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 complete and absolute loss of control over Australia’s borders and its failure to adopt policies to deter people smugglers and return order to immigration detention facilities.

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.

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

To understand the gravity surrounding today’s matter of public importance, it is very important to set the scene. We need to understand properly what the state of Australia’s detention network was when the Howard government lost office in 2007 and then look at the state of the detention network in March 2011 under the Gillard government and after the Rudd government.

These are the facts. When the Howard government lost office, only four people who had arrived illegally by boat were in detention in Australia. Let us compare that to March 2011 under what is now the Gillard Labor government. Today, that figure is more than 6,300 and that includes more than 1,000 children. The annual budget has increased sevenfold since Labor came to power. That is Australian taxpayers’ money that is being utilised to pay for Labor’s policy failings. There has been a total budget blow-out of over $1 billion. That is $1 billion of taxpayer’s money by which this government has underestimated costs when forecasting the number of asylum seekers who would come to Australia under its policies.

Of the more than 10,000 people who have turned up by boat since this government came to power, only 160 have been returned to their countries of origin. When considering the Labor government’s border protection policy, this is what Australians are now faced with. Christmas Island is beyond capacity. It is so beyond capacity that the AFP have requested that the port be closed because they cannot afford to have any more people coming to the island.

The Labor Party are now opening detention centre after detention centre after detention centre on the mainland—without any consultation with the communities that are going to be affected. We all know that universal offshore processing is now history. We know that because the Labor government’s new policy, as of yesterday, is to ensure that the boats do not go to Christmas Island but are brought directly to the mainland. Detainees are escaping from detention centres on Christmas Island and, when you actually ask the minister how many have not been accounted for and how many are still on the loose on Christmas Island, the Minister representing the Minister for Immigration and Citizenship stands in this place and says that, quite frankly, he does not know. I will be honest with you—I do not think the minister actually cares either. That is an absolute disgrace.

When questioned about the failure of the government’s border protection policies, the government tries to counter its failures with a massive spin. We all saw the Department of Immigration and Citizenship’s advertisement on page 28 of yesterday’s Australian. What was it doing? It was seeking applications for an additional six public affairs and media officers, those positions paying between $56,000 and $117,000 a year. It would be laughable if it were not true. When will those on the other side understand that you cannot spin your way out of policy failures of this magnitude? Talking of spin, what did the minister say last Thursday? Following a night of rioting by some asylum seekers on Christmas Island, Minister Bowen came out with:

… the situation on the island as we speak is calm.

I do not know if Christmas Island residents would necessarily agree with Mr Bowen. After another night of rioting, the minister said:

At no stage during the week have I underplayed the seriousness of this situation.

We all know that those words have now come back to bite him. Then there was the statement by the Prime Minister, who was in complete, total and utter damage control. The Prime Minister said that the situation on Christmas Island was all under control.

Let us have a look at the situation on Christmas Island. We had the use of tear gas and beanbag rounds, we had mass breakouts, we had fires, we had rock-throwing and we had protests. We still have detainees that are potentially on the loose on Christmas Island. That is the definition, under a Labor government, of a situation that is under control. That is an absolute indictment of those opposite that they would dare to say to the people of Australia and, in particular, to the people of Christmas Island that that is a situation that is under control.

Then the minister could not help himself. He went further and said: ‘I take responsibility for it and I take responsibility for making sure the situation is under control going forward.’ Well, if the minister is going to put his money where his mouth is, if the minister is actually going to live up to this so-called responsibility that he says is his alone, then the minister needs to stand before the Australian people and have the guts to admit to them that, under the Labor government, there has been a complete, total and utter breakdown of border protection policy. But we all know that the minister does not have that guts. The minister does not have the guts to actually stand before the Australian people and admit that, under this government, Australia’s borders are no longer secure.

I was reading a comment from the Christmas Island community leader, Kane Martin, who probably would like to speak with Minister Bowen in relation to his statement that the situation is calm and under control, because this is what Kane Martin said:

People are locking their doors, people are locking their cars ...

Now while this might seem like a small thing on the mainland, this is essentially the core of what it is to be a Christmas Islander—to have that sense of freedom, to have that sense of safety and to have that sense of community all around us.

It’s certainly been challenged at every level.

That is an absolute disgrace, and it is the sole fault of the Gillard Labor government. The bad news for Australians is that this is a situation that need never have occurred. I go back to what the situation was in 2007 when the Howard government lost office. Those on the other side are very quick to throw statistics at us and say, ‘But under your watch you had thousands arriving.’ Do you know what? Yes, we did. You are right—yes, we did. But unlike those on the other side we had the guts, we had the stomach to stand up and make some very, very tough policy decisions. Once we had made those decisions we had the guts and the stomach to stand by those decisions.

We all know what the result of those decisions was. It is a statistical reality that the boats stopped coming. That is something that those on the other side cannot deny. It is also a reality that, when those on the other side decided to wind back the Howard government’s strong border protection measures, the boats started coming again.

There is only one way forward and that is for those on the other side and for the minister to realise, to stand up, to have some guts and to re-adopt the Howard government’s strong border protection policies. Despite the Prime Minister’s pathetic protestations Australia’s borders are not safe. As at 4 February 2011 there were 6,659 people in immigration detention. This is an appalling record and continues to confirm that Gillard Labor is failing to protect Australia’s borders. (Time expired)

Claire Moore (Queensland, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I think today’s debate has reached a new low when someone from the opposition can actually say that our minister does not care.

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

I didn’t say he didn’t care.

Claire Moore (Queensland, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

You said the actual words and we will be able to review—

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

He doesn’t care.

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

Order! Senator McGauran, you cannot seek the call by putting your hand up and I do not want you interjecting. Senator Cash was heard in silence and I expect Senator Moore to be heard in silence too.

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

Senator McGauran interjecting—

The Acting Deputy President:

Order! Senator McGauran, I am actually addressing my remarks to you directly. You might do me the courtesy of listening. Cease interjecting and I will give Senator Moore the call.

Claire Moore (Queensland, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Thank you, Mr Acting Deputy President, and we will review the Hansard to make that clear as it demonises the debate, as we know. Today we heard lots of rhetoric and very colourful language. I forgot how many times the words ‘guts’ and ‘stomach’ were mentioned in the previous contribution. I lost track after seven times.

Basically we have a debate today about the issue of detention and about the policies that this government has put in place since we were elected. They are policies that we went, very openly, to the Australian people with. It interested me that the previous contributor kept talking about the minister taking responsibility, stepping up and using his guts and stomach, but I got the impression that what that meant was having courage to come forward and talk with the Australian people about what was going on.

I do not believe there has been a minister who has had more public commentary on the issues of his portfolio over the last couple of months than Minister Bowen. Consistently he has run the line that our policy is part of an international response to the issue of refugees. One of the things that the opposition cannot understand is that our policy is looking at responding and working with refugees through the UNHRC, using the internationally accepted processes and ensuring that the law is fulfilled but most importantly that there is compassion. Senator Cash did talk about the statistics but I am not going through a statistical argument; we have had that. We know how many people have come in and how many boats have arrived. We have seen the stunning press releases that have been issued every time by the opposition. We saw the splendid imagery in recent times that was showing large red boats attacking our—

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

We saw the imagery: boats crashing up against rocks.

The Acting Deputy President:

Order! I will ask senators to refrain from interjecting. I again remind senators that Senator Cash was heard in silence and I think—

David Feeney (Victoria, Australian Labor Party, Parliamentary Secretary for Defence) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Which shows enormous restraint.

The Acting Deputy President:

I would ask all senators to cease interjecting.

Claire Moore (Queensland, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

We have a coalition that is determined to demonise people who have an absolute right to seek refuge. Once they seek that right, it is our law to ensure that they fulfil the aspects of refuge. It is a straightforward process. We work under international guidelines using our law to ensure that people who are claiming refuge have a right to that process. Not everybody receives that outcome, but under Australian law they receive the process.

We have had more boats coming; no-one denies that. Minister Bowen actually talks to the Australian community about that. He talks about the numbers. In fact there have been great efforts made in the last six months to ensure that we work with community organisations in Australia so that children who have been unfortunately caught up in this process by travelling on boats with parents, or most sadly alone, have protection while they are in our country. Through that whole process the core principles of law are retained and that has caused delays; we acknowledge that. That is one of the worst aspects of dealing closely with the law in the refugee process. We have to ensure that our security is maintained and that has been the guiding principle at work in our government law.

However, we have always felt that there needs to be a balance. The previous government’s process did not feature a balance. The temporary protection visa process seems to be the hallmark now of all the arguments being put forward by the opposition—a magic imposition of temporary protection visas will automatically stop boats. It is not such a straightforward equation, though it is a pretty good logo and it has been used consistently in media releases by various spokespeople from the opposition.

We have to understand the international situation, something which people on the other side reject consistently. They have a limited understanding of history and selectively pull out dates and times when there were periods of migration and refugee boats coming to Australia and when there were not. They do not take into account what is happening in our region. They do not take into account what was happening in Afghanistan. They do not take into account what is happening in Sri Lanka. They do not take into account any of the features that force people to make the desperate decision to throw themselves on our mercy by seeking refugee status. It is not an easy decision.

Somehow we seem to be able in these debates to differentiate between numbers and boats and people. I cannot do that. Our government does not do that. It accepts its responsibilities and understands that the numbers are all people and they must be treated with the full respect of the law. They must understand their rights through that process and there must be a clear understanding by all involved of what is in the law, what the objects of the legislation are and what the outcome will be if they are judged to be refugees under the UNHCR guidelines or if they are not. If they are not, there are processes for returning them to their home country. That is clear. The minister explains it consistently in the media, but if you have a political agenda and you are determined to demonise people who are in that situation, of course you are going to have the kind of conflict and outrage that we have heard and will continue to hear from the other side.

Certainly it is important that this argument is understood in the community. Minister Bowen is taking up that argument in the media and also in the community through community organisations, local meetings in townships and with different people who need to know exactly how the system works. If you only take the grabs in the media that we have now, the vision that is being put out for political purposes, the people of Australia will not understand the issues around refugee status.

We need as a community to ask the questions. We need to meet with the people who are in this situation as much as we can. Once you meet with people who have gone through the refugee process and talk with them, those statistics take on a human form and you can understand the background to their decision, the processes they have undertaken to seek a better life, how they have fulfilled the requirements of the UNHCR to determine that they are genuinely in a refugee situation and how they have fulfilled the requirements of the Australian government. Minister Bowen has made those requirements clear. People have to pass health checks to ensure that they are healthy. People have to pass security checks to verify their true identity and to ensure they do not offer a security risk to our country.

Instead of all the yelling and all the talking about keeping our borders safe, look at the situation and look at the people who are involved. See those who have made the decision, through horrific situations in their home countries and their family areas, to actually get on the boats. Funnily enough, we always focus on the people who are on the boats. These discussions never look at the statistics and see the number of people who come into our country without the appropriate visas and approvals who have not been on the boats and identified as asylum seekers. All the debate, all the anger, all the discussion about guts and stomach seems to focus around those people who are on boats. They need to understand how the system works. Certainly that is a responsibility for our government, but not our government alone. The Australian government is proud of the role it takes in the international community working with other countries who are facing these issues about the flow of people who are seeking refugee status in their own lands. We need to work collectively in an international way to get the best possible practice, to ensure that the whole debate does not get derailed by emotion or by political rhetoric, and to understand the true definition of someone who is seeking refugee status and the responsibilities of responsible nations to accept their status. We need to have strong policies that reflect UN best practice and treat people with respect but always with full regard for the law.

Cory Bernardi (SA, Liberal Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary Assisting the Leader of the Opposition) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Let me start my contribution to this debate by saying I agree with some aspects of what Senator Moore said. Firstly, the government have been entirely consistent for their period of office and that is consistently wrong in their approach to how they are treating refugees and protecting Australia’s borders. There is ample evidence of that which I will get to shortly. Also Senator Moore claimed that the process that the refugees or unauthorised arrivals in this country were undergoing was in full accordance with the law. She is absolutely right. It is in accordance with the law because this government changed the law. It changed the law that stopped the boats from coming and stopped providing incentives for people smugglers and for unauthorised arrivals to try to get to this country. That was offshore processing and temporary protection visas.

This government changed the law and the boats started coming in overwhelming record numbers. What Senator Moore failed to address—and may have inadvertently misstated the position on—is the fact that we are complying with our international obligations to the point that the first safe port of call for people seeking refuge is to arrive in our country. To my knowledge, none of the people coming on these boats first arrives in Australia without going through another nation. If they are fleeing Afghanistan, they go to Pakistan or Malaysia, and they normally end up in Indonesia. They pay their tens of thousands of dollars to the people smugglers right along the way. They dispose of their identity documents if they have them and then they hop on a boat to come to Australia.

That is not a legitimate claim for asylum in my book if you have travelled through three other countries and paid your way. You are not fleeing oppression in Indonesia. You are not fleeing the Taliban. You are just seeking to get to Australia by not waiting in the appropriate refugee camps that are available in many places. Every one of these people that jumps the queue by paying the money and claiming asylum in this country stops a person who is doing the right thing and is appropriately putting themselves through the proper system, a person who probably cannot afford to pay the people smugglers and fuel their outrageous trade. That is enough of addressing Senator Moore’s concerns.

The Labor Party are caught in a very inconvenient truth. I recall the day when the facility on Christmas Island was built and it was derided and mocked by the Labor Party as a white elephant. Yet the detention centre on Christmas Island has never been fuller. The minister himself has acknowledged there were over 3,000 people in that facility when it was only built for 2,500. The results are stark. Last week they came back to haunt all Australians because last week buildings were damaged there, fires were lit. There were violent approaches to the Australian Federal Police by the people that are detained on Christmas Island. There were seven days of riots—250 of these people set buildings on fire and threw makeshift explosives at police and still this government will not condemn them. Nearly 200 Australian Federal Police officers had to be flown in and quell the rioting. They had to deliver tear gas ammunition and more police to the island through the Royal Australian Air Force. A number of these asylum seekers escaped. According to the Prime Minister that is okay because they are on an island; they cannot go anywhere. Tell that to the poor residents of Christmas Island. Yet just today we have learned that an official head count still cannot account for all the people. There must be some hiding around Christmas Island. This government do not even know where they are.

The facts are that detention centres right across this country are full to overflowing. There is no offshore processing anymore. There have been three boats in the last five days. The most recent of them hopped onto the Christmas Island bypass lane and received its escort directly into Darwin. This is outrageous. It is a catastrophic policy failure not just because Australia’s borders are being breached without authority and, despite what Senator Moore says, without a legitimate claim to asylum because it is not the first safe port of call. What is happening is the outrageous waste of taxpayers’ money in dealing with these problems, the fact that people being forced to put their lives in jeopardy are encouraged to do it. You want to talk about the pull factor. The pull factor is the great way of life we have in this country and this government’s lax way of dealing with their policy failures.

The other concerns that I know many Australians share are in the words of Mr Bowen, the Minister for Immigration and Citizenship, about the processing of claims of the rioters. He said:

… a small group of detainees have made it clear that they would continue violent action until they were granted visas. Of course, we cannot enter into those sorts of discussions. We do not let that sort of behaviour influence our consideration of visa applications.

I have two responses to that. The first is ‘nonsense’ and the second is ‘you should’. It is nonsense because people on the Oceanic Viking were blackmailing the previous Rudd government saying, ‘Unless we get a special deal we are not coming off and we are going to go on a hunger strike.’ Did they get a special deal? Yes, they certainly did. We all forget the emotional blackmail that was played against the government and the government folded. I would like to play cards against this government because they are hopeless.

The second part of Minister Bowen’s statement is:

We do not let that sort of behaviour influence our consideration of visa applications.

I am telling you that you should. You should let it influence it because if people are prepared to throw bombs at police whilst they are in detention being assessed for security concerns, if they are prepared to escape from lawful detainment, if they are prepared to break the law to get here, if they are prepared to set fire to buildings and hurt their fellow refugees or asylum seekers, are they really the type of people we want to have in this country? That is a legitimate question, and I know it is one that many people ask, yet we do not have an answer or any embracing of this legitimate question by this government. We simply have an approach that we can build more detention centres or asylum centres, however you want to describe them. We will provide the welcome mat for more people to get in with people smugglers and ply their vile trade.

There is no question there are many legitimate refugees in the world, and many countries are struggling with this precise issue. But Australia had this issue solved. We had an orderly assessment process under the previous government and that was changed, on an ideological whim, by this government and it has proved to be a catastrophic failure. We know they do not have the will, the strength or the courage to actually change it back. We know they have the rhetoric. We know they have their plan for the East Timor regional detention centre, but, of course, that is not going to come to fruition because Kevin 11—sorry, Mr Rudd—is responsible for negotiating it and he does not want a bar of it. So we know it is another flawed and failed policy smokescreen to divert attention from the catastrophic failure of this government to secure Australia’s borders. You want to have a sensible debate on this but the first part of having a sensible debate is admitting there is a problem. (Time expired)

Catryna Bilyk (Tasmania, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Before I go to the gist of my speech, I have to point out to Senator Cash—having listened to her, and she was rather dramatic again, talk about how many boats came—that of more than 240 boats that arrived under the Howard government only seven were turned back.

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

We stopped them. That is the point.

Catryna Bilyk (Tasmania, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

They stopped coming because global circumstances changed, Senator Cash. If you do not understand that you should not be here. We know that the Taliban regime fell at the end of 2001 and millions of Afghans were able to return home. So you are really rewriting history with this supposedly wonderful life under Howard and you need to make sure you get your facts straight.

To go further into the matter of public importance as submitted by Senator Fifield that is before us today, I find it slightly misleading. I say that because it tries to link two separate matters: the control of Australian borders and the issue of maintaining order in our immigration detention centres. I can only assume that Senator Fifield has chosen to link those two topics because those opposite never ever miss the opportunity to take advantage of an unfortunate situation and score political points from it. So I can only guess that the coalition strategists were thinking ‘here’s a chance for us to score another political point about border control’ and yesterday, and again today in question time, we saw them attempt that. It is really quite unbecoming. I agree with what you said, Mr Acting Deputy President Marshall, in your speech yesterday, that it is quite sickening to see people try and make political advantage from the human suffering and misery of others. I thought that was a great speech. I did listen intently to it and it is a shame that some of those on the other side did not listen so well.

But, as I have stated, it is important to point out that these are two separate matters. So this MPI actually addresses two completely separate issues and as such I will deal with each issue in turn. First of all we have Senator Fifield, who knows that the only people to blame about the situation at the Christmas Island Immigration Detention Centre are those detainees who perpetrated the violence and unrest there. But Senator Fifield asks the Senate to note the Gillard government’s ‘failure to ... return order to immigration detention facilities’. We have the Australian Federal Police in control at the Christmas Island now. They are doing all they can to work to restore the security and safety of the facility and to ensure that it can go back to normal operations. The goal is to return the responsibility to the Department of Immigration and Citizenship and Serco as soon as possible and they will remain on the island until that aim is met. As for those who participated in the riot, their violence is unacceptable and will not be tolerated by this government.

I am sure that Senator Bernardi actually knows that but he chooses to scaremonger and run scare campaigns about the fact that he thinks everybody that is detained and is seeking asylum automatically gets to stay. He knows that is not true. He knows that there are processes that they have to go through and he knows that one of those processes is about good character. So he should not stand up and carry on and do this scaremongering, which the opposition have been doing so much of in the past few years. It is the only approach they have and it is quite an abysmal effort.

So, as I said, we have the AFP working to restore the security and the safety of the facility and to ensure that it can go back to normal operations. As I also said, the goal is to return the responsibility to the Department of Immigration and Citizenship and Serco as soon as possible. The Minister for Immigration and Citizenship, Chris Bowen, has made it very clear that, under the Migration Act, there is a character consideration that comes into play to determine whether somebody should be granted a visa. The AFP is conducting its own investigations and criminal charges may be laid by the Director of Public Prosecutions. This is something to be considered by any immigration detainee who may consider engaging in violent behaviour.

The government has been aware for some time of the pressure being faced at the Christmas Island detention centre and we have been working hard to relieve that. Taking account of recent circumstances, we are moving more people onto the mainland. Last year and earlier this year, the government announced new mainland facilities in Western Australia and the Northern Territory. The minister has announced an independent arms-length review into the protests and escapes at Christmas Island and the preparedness and response of the department and Serco. This review will be led by two eminent former public servants, Dr Allan Hawke and Helen Williams, and, like the minister, I have great faith in their ability to oversee this review.

The opposition will continue to score political points in the meantime because that is really the only thing they know how to do. Of course, trying to encourage the opposition to develop sensible policy instead of engaging in political opportunism is like trying to teach etiquette to Sir Les Patterson. It is all a bit rich coming from a coalition whose immigration policy is little more than a three-word slogan. There is no greater example of the coalition’s political opportunism than the way they have tried to make out that the latest arrivals will be given greater legal rights than those processed on Christmas Island. It has been made clear, in legal advice to the minister, that when people are processed originally at Christmas Island or Ashmore Reef they continue to be processed as offshore entry arrivals. If they are transferred to the mainland once the process has begun, it has no impact on the way they are processed.

I will now turn to the issue of border protection and the number of unauthorised arrivals. There are a number of driving forces, as the opposition well knows, on the number of people seeking asylum in Australia. It depends on the situation in different parts of the world. For example, the number of Sri Lankans arriving in Australia has fallen as a result of improvements in circumstances in northern Sri Lanka. Italy had arrivals of 8,000 asylum seekers last month, more than they received in the whole of 2010. This was not due to any change in Italian immigration policy; it was to do with regional push factors, particularly events in northern Africa. Similarly, Australian domestic policy has no influence on the numbers of unauthorised arrivals in Australia. People fleeing persecution are desperate, and they will try to enter Australia regardless of our domestic immigration policy.

The coalition knows this but that does not stop them from unashamedly using the politics of fear and trying to beat up immigration issues for their own political purposes. What they do not seem to get on that side of the chamber is that our humanitarian visa processing regime is not a punitive regime. If there is any punishment that should be dished out it is to the vile people smugglers who trade in human misery. But the opposition is pretty intent on returning to the harsh treatment of asylum seekers that they meted out while they were in government. The opposition has not quite understood that people actually need to flee their homelands and seek a life elsewhere. They have not understood that these people have suffered human misery, torture, human rights abuses or maybe starvation—maybe one of those or maybe a mixture of those things. I stop sometimes and think it would be really interesting to walk a mile in those people’s shoes. I doubt that anyone on the opposition side, if they were walking a mile in those people’s shoes, would not use every resource they had to try to make sure that their children and their family could get to somewhere safe.

I find those on the other side to be not so caring. They purport to care in varying situations, but they want to return to the days of the Pacific solution. They want to detain people on Nauru at phenomenal taxpayer expense. They would have us return to the days of indefinite detention and temporary protection visas, of having asylum seekers grappling with uncertainty over their future or languishing in legal limbo for years on end. They would have Australia’s Navy turn back the boats, obviously putting the lives of those on board at risk. And for all the suffering this would cause, guess how many fewer boats would leave Indonesia’s shores. Not one.

Instead of the simplistic, punitive solution offered by the federal opposition, there is another way. The Bali process is a great opportunity for all the foreign and immigration ministers in the region to come together and tackle the issue of people-smuggling. We are looking for an endorsement of our proposal for a regional solution to what is a regional and international problem. We want a framework of countries to work together to break the people-smugglers’ business model. (Time expired)

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

The Gillard government has failed miserably to protect our shores from the scourge of people smugglers. Yesterday the 215th illegal boat since the Gillard government took office was intercepted in Australian waters. At this rate, our northern waters will soon rival the English Channel as one of the busiest sea lanes in the world, the Indian Ocean having become the express lane on the highway for illegal boats. As I said, the Gillard government has failed to protect our borders. As other speakers have also said, it has failed to make even the slightest inroad into reducing the number of people landing illegally on our shores. Since the Gillard government took office, more than 10,000 illegal immigrants have arrived in this country by boat.

For months now we have heard talk of a regional solution. Kevin Rudd first raised this and approached the government of Indonesia about setting up a regional facility in East Timor to process illegal migrants, but nothing has come of that. It is a farce. It is something that is not going to happen. As a consequence of Labor’s failure, our detention centre is stretched beyond its capacity. The recent riots on Christmas Island outraged Australians and left this small, normally idyllic community wondering what its government had done to cause this riot to be foisted upon them. Since taking office, the government last year suffered a cost blow-out of more than $1 billion in detention centre running costs, a sevenfold increase over the costs during the period of the Howard government. A significant amount of this cost has been for the addition of a staggering 4,900 beds to detention centres at a cost of some $400,000. If only this were 4,900 new hospital beds, 4,900 new police officers or 4,900 new teachers, but sadly it is not. It is a waste, in effect, of 4,900 beds for illegal queue jumpers. More boats, more spending, less protection and less control—that is the Gillard government’s approach to border protection.

This contrasts very starkly with the reasonable and respected policies the Howard government developed over its 11 years in power. When the coalition government left office, just four people who had arrived illegally by boat were in detention. Today that figure is more than 6,300, including more than 1,000 children. In the last five years of the Howard government just 18 boats entered Australian waters illegally. Compare that figure to the armada of boats that is now coming down from Indonesia to Christmas Island.

The question we have to ask ourselves, and which has been alluded to by other speakers, is whether it is push or pull factors that are contributing to the growing tide of illegal boats. To my mind it is very much pull factors. The changes the Labor regime has made to our previously highly effective border protection policies have meant that those policies and the protection of our borders have collapsed under the Rudd and Gillard governments. As it stands, people smugglers know that they can get people to pay large amounts of money for a seat on a boat to Australia knowing full well that once on our shores there is a very good chance that they will stay here and have access to our state provided health, education and housing services, which is one of the reasons why people find it attractive to come to Australia.

I suggest that the return of temporary protection visas, or TPVs, utilised to great effect by the Howard government, would be a responsible and considered approach the present government could take to reverse its current policy failure. But both the Gillard government, and the Rudd government before it, have indicated that they have no intention of reintroducing temporary protection visas, in spite of the great success they brought. Under the temporary protection visa policy, persons who are fleeing from persecution in their homelands could come to Australia until the situation in their homelands improved and then they were returned to their own countries. This occurred with refugees from Kosovo and also from East Timor.

One of the other effects of the influx of great numbers of illegal refugees has been that the number of humanitarian migrants that Australia takes has been reduced because the number of refugees per annum is taken off the total of our refugee intake of some 15,000 people per year.

There is no doubt that Australia is rolling out the welcome mat and the people smugglers are lining up to bring more and more refugees here on the promise of permanent residency under the soft policies of the ALP government. The Australian people expect their government to protect their borders. This government is not doing that.

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

I rise to speak on this matter of public importance and contribute to the debate on this important issue. It is an area that the Labor federal government focuses on. The government is sincerely concerned about these issues. With respect to the number of boats that are entering our waters the government is sincerely interested in and concerned for the health and wellbeing of those refugees in the centres that house them whilst they are here. To listen to some of the rhetoric I have heard since this debate commenced, you would think that we have lost control and that there is an invasion happening. The previous speaker spoke of an armada of boats. I have seen some of these boats coming to our shores and there is nothing like an armada of boats coming down to enter our nation—far from it. I suggest these scurrilous and false accusations being put forward by those opposite are just another example of the scare campaigns they run when there is no logical example or policy put forward to deal with the particular issue. We have heard more examples of those scare campaigns over the past few days in dealing with other issues like the carbon price. So, once again, it is just the latest in a long line of concentrated efforts by the opposition to distort the facts, manipulate tragedy and create fear in the electorate at the expense of the Australian people. If the opposition’s scaremongering is to be believed, it would seem that an invasion is imminent as, apparently, a ‘complete and absolute loss of control’ has rendered our national borders non-existent.

It is this accusation of loss of border control that I wish to address first. Last year I was very fortunate to participate in the Australian Defence Force Parliamentary Program, which involves the Border Protection Command in Northern Australia, and I know that some of the members opposite me have gone down the same path and been involved in parliamentary defence programs. It is basically a tripartite arrangement between the three forces: the Royal Australian Air Force, the Navy and the Army. They are given the task to protect our borders. I must say that our Defence Force is highly professional with committed and competent personnel who do their job extremely well protecting our borders. The ADF assets protect this vast northern area of Australia’s maritime domain from security threats including irregular maritime arrivals; maritime terrorism; piracy, robbery and violence at sea; compromises to biosecurity; illegal activity in protected areas; illegal exploitation of natural resources, such as illegal fishing; marine pollution; and prohibited imports and exports. That gives you an idea of the range of activities they perform. It is not solely just focusing on boat arrivals of refugees trying to come to this wonderful nation of ours from places where they are oppressed. It is a case of dealing with all these other activities that Border Protection Command do, and they do them well.

There are 400 ADF personnel in the area. I was fortunate enough to be on the HMAS Bathurst at the time, in June of last year. You may remember that around June we were leading up to the possible announcement of a federal election. A couple of my colleagues from the House of Representatives were on board HMAS Armidale and HMAS Bathurst and they enjoyed the same opportunity as me to see our personnel perform their duties.

These 400 ADF personnel work on the sea, in the air and on land to protect Australian borders. Customs are also involved in helping and cooperating with the agencies to protect our borders. On the second day we also went up in an AP-3C Orion maritime patrol aircraft which went over the reefs. During that particular surveillance exercise we saw an illegal fishing boat—not a boat of refugees. The fishing boat was identified and processes were followed. The boat was photographed and the material was sent down to the areas of control and surveillance. There is no doubt that that boat would have been approached by the local Armidale boats in the area and dealt with.

Our Defence Force are doing an excellent job up north. We have seven Navy Armidale-class patrol boats in that area as well. To appreciate the job they have to do you really need to recognise the area of coverage. It is not just a case of roaming around the north of Queensland, Northern Territory or Western Australia; they have 10 per cent of the world’s surface to cover. That is the area of coverage that our ADF have to manage—it is a huge area.

One of my colleagues from the House of Representatives, the member for Dickson, asked one of the personnel on the boat what would happen if we turned the boats back. The logical answer from those Navy personnel was that the people would destroy their boats. They would damage their motors or put holes in the hull—whatever it took to be rescued. This is the issue we need to deal with when the opposition leader, Mr Abbott, makes statements about just turning the boats back. Logically, you cannot turn the boats back because of the desperate situation of the people on them. They do not want to turn back. They want to be dealt with, they want to be managed and that is how we handle this situation.

During the Howard government era, 240 boats arrived carrying more than 13,600 asylum seekers. It is vexatious for those opposite to claim that they dealt with the migration and asylum seeker situation. The truth is that they did not deal with that situation. In fact, boats stopped coming as a result of global circumstances. As we know, the Taliban regime fell at the end of 2001 and millions of Afghans were able to return home. Yet the opposition decided to go ahead and build the centre on Christmas Island at a cost of $400 million. Naturally, they planned ahead because they realised this was an issue so they built that detention centre 2003.

To return to the issue of turning the boats back, I understand only seven boats were turned back under the Howard government. So the view that turning the boats around is a silver bullet is just a fallacy. After 2003 there were no boats turned around—none whatsoever. The reintroduction of the temporary protection visa is also a con. Do not think that that is a matter that will be resolved and used to stop the boats. Only three per cent of the 11,000 people who were granted one under the Howard temporary protection visa program ever left Australia.

We then had the magic bat phone—or in this case it was Mr Abbott’s boat phone. He was going to somehow pick up a phone and say, ‘We’ll assess this boat that is coming to our shores and we will make a decision about it.’ Once again, having been on an Armidale-class boat, the HMAS Bathurst, I understand that is not possible. It is about time the opposition came up with some responsible policies to deal with this particular issue. (Time expired)

Helen Kroger (Victoria, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

In contributing to this debate, I would like to comment on two words which have been used frequently by those on the other side: ‘compassion’ and ‘scaremongering’. It has been implicit in the suggestions of many on the other side, including Senator Collins and Senator Moore, that they are the rightful custodians of compassion. I would like to ask what is the measure of compassion? Why is it that those on the other side of this chamber believe that they are the unique bearers of compassion?

I would suggest that the best measure of compassion in this debate is the effectiveness of the border protection policies of this government. Over the last two years we have seen the total unravelling and implosion of the border protection policies of this government. There is no greater example of that than what we have seen in the last couple of months. The second word, ‘scaremongering’, has been used frequently by Senator Collins and Senator Bilyk. Their suggestion is that there is not a problem and that the coalition have been heartless and scaremongering on this. That is a total denial of what is happening.

There was nothing compassionate about the boat which tragically smashed against the rocks earlier this year when many lost their lives. We were all appalled to watch the TV footage as we saw the residents of Christmas Island trying to rescue those people. There is nothing compassionate about a policy that is actually encouraging the vile business of people smugglers making a bob out of people who are destitute and seek a future here in Australia. There is nothing compassionate about that, nothing whatsoever. There is nothing compassionate—and it is not scaremongering—about the destruction of the Christmas Island facility that we saw on TV. We have heard that 250 rioters went rampant and not only destroyed a lot of that facility but risked the lives of many in the process. We also heard from local Christmas Island resident Kane Martin about his concerns and the concerns of the residents on Christmas Island for their personal safety. There is nothing compassionate about a policy that does not put the rights of Australian citizens first. There is nothing compassionate about that, nothing whatsoever.

I suggest we are seeing a total unravelling of this. The Pacific solution under the Howard government did work. It meant that by 2004 we did not have one child in detention. It meant that we did stop the boats. We have heard that people do not like the mantra, but the bottom line is that the Pacific policy solution did dissuade people smugglers from bringing boats to Australia. They knew what the consequences were. In the end, there was no business. More to the point though, in the end we did not have children in detention—none of us likes to see that. It was a solution that worked and I suggest to Senator Furner that perhaps he look at the statistics. We have heard that it is not compassionate to look at the statistics, but I think you will find that the statistics speak for themselves. We do not want an armada of boats coming from Indonesia, risking the lives of those looking for a better future. We want refugees to explore the United Nations sanctioned refugee camps and approach asylum to this country in a lawful way.

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

Time for this debate has now expired.