of a child seeking asylum, whom he referred to as ‘it’—not he, not she, but ‘it’. That epitomises the problems with the coalition and the lack of respect that the coalition have for refugees. (Time expired)

Ian Macdonald (Queensland, Liberal Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Northern and Remote Australia) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

That speech from Senator Cameron will certainly not go down in history as his finest. The speech from Senator Cameron that will go down in history is the one in which he referred to himself and other backbench members of the Australian Labor Party in this place as ‘zombies’ and ‘people who had a political lobotomy’. Senator Cameron’s speech today has demonstrated that clearly. It is a speech written in the minister’s office—certainly not a speech that Senator Cameron himself believes in and certainly not one that the people he is supposed to represent would believe or support. If Senator Cameron had taken the time to go and talk to people in Western Sydney and people in other parts of New South Wales, the state he represents, he would understand the real issues that are before the Australian people at the moment.

The decision of the Labor Party to open up the borders, its soft approach to border protection, has meant that Labor is running out of places to place the ever-increasing number of illegal immigrants. Their decision to house some of the overflow in the Adelaide Hills in South Australia and at Northam in Western Australia led to howls of protest because nobody from the Gillard government had bothered to let locals know in advance. Talking about Inverbrackie in the Adelaide Hills, I want to refer senators to a very thoughtful article by Alexander Downer in today’s Adelaide Advertiser, where he relates this very interesting scenario put to him by a constituent:

She thought it would be strange there would be the children of serving Australian Defence Force personnel, some of whom are in Afghanistan, at Woodside Primary School with children of boat people from Afghanistan.

As he goes on to say in his article:

The point was simple. How is it that we are sending our young men to Afghanistan to fight the Taliban and young men and women from Afghanistan are paying people smugglers to come here in a method which circumvents our laws?

It is a very interesting point Mr Downer makes. I think people might like to reflect upon it. It also brings the point—and Senator Cameron slightly mentioned this—that we have a very generous refugee immigration system in Australia. We take approximately 13,000 every year, and most of the people that we have taken in are people in refugee camps—not wealthy people who can pay tens of thousands of dollars to people smugglers to bring them into Christmas Island because they know the Labor Party is soft on border protection but genuine refugees in refugee camps who have escaped there with their lives. And, for everyone that we allow in who has come by other methods, some of those people languishing in those horrible refugee camps around the world are prevented from coming in, because they are taking the place of those who would normally be coming in.

I have just returned from a tour of northern defence forces in Darwin and Cairns and I want to take this opportunity to note the important work that the men and women of our Navy and Border Protection Command are performing in these areas, policing our very vast coastline against illegal fishing and immigration, particularly now that, under Labor, the boats continue to come in ever-increasing numbers. Looking at a .50-calibre machine gun made me think of the time when I was able to commission a .50-calibre machine gun on the Oceanic Viking, a vessel that the Howard government had proudly brought into Australia, armed quite substantially, to deter illegal fishing. I was always distressed to find that this boat that was brought by the Australian government to look after our waters insofar as illegal fishing is concerned was being used to house immigrants in Indonesian waters who refused to get off the boat until the Rudd government gave in to their demand—as the immigrants knew the government would, because everybody around the world knows that the Gillard government and, before it, the Rudd government is soft on border protection.

I am also concerned about the fact that Labor is now flying asylum seekers into Scherger Air Force base in Cape York. After stringent denials prior to the election that this was happening—a fact that was exposed by the Hon. Warren Entsch, now the federal member for Leichhardt, but denied by the Labor Party at the time—we now have the extraordinary situation of this Air Force base, which is bare but has accommodation for a couple hundred Air Force personnel if it has to be used, now having nowhere for those Air Force personnel to go. Let’s hope we do not have any sort of incident which requires that base to be activated by the RAAF. If we do, the RAAF pilots and the support crew will have to sleep on the ground. I do not blame the asylum seekers for that; I blame the Gillard government in its duplicity and its mismanagement of this whole situation.

I also raise in this debate an incident where I am conscious of a constituent who is in Australia—I do not want to mention names, because I do not want to prejudice his case as it comes before the authorities. He is in Australia, applied for a visa, thought he had got it but made a mistake, and then set up a very substantial business in Australia which employs 15 people. He will never be a burden on the Australian taxpayer. He is a young, active, go-ahead professional man very keen to employ people and get involved in substantial infrastructure works in North Queensland. He is the sort of immigrant that Australia desperately needs and that we want. When he realised he did not have the right visa, he contacted people and asked what he could do about it. He is now being told that he has to leave Australia and he might get back at some time in the future. I said to him: ‘Perhaps the best thing I could do to you would be to lend you my tinnie so you could go offshore and sail your boat in, because if you could do that, under the way the Labor government runs things, perhaps you would be allowed to stay. You wouldn’t have to leave the country and stand in a queue to hopefully get back and give to Australia your expertise—the sort of skills and technical knowledge Australia desperately needs. We would be able to take advantage of that.’

The Labor government is simply incompetent at handling this issue of immigration and border protection, as they are incompetent at dealing with roof insulation and as they are incompetent at dealing with the economy. The Labor government simply cannot be trusted with any sorts of serious governmental issues. That is why I am so pleased today to be able to participate in this debate to continue highlighting the deficiencies of the Labor government—not to make a political point, not to gain votes but in the hope that at some time some of the zombies in the backbench of the Labor Party that Senator Cameron so well described might get the intestinal fortitude to stand up to their leaders and the Greens, who now seem to run the government, and say: ‘Enough is enough. Let’s do this right. Let’s go back to the way that the Howard government treated these sorts of things. Let’s go back to the way the Howard government had a very generous refugee intake policy but did it properly.’ The sooner the zombies in the backbench of the Labor Party have the intestinal fortitude to get up and tell the Greens and Ms Gillard that that is what is needed, the better off Australia will be, the better off our immigration program will be and the better off will be those people who currently put their lives at risk coming to Australia in leaky boats.

Louise Pratt (WA, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I welcome the opportunity to speak on this matter of public importance. However, I regret that the coalition have yet again demonstrated their utter inability to take a reasoned and credible approach to this issue. It is an issue of great concern to many Australians, an issue which affects the lives of some of the most vulnerable people on this planet and an issue that has significant implications for how our nation is perceived internationally, particularly by our regional neighbours.

As I have said previously in this place, this is an issue that confronts all developed nations and to which no nation is immune. Senators in this place should be well aware of this fact, but as some on the other side do not appear to have taken note of it, let me repeat the statistics for them. We know that worldwide 380,000 asylum claims were lodged in industrialised countries in 2009. The United States was the single largest recipient of such claims; it received nearly 50,000 and Canada received over 30,000. The European Union received 250,000 asylum claims in 2009, with France receiving over 40,000 of those claims, the UK and Germany about 30,000 claims each and eight other EU countries receiving more than 10,000 claims each. By way of comparison Australia received about 6,000 claims last year, so this number is low by world standards. The overwhelming number of asylum seekers still head towards Europe or North America.

This is a global problem, as you can see, with no easy solution. If there were easy solutions, some of these developed nations would have implemented them and we would not find, as we do, nations around the world wrestling with this problem. Not only is this a problem without easy solutions that confronts all nations; it is a problem that has been around for a considerable time. It is a problem that waxes and wanes depending on civil conflicts around the globe in particular. It was so with Vietnam, Sri Lanka and Afghanistan. For Australia, as for many other developed nations, the situation in Afghanistan has had and continues to have a direct impact on the number of claims for asylum. For example, according to the UNHCR, in 2009 Afghanistan became the main country of origin for asylum seekers in industrialised countries worldwide.

Here in Australia we also saw a surge in boat arrivals. Similarly, the last time Afghanistan was at the top of the global list was in 2001 when there was a surge in boat arrivals under the Howard government. So contrary to the myths perpetuated by the opposition, this is a problem that Australian governments, like other national governments, have struggled with for a long time. Finding permanent, sustainable solutions to this problem is not easy for any government and any honest assessment of the Howard government’s record on this issue would confirm this. But the coalition is not interested in any such assessment. It wants to pretend that there are easy solutions to this problem for its own political purposes. It wants to play on people’s genuine concerns about these issues. It is feeding their fears as it wants to play a knight in shining armour walking in on a white horse to slay the people-smuggling dragons. So we see the opposition advocating a return to Howard government policies which it claims solved the problem.

It is a great story, but it is a fairy story because the Howard government did not have a silver bullet—an instant, permanent, sustainable solution to this problem. Once again the facts speak for themselves. More than 240 boats carrying 13,600 asylum seekers arrived under the Howard government. Boats stopped coming because global circumstances changed. The Taliban regime fell at the end of 2001 and millions of Afghans were able to return home. The Howard government knew this. It knew that the boats had stopped because global circumstances had changed and not because it had discovered a failsafe way of keeping out boats.

How do we know that the government knew this? We know because in 2003 the Howard government started to build a detention centre on Christmas Island that cost $400 million. The Howard government was planning for more boat arrivals and yet despite all this the opposition want to return to the discredited and failed policies of their past. They maintain we can turn the boats back—a very hollow promise. Of the more than 240 boats that arrived under the Howard government, only seven were turned back. No boats were turned back after 2003 and the practical reality is there is nowhere to turn the boats back to. Also, to avoid being turned back, we have seen boats being sabotaged, putting Australian Customs and Border Protection and defence personnel at risk.

In fact, on turning boats back Mr Abbott wants to go one better than the Howard government, because there is Mr Abbott’s ‘boat phone’. Labor will not have a bar of any of this nonsense that would make bad policy even worse. We must support the judgment of the captains of our border patrols. When lives are at risk on the high seas, the last thing our troops need is the interference of Tony Abbott from a desk in Canberra. There is more: the opposition also want to reintroduce the failed temporary protection visa, but the temporary protection visas also did not work; they did not stop the boats and only three per cent of the 11,000 people granted one of John Howard’s temporary protection visas ever left Australia. Still, the list of failed policies that the opposition has put up for retrial goes on.

The opposition also want to return to the Howard government’s go-it-alone approach to offshore processing. I am glad that Mr Abbott at least agrees with Labor on the need for a regional processing centre. But, unlike Mr Abbott, Labor is committed to getting it right by establishing a regional centre with the cooperation of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees and in a country which is a signatory to the refugees convention. We will not shirk our international obligations and we will ensure that people are treated decently.

As I said, the problem of displaced people is an ongoing global problem, with a strong regional dimension, and it requires solutions that reflect this reality. That is why Labor supports, and is committed to, achieving a regional processing framework. A regional protection framework, including a regional processing centre, is the most effective and sustainable way to remove the incentive for people to undertake dangerous sea voyages. A regional processing centre will serve to deter irregular movement to Australia by sea, dealing a serious blow to the people-smuggling business model.

Minister Bowen has held talks with senior officials of the Malaysian government following positive and constructive meetings in East Timor and Indonesia. President Ramos Horta and Minister Bowen agreed that a high-level task force with Australian and East Timorese government officials would meet to put together a detailed proposal on regional processing, a proposal that both governments would consider early next year under the auspices of the Bali process. The Indonesian foreign minister agreed to make Indonesian officials available to Australia over the coming weeks to further develop the regional protection framework.

What differentiates this government’s approach on border protection and people-smuggling with that of the current opposition is that our commitment to engaging both with our region and the international community is a serious one. What differentiates us is that we do not believe in selling silver bullets or fairytales about simple solutions. We believe in doing the hard work required to find sustainable solutions to this complex, recurring global problem.

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

It gives me pleasure to make a brief contribution to this debate this afternoon, given some experience I have had in this area. Firstly, I would like to put on the record some of the commitments of the Gillard Labor government in this area. As you would probably know, in the 2010 budget the government announced $1.2 billion to bolster border security and to encourage a wide range of measures, including eight new border patrol vessels—the Armidales. That complements the $654 million border protection and anti people-smuggling package announced in the 2009 budget. The government also has established a dedicated Border Protection Committee of cabinet to drive the whole-of-government strategy to combat people-smuggling. I acknowledge the opposition’s support of the introduction of the Anti-People Smuggling and Other Measures Bill 2010, which was recently passed by the parliament.

I also want to remind people that, with regard to the UNHCR, we do have obligations as a nation to accept refugees who are in our waters. The numbers of refugees who have arrived on our shores have really been blown out of all proportion, and there are a number of areas that need to be rectified in terms of understanding what we are talking about. We are not talking overwhelmingly of hundreds of thousands of asylum seekers. In fact, numbers in Australia remain very low and that needs to be put into perspective. There were something like 380,000 claims lodged by asylum seekers in industrialised countries in 2009, and, by comparison, our figures show around 6,000 claims last year.

If you look at the opposition’s policy on turning boats back where circumstances permit, you will see that that is a hollow promise, because effectively, since 2003, there have not been any boats that have been turned back. We all know—and it was indicated by the previous speaker, Senator Pratt—that doing that would jeopardise our Australian Defence Force personnel, because all attempts to turn back the boats would result in sabotage, and that would put personnel on Australia’s Customs and Border Protection Service ships at risk. Oddly enough, when I was on the Australian Defence Force Parliamentary Program in July this year, that very question was posed by an LNP member to one of the members on HMAS Broome. The response given, appropriately, was exactly as I have just said—that, if you start turning boats back, what you will get in return is people sabotaging those boats and putting the personnel on our Armidales at risk.

The other observation I want to make is that Mr Abbott has indicated that he wants to use not a bat phone but a boat phone to have direct contact with captains and make a decision based on risk on the high seas. The last thing we need is to have our troops put in a position of having to speak to Mr Abbott about whether or not the boats should be intercepted. What we experienced in July this year was the interaction of a mock exercise as to how the Armidales interact with particular circumstances. There are procedural processes to follow in terms of direct contact with these boats and whether they are boats with people on them or boats doing illegal fishing. There are correct procedures to follow. That is what we experienced when we were up there in July this year in the Timor Sea. We have a great understanding of the excellent professional work our personnel do in the Australian defence forces, serving on the Armidales.

I want to pay particular acknowledgement to a professional young woman who was the CO of HMAS Broome, Kylie, who performs an amazing job in tough and hard circumstances, being away from home. It somewhat frustrates me that this sort of motion comes to this chamber, where I consider it as being an attack not only on the government but also on our Australian Defence Force personnel who are doing an excellent job up there in the Timor Sea. I think the opposition should think twice before they bring motions like this before this chamber.

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

Australia and Australians deserve better than this. We have seen grossly incompetent Labor governments for the last 3½ years, but this takes the cake. It was in June of this year that, because by their own statement they had lost their way, this Labor government got rid of a first-term Prime Minister. They, of course, created a record in the number of people coming to our shores by boat. They now have a second record.

But why do we deserve better? In the eight weeks of the Gillard government after the election in August of this year, we have seen absolute incompetence at every point. In foreign relations, we have seen failure in the last few days. On the world stage, they thought our Prime Minister was from Austria. What an embarrassment and what an insult! In the economy, we see the inability of this government to deal with the banks, whose respect they have totally lost. The minerals resource rent tax is in disarray. The stimulus spending is in chaos. If I turn to the environment, all we see is confusion with carbon taxes, committees of the people, changing climate change et cetera. In communication, only yesterday we heard the OECD come out and criticise the NBN; in water, we see a backflip over the Murray-Darling basin; and in border protection we see an absolute abrogation of responsibility by this government.

It is not only Australians who deserve better; it is all of those thousands of refugees who have applied and been accepted legally, who are in refugee camps around the world and who are being overlooked in favour of these people who are jumping the queue. We are a generous country, and those people have every right to feel as cheated as the Australian community does. Just have a look at the incompetence of this government when it comes to border protection. In the budget in May of this year, the estimate was $327 million for refugee management, estimated at 2,000 people for the year. It is already 2,320 in the first four months. If you multiply that out, we are looking at a blow-out of over $800 million for this absolute abrogation of responsibility.

I turn to consultation with the community. In my own home town of Northam, 1,500 single young men are to be housed on the edge of that town in an army barracks that all of us who have spent time there know very well is very cold in the winter and very hot in the summer. It was said to me the other day, ‘Since there are 1,500 Australian soldiers in Afghanistan and 1,500 young men from Afghanistan coming to the Northam Army barracks, why don’t we train the 1,500 Afghans at the Northam Army barracks to the level where they could go back to Afghanistan and do what our soldiers are doing so ours can come home?’

Seven hundred people from that community turned up to a function on 4 November. This is after the minister did not even have the courtesy to attend a meeting or, in fact, have any of his colleagues turn up. Someone derisively said, ‘700 isn’t many.’ It is 10 per cent of the community of Northam. If 35,000 of the 350,000 here in Canberra turned up to a protest, you can bet your life that plenty of government ministers would be there. The figure of 1,500 young men represents a 20 per cent addition to that community. If 70,000 people were dropped into Canberra on the outskirts, you can bet your life that there would be a high level of concern.

I turn also to service provision. Included in the budget, incidentally, $164 million can be found to turn the old Northam Army barracks into something acceptable for these people. On service provision, I asked in this chamber: given the fact that we lost a teenager and a baby at the Northam Hospital only in the last few weeks for lack of a doctor, what were they going to do for medical, nursing and psychological services? They said, ‘No problem; we are going to provide those doctors.’ We have an acute shortage—and I do not think the situation is different in other states and territories—of doctors, nurses and psychs throughout rural Australia, particularly rural Western Australia. I can speak with great experience. I have a niece who is the only psychologist in the town of Karratha, servicing everything from 500 kilometres south to 800 kilometres north, with all the associated problems that she has in that community. Yet she learned the other day through the newspapers that there will be no problem providing psychologists, doctors and nurses, and I have heard the same for Derby. ‘Where are they coming from?’ a nursing sister asked in Northam the other day. It is an insult from this minister and this government that they could not even address the community of Northam.

I turn to the people smugglers. We have the decision of the High Court only the other day. What is that going to add to our budget burden? What is that going to add to the legal system? It is in total and utter disarray. What is the minister going to do? He has not got a clue. There is, of course, a solution—a solution originally paid for by the Australian people—in the matter of Nauru. The centre there could be reopened and staffed with UNHCR people, and there would be a solution. But will this government do that? No, it will not. We have just heard dialogue and discussion with East Timor, Malaysia and Indonesia. Madam Acting Deputy President, let me tell you that, when Prime Minister Gillard visited Malaysia recently to go to Putrajaya and visit the Malaysian government, they could not even send their Prime Minister to speak to our Prime Minister. In terms of relations, what an insult it is that our Prime Minister was met by the Deputy Prime Minister. The Malaysians have no more intention of being involved in a regional solution than East Timor, and if the government were serious then it would pick up the phone and deal with Nauru right now.

We turn again to the question of border protection. Only in Senate estimates in the last two or three weeks did we address questions to the secretary of the department. I asked him how many people leave their country to go to Malaysia or Indonesia with papers, passports and visas. He told me that the answer is that everybody does. I said to him then: how many of these people have their papers and visas when they are processed after being picked up on the boats? He said that practically none did. I said, ‘Then they have a problem, Mr Metcalfe.’ He said, ‘No, they haven’t got a problem; we’ve got a problem.’ I asked why we had a problem. He said, ‘Because we have to establish who they are.’ You would think that the process of ‘no papers, no admission’ would surely be the starting point in this whole exercise. Surely it is incumbent on these people, if they leave their home country with passports and visas, to present themselves and explain why they do not have them. It is the tail wagging the dog.

This Labor government knows the solution. We have the solution from the past. The figures that have been quoted this afternoon need placing into balance: in 2002-03, no boats; the next year, one boat; the next year, zero boats; and the next year, one boat. Remember that, of course, Iraq and Afghanistan were well and truly alive at that time. The solution lies in the government’s hands; Australia deserves far better than this.