Christine Milne (Tasmania, Australian Greens) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

This is a continuation of my speech from just before question time. I rise to remind the Senate that the government and the coalition argued that we had to change the law in Australia to abandon our commitment to legally binding protections for refugees in order to save people from getting on leaky boats and to save them from risking their lives at sea. Well, there has been a spectacular failure of that compromise. What the government and the coalition have done is abandon the rule of law when it comes to protection for refugees. They have abandoned the principle that the minister is the guardian of unaccompanied children. They have abandoned the idea that he has to act in the best interests of those children. They have legislated to say that refugees will not have the legal right to natural justice and legislated to say that none of the protections needs to be legally binding. Yet it is such a spectacular failure that the refugees continue to come and continue to risk their lives on boats. As Michael Bachelard's piece in the Age today, 'PM asylum-seeker policy fails to deter boats' says, the asylum seekers have said themselves:

‘‘They know [ about the new policy], but they don’t stop. They say it’s too dangerous to stay in Pakistan.’’

In fact:

The recent drowning of more than 100 Hazara asylum seekers had also not deterred them. ‘‘Everyone knows [about the drowning], but . . . they say ‘When I go back to my country, I am sure that Taliban or al-Qaeda or the other agents of the Taliban will detain me, kill me’,’’ he said.

‘‘I’m sure, 100 per cent sure, that the Taliban will kill me . But if I go, maybe I wait to get to Australia, maybe one year, two years, to Nauru island. The Australian government does not kill you.’’

So you have got an issue here where the refugees are not going to be deterred. All that has happened is that this parliament has abandoned its commitment to the refugee convention, to the rule of law, to natural justice and to the protection of children for no other reason than to punish people and send them away for no outcome when it comes to deterring them from taking this risk. I want to go to this issue because I do not think most Australians realise that what the parliament did, at the request of the government, was to exempt the minister from being the guardian of unaccompanied children. Until the legislation went through this parliament, the minister had to act in the best interests of the child. He was legally bound to do that and the High Court had made it clear that sending children into offshore detention was not in their best interests. The minister could not send the children away, so he came to the parliament to say he wanted to be exempted from that and the coalition voted with the Labor Party to do exactly that, to allow the minister to send unaccompanied children to Nauru with no guardian. That is exactly what has been voted for.

I put it to the Senate that when people said, 'Oh, the Greens won't compromise on this legislation; they are not going to be part of this so-called solution,' they were right. And what did compromise achieve for the coalition and the government? Firstly, a record number of people risking their lives at sea for a start. Secondly, what they compromised on were basic tenets of our democracy: a legally binding protection for refugees, a protection of the child so an unaccompanied child has a right to be represented by the minister and the minister has to actually act in the child's best interests, and the right to natural justice as a refugee. I find it extraordinary that the way this issue was presented out there in the community was that everyone in this parliament was trying to do so much to save people from getting on boats and the Greens would not compromise. Well, now this has happened what has been shown is that the Greens stood up for the rule of law, for natural justice, for the refugee convention and for the rights of the child.

This parliament sold all that out and now it is faced with the humiliation that what has been said by all refugee advocates and the Greens was true: deterrence does not work; it does not stop people trying to get to Australia

In fact, what has been shown to help people is an increase in the humanitarian intake, investment in regional assessment in Indonesia and elsewhere in the region and codifying our safety of lives at sea legislation. All of those things that the Greens proposed that actually address the situation are now being done, because we held out. If the government had got its own way and had put through the Malaysia proposal in the first place, none of those things would have happened. We would not have had the intake increased to 20,000, we would not have had the investment going into the UNHCR, and nor would we have had this investment in trying to help people across the region to get to a decent solution. Instead of that, we have humiliated ourselves globally by abandoning our legal obligations under the United Nations human rights convention and we have abrogated our responsibility to innocent children. If one of those children gets sent from Australia to Nauru, let it be on the heads of all the people in this parliament that you voted to abandon them having a guardian.

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

There are times during major debates of this kind when one would dearly like to see some kind of tear in the space-time continuum to allow the present to hear the future come back to educate us about what we are debating. In particular, I cannot help but wonder about the course of the debates that went on about the Pacific solution between 2001 and 2008, in particular, when it was dismantled by the Rudd government. I would just love for some of the Labor Party critics of the Howard government's solution to somehow have heard the speech that Senator Lundy gave today in the Senate, when she told us, magisterially, about how we need to reopen the Nauru detention centre to deter people smugglers and that we need to deter people-smuggling businesses by not having a system of onshore processing but rather we should process people offshore in a place such as Nauru.

How extraordinary it would be, how embarrassing it would be for those critics who lined up, week after week, to hector the Howard government and its supporters for having the audacity to suggest that we were doing refugees a favour by having offshore processing. These people went on for not months but years. Mr Bowen said, 'We closed Nauru because it was the right thing to do.' Senator Evans said, 'The Pacific solution was cynical, costly and ultimately unsuccessful.' Mr Rudd said, 'The Pacific solution is just wrong. It is a waste of taxpayers' money. It is not the right way to handle asylum seekers or others.' But today, of course, that is exactly the solution which is being reinstituted by this government. Tail between its legs, humiliated beyond belief, the government is now telling the Australian people that everything it said between 2001 and 2010 was wrong. Ms Gillard, as the then opposition spokesperson on immigration, said, 'The so-called Pacific solution is nothing more than the world's most expensive detour sign. The so-called Pacific solution is not a long-term solution.' That was in May 2003. Then she said, and this is interesting: 'Can anyone in this place really imagine that Australia will be processing asylum seeker claims on Nauru in 10 or 20 years time?' Yes, we can imagine it, because Ms Gillard's government is actually implementing a return to the processing of asylum seeker claims on Nauru—almost exactly 10 years after that claim was made. So we know that that is the case.

In contrast, we have the words that the Minister for Immigration and Citizenship, Mr Bowen, has uttered to justify the decision to reopen the Nauru detention centre:

I consider designating Nauru to be a regional processing country will discourage irregular and dangerous maritime voyages and thereby reduce the risk of the loss of life at sea;

And further:

I think that the cost of irregular maritime voyages, in terms of the loss of human life and in respect of the substantial financial and resourcing costs to the Commonwealth in dealing with such arrivals … means that it is in the national interest to attempt to reduce the number of such voyages, and to do so urgently.

He is saying those things now without the slightest sense of irony, when he said such different things in the past. The truth is that this government has finally been mugged by reality and it realises, after so much wasted money, after so much patent and obvious failure, after so many deaths at sea, that its policy just was not working and that it had to be reversed. It simply had to be reversed. The government is taking steps now, through gritted teeth, to reinstate the policy which it spent a decade systematically tearing down—from opposition and then from government—and it expects us to somehow believe that it is sincere in its conversion to this new position. The fact is that it is putting on the clothing of the Howard government—and doesn't it hurt!

The question has to be asked by the Senate, in looking at this change of position by the Gillard government: how effective will a change of policy actually be? And that leads to another question: how much does this government actually believe in what it is doing? Does it have the conviction to carry forward the policy which it reviled and denigrated for so long? The answer to that question has to be no, because this policy is based not on the government's assessment of what it needs to do; rather, it is a reaction to the opinion polls which said that its policy was not trusted by the Australian people to deliver any longer an effective policy on border control.

What is the evidence for that statement, my assertion that this government actually does not believe in what it is doing? Last year when the High Court brought down the decision striking down the Malaysia solution, Senator Lundy said on ABC radio in Canberra that she would never vote for the Nauru solution, the reopening of Nauru. But today in the Senate, Senator Lundy moved a motion for Nauru to be reopened. Only last night on Q&A, in the midst of the government implementing a policy of evacuating its opposition to the Pacific solution, Senator Evans defended the policy that had dismantled it in 2008. On ABC Radio National today Senator Cameron made it very clear that he did not support this policy and that he was rolled by the caucus. Again, he was extremely concerned about the treatment of refugees and he had opposed in caucus implementation of this policy but was bound by the caucus decision and will have to vote for it on the floor of the Senate. Are we to believe that the spirit of what Senator Evans said last night and the spirit of what Senator Cameron said this morning does not reflect the views of most members of the Australian Labor Party caucus? I do not believe that, although that is what we are told. I think those voices were the authentic voices of the Labor Party which is not implementing these changes of policy because it believes in them but because it feels it has to do this because its policies are no longer trusted by the Australian people. The Labor Party knew that its policies were spectacularly failing and, more to the point, were being seen by the Australian people to be spectacularly failing and it had to do something to change the dynamics of the debate.

This government, without any conviction in what it is doing, has taken back the position that it denigrated and opposed under the previous government and cannot be said in any sense to have its heart in what it is trying to do. It is clearly doing this with the greatest of reluctance. The Howard government opened the Nauru detention centre from scratch 19 days after deciding that we needed to put in place a more effective policy in the form of the Pacific solution. I know it is now 29 days since the Gillard government came to a similar conclusion, and we are yet to see the reopening of the centre—even though there was a centre, albeit one that had been allowed to run down, courtesy of the Rudd and Gillard governments. But there is even now a fundamental problem in the way that the government is approaching this task. It is implementing the Howard government policies without the conviction that goes behind such policies. The government is hoping that the policy it grabbed quickly off the shelf, as it were, is the policy that will get it out of this political bind, that will eliminate and cancel the pains the government has felt so obviously in the last two to three years as the policy has progressively collapsed.

Senator Thistlethwaite said a few weeks ago during the debate on the legislation that underpinned today's motion that he was glad that this was happening because now the issue was going to go away. The problem is that it is not going away: the boats are still coming. In the last 24 hours, four boats have arrived carrying 205 people, bringing the total number of arrivals this year to 10,000. The policy is not working, because the Gillard government has picked up only part of what the Howard government was doing. The Gillard government has only adopted those elements it thinks it can get away with to make it look as though there are some differences from the approach of the previous government. But the government hopes these differences are enough to make it look to the people smugglers as though the government now means business on the question of deterring their trade. But it is not working. I am sorry to disappoint Senator Thistlethwaite and others, but I think this issue will be part of a live debate for the Australian community for some time to come.

This government has so stimulated the business of people smugglers, so encouraged them to put up a shingle and open their doors to vulnerable people wanting to find a new life, that it is going to take a great deal of conviction and effort to stop the trade. Picking up only part of the elements of the previous government's policies is not going to achieve that. We have made it perfectly clear that you need at the very least to put other elements in place, such as the re-enactment of temporary protection visas and the policy of turning boats around when it is safe to do so in the waters around Australia. The government at this point is not prepared to take those steps, but how many more boats do we need to have, how many more risks to people's lives do we need to have before the government takes those other steps? Until the government takes steps of that kind, I do not think this issue is going to go away.

I turn to what the Greens have had to say in the course of this debate. They have thrown out a fairly large number of insults to other parties in the course of this debate. They have attacked the sincerity and the bona fides of the other parties in the Senate. Senator Hanson-Young, in the course of her remarks, said: 'No-one believes that the major parties will look after refugees.'

Sarah Hanson-Young (SA, Australian Greens) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Well, you haven't done so yet.

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

You continue to make that assertion. First of all, I think that is obviously hyperbole. I remind Senator Hanson-Young that under successive coalition governments, from after the Second World War until the present day, hundreds of thousands of refugees have been brought to Australia and successfully settled here because we wanted to make sure refugees had a decent chance at a life. That record stands very clearly.

Sarah Hanson-Young (SA, Australian Greens) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Until Philip Ruddock came along.

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

You can interrupt all you like, Senator Hanson-Young, but our record on refugees is second to nobody's. This party, this opposition, has been responsible for many tens of thousands of refugees being brought to this country and offered homes here and new lives. What I also think needs to be said at this time is a point that the Labor member for Fraser made in a debate a few weeks ago when the policy was in the first stages of being reversed. He said the Greens are hardly in a position to talk about this because it has been the Greens' policy on onshore processing which 'has been in place for the last four years'. The Greens have had their policy put in place; it has been put into effect.

Senator Hanson-Young interjecting—

I know you did not like elements of the policy; you would have liked more things in more areas. The Greens are never satisfied in these sorts of areas. You would like to spend more money on this or put more money into that—there is never enough money as far as the Greens are concerned. But your policy is the one that has been in place for the last four years and, as a result, your party has to share some of the responsibility for the 704 deaths at sea since October 2009. You wanted onshore processing, you got it under this government and you have got to share some of the blame for the consequences of that policy. You tell us now that the policy is not working. You would not know a policy that works if you saw it. You claim that the policy was not working between 2001 and 2008 under the Howard government even though the boats virtually stopped and there were virtually no deaths at sea. That was the record of the Howard government.

The record of the Rudd and Gillard governments is one where the policy has failed and the deaths have occurred. The Greens cannot pretend that they sit magnificently divorced from those actions because they supported those actions on the floor of the Senate, they buttressed the government's moves towards that end and today they have to bear some responsibility for the fact that the policy has been a failure. Notwithstanding their attempt to say it was not done the way that they wanted it done, the policy has been a failure and they share some responsibility for that failure, including the massive waste of money and the huge loss of life at sea.

It is time to acknowledge that new measures need to be put in place. The government has been brought, kicking and screaming, to the position where it is now implementing the policies which it says were not successful in the past but which it now says, miraculously, are of course the ones that have to be implemented in order to be make it work. I welcome the fact that the government has come to that position. It would be the decent thing to do if the government was to acknowledge, at least in passing, in a begrudging kind of way, that what the coalition have been saying for some time deserves a little bit of credit, that it was what we have been urging you to do for the last four years and you have only just come to the conclusion that it is the right thing to do. And don't pretend that there are differences in your approach, because if you say, 'We're not doing TPVs and we're not doing turning back the boats,' you could find yourselves embarrassed by that claim because you might yet have to come back and do it when you realise that the policies you now have in place are still not deterring the boats.

I think I am entitled to a little bit of venting today at the government for the ungracious way in which it has acknowledged that its policies need to be reversed and that it needs to come back and pick up the policies of the coalition. It is good that the parliament has the chance today to approve the instrument of designation made by the Minister for Immigration and Citizenship to put this policy firmly in place. But I warn, as both Senator Cash and Senator Brandis have done already in this debate, that you cannot get the solution to the problem which the Howard government had unless you pick up all the elements of the Howard government policy. That has not yet happened and you are therefore very far from being out of the woods yet on this question.

Rachel Siewert (WA, Australian Greens) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise to oppose the approval of the designation of the Republic of Nauru as a regional processing country. I want to start, as I started a previous contribution in the debate on the legislation, by remembering the people we are talking about. We seem to forget that these are people fleeing persecution, terror, torture and inhumane treatment in their homelands. And what we are doing through this process is further subjecting these people, who are fleeing for their lives and the lives of their families, to the inhumane conditions that will exist in the facilities on Nauru. In the first instance, they will be in tents.

The government has not ensured that the facilities will meet the humanitarian standards that the Houston report said should be in place. Those standards are not being met and will not be met. The government is relying on the so-called Houston solutions but it is not implementing the recommendations that humanitarian standards should be in place. In fact, this is why Nauru did not work last time, and it is why people then had poor mental health and are in fact still suffering from the effects of being held on Nauru for excessive periods of time. It is interesting that in answer to questions today from Senator Hanson-Young, our portfolio holder on this issue, the minister would not commit to what period of time we are talking about and would not commit to what a no disadvantage test means. It seems to be elastic and indefinite. The government wants to walk both sides of the road. They want to have a so-called no disadvantage test but they do not want to say how long it will apply. In questions to Senator Lundy, representing the minister in this place in the debate on this motion, Senator Milne articulated the concern that some people had—and Senator Hanson-Young raised this too—that for Malaysia it would be something like 76 years. Senator Lundy's response was, 'That's something we will work out in full consultation with the UNHCR.' Has the government done that yet?

Sarah Hanson-Young (SA, Australian Greens) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The UNHCR advice is that they cannot do it.

Rachel Siewert (WA, Australian Greens) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

In fact, the UNHCR advice is that they cannot do it. So what does the government mean by 'no disadvantage test'? Are people going to be stuck on Nauru for 76 years? How long are they going to be there—20 years? That is why, at least, the government needs to be committing to a time line of detention of individuals on Nauru, and that is why Senator Hanson-Young will be addressing this issue through amendments.

Imagine fleeing violence, persecution, terror and torture and then not knowing your future—being held for an indefinite period of time in inhumane circumstances where this government has not guaranteed that humanitarian standards will be met. People could potentially be there for vast periods of time. We have been told that pregnant women may be sent there for vast periods of time. Children born there could be held for vast periods of time. Children could be held there for long periods of time—20 years. They could enter adulthood being held in an indeterminate future when they are fleeing from a country where their futures were also indeterminate and they were subject to violence. I cannot get away from the fact that these people are fleeing for their lives. They are fleeing war. They are fleeing persecution. And here we are persecuting them further because we have not addressed this issue properly.

Senator Humphries says this is our policy that they are changing. Well, the Greens do not support children in detention. Senator Humphries was proposing that the government is changing this because it is our policy that has been in place. In fact, that is completely untrue. We do not support children in detention. We were not talking about circumstances where the humanitarian intake had been increased and those people were being resettled. The government has only just announced it will increase the humanitarian intake. We have been proposing for years that the humanitarian intake be increased, that people be processed properly and that we restart the resettlement process—so that people do not have to get in boats, so they know they will be properly assessed and resettled, so they do not have to risk their lives.

But, as people are saying, they have had to flee and they have had to take their lives in their hands to flee. And how do we treat those people? We put them in tents in Nauru. These people who have fled are the same as any one of us. I believe that anyone, to protect their family, to protect themselves and their families and their children, would attempt to flee. And what do we do? We lock them up in detention for indeterminate periods of time—on Nauru. And, in the not too distant future, we will have another approval in here designating Manus Island as well. And then where else? Will we find other islands dotted around the place to put detention centres to keep people in inhumane conditions for indeterminate periods of time—simply for trying to protect themselves and their families from persecution, torture, terror, war and violence? Let us keep remembering the people that we are talking about. We keep forgetting why people are fleeing in the first place.

We have an organisation that is apparently now going to be put in place to run this process—Transfield Services, I think they are called—which has no experience in this area. Great; let's just keep racking up the problems on Nauru!

Sarah Hanson-Young (SA, Australian Greens) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

An engineering company.

Rachel Siewert (WA, Australian Greens) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

An engineering company—great! And today it was announced that the Salvation Army would be providing some support services—an organisation that at least cares. The government is not providing those services—and the coalition doesn't—so the Salvation Army will be there to care for these people. What I would like to know is what confidentiality agreements they will be forced to sign. You can bet your bottom dollar that they will not be able to do advocacy for individuals for problems that they see.

Sarah Hanson-Young (SA, Australian Greens) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Let alone speak to the media.

Rachel Siewert (WA, Australian Greens) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Will they be able to speak to the media? Will they be able to tell the media of the circumstances in which they are operating and in which they find refugees living on Nauru? Will they be guaranteed that, without fear or favour, they will be able to speak out on behalf of those individuals?

I heard on the radio this morning that they were saying they would still be able to do advocacy, but a systemic advocacy. Systemic advocacy is very, very important, but individual advocacy on behalf of individuals in these detention centres will be absolutely essential. Is the government prepared to say now that these caring people will be able to advocate specifically on behalf of individuals and speak publicly in the media about what they see on Nauru and wherever else they provide support? Will they be able to speak publicly about that now—not in five years time or 10 years time, but now—of the circumstances that they find? I would appreciate it if, in the summing up of this debate, the government could answer that particular question.

Will the government also provide publicly the contracts that these service organisations will sign with the government so that the community is confident that there are no secrecy or gag clauses in these policies? The government today, also, would not give any commitment around the timing of when the humanitarian intake would proceed. They could not answer that question. Just when is that intake going to increase, and what are the details around direct resettlement? Those questions still remain unanswered.

As has been articulated in this place on several occasions, we are now up to 2,009 people arriving since the bill went through this place. This sends a clear message that people are still desperate. People need to know that there is an alternative avenue to coming to Australia, so there is a need for the government not only to say that they are going to increase the humanitarian intake but actually to start that process. This is not the way to treat the most desperate and vulnerable people, who are fleeing for their lives and those of their families. These are people who have risked everything to escape that persecution, and how do we treat them? We throw them in another camp indefinitely, because we are not welcoming; we are not prepared to treat people in a decent manner.

Australians, I think, can and should be doing better in helping the most vulnerable people who are desperately seeking asylum. These are refugees. And how do we treat them? We shove them on an island, in a tent, do not give them adequate support, do not bother to make sure that they reach humanitarian standards and we keep them there for as long as we want, really. And we are expected just to trust the government that they are somehow going to work this out; that they will come to some time line eventually. Actually, what this is about is 'out of sight, out of mind'. We are now going to be subjecting people to more inhumane treatment and to poor health outcomes, particularly to poor mental health outcomes.

And we think that we are a first-world nation, that we are a developed community, and yet we think it is okay to treat people that way—to send children into detention indefinitely, to send pregnant women into detention indefinitely, to send men into detention indefinitely? Since when is that the action of a decent, civilised and fair society? It is not the action of a decent, civilised and fair society to treat our fellow humans that way—people who have already suffered so much.

No, we do not trust the government to implement the no disadvantage test. In fact, they do not know what they are talking about; they do not know what that means. They certainly have not articulated it in here, and they cannot. Senator Lundy's attempt was, 'Oh, we will talk to UNHCR about it.' I do not know whether they have or not, and I do not know whether we have been told this or not, but the UNHCR says that you cannot. What we are doing here is condemning people to inhumane treatment for an indefinite period of time. It is not reasonable, it is not decent and it is not fair. We will be opposing this motion.

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

In rising to make a contribution on this motion I recall some wisdom given to me very early on in my business career, that the definition of insanity is doing the same thing and expecting a different result. It is pleasing to me that most people in this place have recognised that we could not continue to get the results that we have in respect of our border protection and the arrival of illegal vessels as we have seen over the last four years.

I say 'most' because there are still groups of people in here, within the Greens party, who refuse to accept that the evidence that the change from the policies that worked under the Howard administration to those that were introduced by the Rudd-Gillard administration has resulted in hundreds of boats and tens of thousands of people paying their way to circumvent Australia's orderly humanitarian refugee program as well as our orderly and regular immigration intake, for their own desire to live in this country. More importantly, it ignores entirely the fact that at least 1,000 and possibly more—no-one can know how many more—people have paid money to people smugglers to get on leaky boats and they have died at sea. They have drowned and disappeared without trace.

Sarah Hanson-Young (SA, Australian Greens) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

And what did you do about it?

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

I hear Senator Hanson-Young chiming in, as she normally does. This is the senator that, when one great tragedy occurred, said, 'Well, tragedies happen.' Such was her blase-ness. Such was your concern for the people who died at sea, Senator Hanson-Young, that you said, 'Tragedies happen.' Then you come in here with your crocodile tears. You are the phoniest of phonies. You are a media show pony that is just a fake and a fraud.

Ursula Stephens (NSW, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Order! Senator Bernardi, through the chair, please.

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

Before I was rudely interrupted—

Ursula Stephens (NSW, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Not by me, I hope!

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

Not by you, Madam Acting Deputy President, but by Senator Hanson-Young. There was a process in which the boats had effectively stopped, and it was not done only so that Australia could protect its borders; it was a matter of the Australian people determining what is in their best interests.

Sarah Hanson-Young (SA, Australian Greens) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

What about the children that lost their lives on the SIEVX under your government?

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

Senator Hanson-Young continues to get engaged about the children that have died, and she goes back to the time of the SIEVX. Indeed, it was a tragedy, and that is why we implemented policies that stopped the boats coming. We know the callous and hard-hearted Senator Hanson-Young is becoming increasingly embittered because of her failed leadership attempts within the Greens, and now she continues to desperately look for any other way to grab some notoriety along the way. If she listened instead of talking all the time, we would have a far better opportunity to determine how Australia's national interest is improved by having an orderly migration and refugee program.

I make the point that those on this side of the chamber and those on the Labor side of the chamber actually support a humanitarian refugee intake. It is something that we think is important. We have in excess of 13,000 places currently there for that. We have people in camps right around the world, wading through the United Nations processes to come to Australia or be delivered into a better life, and we support the United Nations in that endeavour. Some of them, indeed, are waiting five, 10 or 15 years in order to do that. Unfortunately, there are people in this chamber, within the Greens party, who would prefer people to be able to buy their way into the country by paying criminals who facilitate illegal entry vessels. I am not sure how that fits in with the Greens' global agenda, but nonetheless it is wrong. It is wrong that people are able to, in effect, circumvent the appropriate processes by paying money. That might sit comfortably within the Greens party, but it does not sit comfortably with the people of Australia. It is a great concern that, despite the overwhelming evidence, people are still refusing to see the truth, if you will.

But, having said that, I do not stand here believing that a return to offshore processing itself will stem this tide—this virtual armada—of illegal vessels. I do not see that, because the people smugglers are quite canny and they know that the government's policies in this regard will eventually meet a tipping point. The tipping point will be when Nauru, Manus Island and whatever other solutions they can concoct are full. So the problem is that we have the first leg of a three-legged stool. But it is progress, because hopefully it will deter some people from making a dangerous and perilous journey and taking advantage of Australia's good will. But there are other aspects that need to be implemented in order to fully protect people from the vicious people-smuggling trade. We need a return to temporary protection visas. When people are fleeing countries in genuine fear of their lives and they are desperately looking for a humanitarian solution, they need to know they can stop somewhere and be safe until it is safe for them to return to their home countries.

I pick up on a few words that Senator Siewert said. She is generally very measured in these areas. Senator Siewert made a point about people fleeing for their lives and about war zones and things of that nature. Predominantly the boats come from Indonesia, which is neither a war zone nor where people are being persecuted—except Christians in some areas. People that reside in Indonesia are generally safe and they have opportunities. They have entered Indonesia through one, two or three countries—sometimes from Afghanistan, Pakistan or elsewhere. So it is not as if they have fled their direct point of peril. They have gone through a number of areas in order to reside in Indonesia.

The second point I make about the boats is that some of them come from Sri Lanka. Of course, Sri Lanka has had a troubled time, and there is no question about that, but Sri Lanka is now no longer a war zone—as evidenced, I guess, by the fact that the Deputy President of the Senate is now representing the President at an international parliamentary conference there this week. We are not in the habit of sending senior parliamentary representatives to war zones for political conferences.

The point I make is that it is disingenuous to say that these people are fleeing a war zone or are fleeing in fear of their lives. They have had an opportunity to move to different countries in some instances, or they are leaving because they think that there is a better life in Australia. There may indeed be a better life for them in Australia, but we should be determining who comes to Australia and the circumstances in which they come to Australia, as John Howard famously said. More importantly, we should not undermine the work of the United Nations through the processes that are formally in place in many of these camps.

Senator Di Natale interjecting—

It is a great concern that there are those over on my left who are flippant about such important things as this because they do not like dealing with the facts. The facts that we have are that there are successful policies that have been proven to work in the past. They were dismantled by the government, ill-advisedly, and the boats started to come again and people started to die again. We do not have a cavalier manner about this. We do not have a cavalier approach to it; we have a genuine desire to make sure that people do not die at sea.

In that respect, I am pleased that the Labor Party have joined us. I am pleased that people like Senator Doug Cameron stood up here in this chamber and said, 'When the facts change, I change my mind.' It is a credit to Senator Cameron, because he is quite intransigent on any number of things, but he has recognised through the caucus process that this is a very important path. The problem that we have is that there are still those people masquerading as compassionate who somehow think there should be an open slather where anyone who wants to arrive in Australia should be able to come here. There is no actual proposal from the Greens about what limit there should be on the number of people who claim refugee status in Australia. There is no point that the boats should stop coming because people are dying. The only suggestion they could perhaps offer is that we fly them in directly or buy a ship. Maybe we could use that trawler that they successfully banned today; just load it up with refugees and bring it over to satisfy the insatiable demand from the Greens to undermine whatever sovereignty Australia has. It is an extraordinary position. It is a wilfully negligent position they have taken with regard to this.

Whilst I feel very strongly about this—and I know that many people do on this particular area—I think we have to take a genuine humanitarian approach. The fact is that, if refugees or illegal arrivals are processed offshore in Nauru or on Manus Island, they will be safe. This satisfies that. They will be accommodated, they will be fed, they will receive appropriate medical care and they will receive the appropriate education and lessons required to ensure that it happens.

Scott Ludlam (WA, Australian Greens) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Some of them will kill themselves on that island.

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

Senator Ludlam says that some will kill themselves. It is a bit rich for Senator Ludlam and Senator Hanson-Young, who just dismiss the hundreds of people who die at sea—the thousands of souls that float around as a result of the Greens' policies—

Senator Hanson-Young interjecting—

You should creep yourself out—not just the rest of Australia—because, honestly, how can you live with yourself at night? It is extraordinary. None make so much noise as the empty vessels, and we have heard a lot of noise about a whole range of things, none of them directly relevant to the fact that thousands of people are dying at sea because of the stupid and ridiculous policies that the Greens want to encourage to keep them there. It is extraordinary.

Sarah Hanson-Young (SA, Australian Greens) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

And you want to push them back to danger.

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

I know responding to interjections is disorderly, but, yes, Senator Hanson-Young, I do want to keep them from hopping in these leaky boats. I want to keep them where they are safe, whereas you want them to hop on the boats and risk dying on the journey to Australia because of your policies. That may sit well with you but it does not sit well with me, and I do not think it sits well with the Labor Party or the coalition. We have a serious issue whereby those who profess accountability and transparency refuse to accept the facts.

The other question I would like to raise is about the fact that the policy that the Greens support is a very expensive one. It is costing billions and billions of dollars. It is easy for them to endorse these sorts of policies; I remember just last week when there was an announcement of a dental scheme between Senator di Natale and the health minister. Senator di Natale was asked about the cost of this problem. There was a shrug of the shoulders, and he said: 'It's not my problem; it's the government's problem. They've got to do it.' This is the level of political discourse and fiscal responsibility that has been exhibited by the controlling party on the government side. It is an appalling indictment on their lack of accountability and it goes to the point that, since Senator Bob Brown left—I did not agree with Senator Brown on a lot of things, but he was a canny and wily politician and he knew about a whole range of things—we have a rabble within the Greens. They have not got a clue. They cannot even control the government anymore, although they are doing their level best to.

But let us go back to the matter at hand. Australia deserves an orderly program for the processing of genuine refugees. It is not about facilitating, incentivising or encouraging those who are economic refugees, those who have the cash to game the system, to pay their way into Australia, to destroy their papers on the way, the people who can make claims and counterclaims with very little accountability. We need to do what we can to discourage those who want to take advantage; but, more importantly, we need to do what we can to stop those who are risking their lives unnecessarily, and this offshore processing program will be a step in the right direction. There are two more legs in the stool, as I said. Temporary protection visas are very important to this. The other one is about turning the boats back where it is safe to do so because we need to send a very clear message that we will not facilitate in any way, shape or form the people smuggling business.

Scott Ludlam (WA, Australian Greens) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

It is with some dismay that I rise yet again; this is the third parliamentary sitting spell in a row where this issue has been brought before the chamber, and it just feels as though we go further down the rabbit hole each time. I have listened very carefully to the contributions of the coalition, and I would like to note for the record—perhaps things will change—the fact that not a single government senator has turned up to defend this policy apart from Senator Lundy, who carried the can for the minister in this place the last time this issue was debated. Where are they? Out there defending the policy?

One thing I will acknowledge is the insufferable smugness of the coalition senators who have turned up in here to claim the policy as their own. I will acknowledge that. Understood. I get it. You are broadcasting loud and clear that the government has taken on your policy, so you are in here doing the government's job of defending the miserable state the debate has got to. Senator Bernardi and those who contributed before him have made it very clear what the talking points are here: 'We've got the Labor Party on offshore processing and now we're going to have them on temporary protection visas and towing the boats back into open waters.'

I heard the minister earlier during question time say very clearly that the government will not be following the coalition down that particular rabbit hole, of temporary protection visas and towing boats back into open waters. But guess what? I have no idea what to believe anymore as far as the government is concerned. Maybe they will join Senator Bernardi and his other two legs of the stool, terrifying contraption though it is. For all we know, Senator Cash, perhaps you will get your way and the government will follow you down to the bottom of the bucket and reintroduce temporary protection visas, though probably, for the sake of argument, they will call them something else. Maybe they will even go against the express advice of the Australian Navy, who have said, 'Do not force us to turn boats back, because it is dangerous to the people on the boats and it is dangerous to naval personnel.' Who knows—maybe the government will complete the triple backflip and go where you are insisting they go. And guess what? The boats will keep coming.

I was expecting—and call me naive—some degree of reflection on the fact that, since this policy was announced and then introduced, several thousand people have continued to put themselves in harm's way on these boats to come to this country, despite the fact that these prison islands are now being made mandatory. These tents in the jungle and these tents on concrete pads are being prepared even as we speak. We know that that news is percolating through the camps and that people are still attempting these journeys, because even a tent on Nauru is safer than the places which they are fleeing from. So you could introduce TPVs, if you want to, and you could introduce towing back the boats against the express advice of the Royal Australian Navy, and people will still come. I will not expect anybody to come in here then and admit that you were wrong—but you are wrong.

We hear a lot of talk about a regional solution to the movement of displaced people. Senator Bernardi, in the middle of the spite and polemic of his contribution, did actually raise some points about why people come, and I think those are worth addressing. To have any chance of success, a regional solution will involve supporting human rights in the countries of refugees and, of course, in those countries which they pass through on their way to Australia. So let us cease and desist from future invasions in far-flung parts of the world that we barely understand and which then lead to outflows of refugees who then find their way to Australia. Let us stand up for human rights in places like Sri Lanka, where there was ethnic cleansing and the massacre of hundreds and then thousands of people who are still making their way in varying degrees of trauma to Australia.

Perhaps most important is the reforming of Australia's asylum application system abroad, so that it is no longer so prohibitively slow, and the boosting of Australia's humanitarian intake, because I think that hope rather than fear is the answer. Senator Hanson-Young and Senator Milne have made this point over and over again, but it seems worth repeating because those on the other side of the chamber do not appear to be hearing it. Rather than the department circulating these daft little YouTube videos that say how terrifying Australia is and how much barbed wire we have surrounding the country, why not circulate in the transit camps the fact that we have lifted the refugee intake and that we will need to lift it again, I think inevitably? Why not say that there is safe passage out of these camps, that you can turn up there and you will not be buried there indefinitely and that eventually you will be given a safe place to resettle and a safe way to get here? That is the kind of news that undercuts the business model of the people smugglers, if we want to descend to that kind of language. That is what will give people hope.

People know very well the kinds of risks that they are taking when they put themselves on those boats. It is broadcast from one end of the region to the other. If the department thinks that cooking up these dopey little YouTube videos to persuade people that Australia is a place of crocodiles and sharks and that it is scarier than politically motivated violence in Iran, ethnic cleansing in Sri Lanka or war in Afghanistan, they are absolutely delusional. Those policies were not the solution when they were introduced by the coalition.

It is remarkable the degree to which the coalition just pretend that the SIEVX never occurred. The reason they do that, of course, is that it does not fit with the narrative that they stopped the boats. Those harsh policies were designed to deflect people from seeking our shores and were not in fact effective in the first place, because the SIEVX sank two months after the Pacific solution was introduced. Nauru did not deter them, and it will not deter them again. We now have more than a month's worth of evidence, if you take it from the announcement of the policy. This form of deterrence simply will not work because, as I said in my contribution the week before last, it has to be more of a deterrent than war, violence, ethnic cleansing, torture and the risk of drowning.

Maybe Senator Cash and Senator Bernardi, who have led the charge on this, have some ideas for how Australia can be scarier than those things. And heaven help us all if you end up on the front bench in a future government. The policies that you introduced were not the solution then and they are not the solution now, because since the announcement with so much fanfare we are seeing both major parties backing away from the instantaneous deterrent value that was meant to be applied with the passage of this policy—2,049 more people have arrived by boat, seeking refuge in this country from exactly the same dire international circumstances from which they were seeking refuge before this policy was introduced.

So, sure, you folks are getting to score some very interesting points in the domestic media. You are probably getting great runs on talkback radio, on Alan Jones's station in Western Sydney—and good luck to you for that. However, it is making no difference whatsoever in the real world, in the terrible circumstances of wars and displacements which are forcing people to seek asylum in places like Australia. If you think a YouTube video is more frightening than Pashtun nationalists or Taliban insurgents in the Swat Valley in Afghanistan, if you think a YouTube video is more frightening than the Rajapaksa government of Sri Lanka, which has been implicated in war crimes, or the way that the Iranian state treats pro-democracy dissidents in Iran, you are out of your minds. Statistics can be dry but the figures that are involved are, I think, quite instructive. It was delightful to hear Senator Humphries refer to the proud Liberal traditions of allowing people into this country. Of course he was referring to changes that were made when the Fraser government was in power. Former Prime Minister the Hon. Malcolm Fraser was sitting in the public gallery when Senator Hanson-Young made her contribution in the last dishonourable phase of this debate, and he certainly was not cheering on Senator Humphries or the arguments that are being made now. You have so unmoored yourselves from the principles of liberalism that your former Prime Minister has now utterly divorced himself from the direction in which you have taken the debate.

But it is worth taking a look at what was done then, when huge numbers of people flowed of out of Indochina fleeing a war—another war that Australia was implicated in, where there was carpet bombing of South-East Asian cities by our great and powerful neighbour, the United States. After a relatively high number of asylum seekers arrived by boat in Australia subsequent to the end of the Vietnam War—one of the last disastrous occupations we allowed ourselves to get dragged into—there was actually a prolonged quiet period. From 1981 until 1992, the number of refugees arriving by boat never exceeded 214 in any given year. In 1999, seven years after the mandatory detention of asylum seekers was introduced, there was a spike in numbers to 3,721. I know that amnesia does tend to prevail in this debate, but let us remind ourselves that the whole concept of mandatory detention was supposed to be the disincentive. Does anybody remember that? That has just failed dismally. We no longer have room on the mainland to put people. That is what provoked the idea that we can simply divorce ourselves from the problem and dump people in concentration camps on Pacific islands. It was because the deterrent value of onshore processing, of dumping people in cages in the desert in Australia, was so utterly ineffective. But we can let amnesia prevail. Perhaps it does help you folk in getting hits on Alan Jones' radio program and in the Daily Tele, but it has no bearing to reality at all. If mandatory detention was needlessly introduced after a decade of very small numbers of people arriving, then why did the numbers go up seven years after the 'deterrent' started? Kabul fell to the Taliban in 1996. In 2011 the number of people seeking asylum in Australia fell by nine per cent—almost all of which, incidentally, was in boat arrivals—from about 6,500 to 4,500. That happened without temporary protection visas, it happened without Nauru, it happened without the Malaysia solution. There has been no analysis from either side of this chamber as to why that could be the case.

I would be interested to know whether in fact anybody else in this debate is even interested in that steep drop in boat arrivals or why the number went up again this year despite no change in policy from one year to the next. In fact, it is more to do with the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan; the presidential election in Iran and subsequent protests and crackdown; the Saffron Revolution in Burma, which saw huge numbers of people flow across into Thailand and elsewhere; and the end of the brutal civil war in Sri Lanka. These things are what have played crucial roles in flows of people seeking to escape violence and repression.

You hear it sometimes dismissed with a wave of the hand as, 'Oh, yes, the push factors; we've thought of those.' But they do not play on talkback radio stations that are used to dog whistle the Australian people into submission—believing, as everybody in this country believes, that if only the parliament could do something we could stop the flow of people away from the horror of war. I think it is readily evident that people in this chamber do not see any political capital in acknowledging the fact that the ebb and flow of people out of war and disaster zones has nothing to do with the degraded state of domestic policies or the way that this debate, from the Prime Minister down, has been conducted.

There are more than 8,000 asylum seekers in Indonesia. In fact the unofficial figure is much higher than that, but the UN refugee agency's annual budget in Indonesia is a mere $6 million. I am fascinated to hear the numerically illiterate Senator Bernardi telling us that the Greens policies of not building these prison cages all over the Pacific and remote parts of Australia will cost billions of dollars. I have just been informed that it has been estimated that to put Nauru together is going to cost $1.5 billion a year for the next 10 years. How Senator Bernardi comes to the conclusion that simply raising the humanitarian intake and dismantling the suppressive infrastructure of barbed wire cages and surveillance cameras would somehow be more expensive than what the act of this chamber today would seek to establish is absolutely beyond me.

An immediate increase in UNHCR funding of $10 million from Australia, which is a rounding error compared to what we are proposing to spend on these new institutions, would greatly increase their capacity to assess asylum applications. Australia accepts 60 people, on average, from Indonesia and Malaysia every year, and the pressure to risk a dangerous boat journey builds to boiling point quickly. As many of us have said before, people are arriving in these camps and what they hear from people who have been there a while before them is: 'You're stuck, you're not leaving. There is no queue. It's just a dumping ground for people.' But imagine if news were percolating through those camps that if they are patient they will eventually be resettled. That was exactly the situation that prevailed during the years of the Fraser government. It was not immediate; it was not instantaneous that people arrived and they were instantly shipped to Australia or other resettlement countries. But people knew they would be safe, they would be fed, they would be looked after, their human rights would not be abused and eventually they would find a home where their applications could either be assessed directly or be assessed in the places where they were.

That is what a former Liberal Prime Minister did, and it is kind of horrifying to hear Senator Humphries invoke that tradition in defence of the degraded state of the debate today where the coalition have managed to drag the Labor Party across to their side of the debate, to completely own and control the terms of the debate, and they are now sitting there with smug expressions on their faces, looking at an empty ALP bench because nobody has turned up in here to defend this atrocious policy. No wonder they feel smug.

Don Farrell (SA, Australian Labor Party, Parliamentary Secretary for Sustainability and Urban Water) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

No, I'm here!

Scott Ludlam (WA, Australian Greens) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I do apologise to the ALP members who are here, and I invite you to stand up and defend what you are doing. I suspect you will not, but you would be entirely welcome to do so. But I do acknowledge there are two ALP senators in here who have stayed silent and avoided eye contact for the entire duration of the debate.

Offshore detention is as harsh as it is pointless and it will not stop people coming. All it will do is damage the people who are locked up: people who are locked up without knowing when they will be released, why they are being locked up in the first place or even if they will be released. They are locked up without breaking any law—international or Australian. As has been established time and again—and the Leader of the Opposition can remind his Senate colleagues if they ask him, because he has fortunately been taken to task on this once or twice—asylum seekers are not illegal immigrants. The way international law has prevailed over the last few decades is that it is not illegal to seek refuge in a country that is not your own if you have been forced to leave by those kinds of circumstances. It has been repeated so often that, again, I believe that amnesia simply prevails.

The fact is that reinstituting temporary protection visas will simply increase the number of women and children who find themselves on these nasty little boats in the open ocean. But that has not deterred the coalition from saying to the government: 'We've got you on offshore processing; now you need to come at us with temporary protection visas and towing boats back. That'll fix things.' It will not, but it serves your purposes and it serves your talking points for today. We know that temporary protection visas were the reason that so many children were onboard the SIEVX when it went down with everybody onboard. The idea of temporary protection visas is simply bankrupt. Of course we support government spokespeople, and Senator Evans was eloquently at it again today, as he has been over the last little while, saying: 'The Australian government won't be doing that. The Labor Party won't be doing that.' If only we could believe the government when it says that, because maybe in six weeks time the coalition will have dragged it even further down into the gutter. Lastly, on turning back the boats, for heaven's sake, if you are not going to listen to the Navy and to the personnel who have done this under previous governments, who have faced the risk and the situations invoked when towing boats full of desperate people back into open waters—noting that the talking point says 'when it is safe', except it is not. These boats are being towed back without adequate navigational systems and without decent crews, and are patently unseaworthy in some cases, into open waters. The Indonesian government has said, 'Don't you dare,' and has confirmed that it will not accept the towing back of asylum seeker boats to its shores. The Indonesian government also does not have the search and rescue or the inshore naval capacity to look after these vessels if they are dragged back into Indonesian waters.

The Royal Australian Navy itself has said to Tony Abbott: 'Don't be stupid. Don't put our personnel at risk in these situations.' This is not hypothetical. This is not some kind of abstract argument. The Navy was involved in 11 attempts to turn back boats between 8 September and 11 December 2001. So we have an interesting little slice of when people like Senator Bernardi and Senator Cash had their way and boats were being towed back. It is very easy for Mr Abbott to just wave his hand and issue another one of his empty slogans, as he is so wont to do. We know what happened. On SIEV5, a riot erupted among passengers and a fire was lit on the boat, endangering passengers and the naval personnel. When told of their return, a number of passengers on SIEV7 jumped into the water and then had to be rescued by Australian sailors, putting their wellbeing at risk.

According to the Navy, a couple of the boats were turned back with relatively little trouble. On one of them, SIEV12, fires were lit on the vessel and passengers jumped overboard. In the other seven interceptions a return was abandoned because of damage to the boats, danger to naval personnel or passengers or because of other safety of life at sea obligations. We have heard senior naval and ex-naval spokespeople who have been on the front line of the kinds of policy blunders that the coalition is trying to lead us straight back into that it is operationally extraordinarily fraught and risky not just for the people on the boat, whose welfare everybody in here has professed that we are trying to look after, but also for the Navy.

Donald Rothwell, Professor of International Law at the ANU, has also put on the record that the policy of towing boats back is utterly contrary to international law. We recognise that the coalition long ago abandoned any pretence of caring. It has been extraordinarily disappointing to see the government go into bat to basically overturn a High Court ruling which emphasised that treating people in this way was unlawful. But here we are, for what it is worth, turning boats back at sea, which apart from being risky to the people on the small boats and the people in the Navy doing the work is also illegal at international law.

The European Court of Human Rights affirmed that earlier this year in the Hirsi case when they found against an Italian policy of intercepting migrant boats in the Mediterranean and returning them to Libya. Australia is not alone in this. We can do better than this and this will not be the last time that this issue will have to be dealt with in this chamber.

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

I rise to speak in this debate and to support the motion, particularly the amendments moved by Senator Cash on behalf of the coalition. I would urge the Senate to support the amended motion before the chamber. We have had another contribution from the Greens political party, full of half-truths and misstatements. Senator Ludlam, the previous speaker, indicated that boats could not be turned around and then gave a list of cases in which boats were turned around. I refer Senator Ludlam to the evidence given by the current Chief of Navy, Admiral Griggs, who when asked at estimates whether boats could be turned around gave an example of when he was a patrol boat captain and actually did turn boats around. In fairness, I mention he also indicated that there were other times when he was unable to turn the boats around.

Senator Ludlam clearly mentioned in his contribution that when it becomes dangerous in turning boats around is when illegal immigrants—and that is what they are; they come to our country illegally—take the law into their own hands—

Scott Ludlam (WA, Australian Greens) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

They are not illegal.

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

Entry into Australia without a permit is illegal.

Senator Ludlam interjecting—

If you are a refugee; that is correct. These people are not designated refugees, as you well know. But there are 10 million refugees who have been determined by the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees to be genuine refugees and genuinely in fear for their lives sitting in squalid camps around the world, and yet the Greens will give preference to those who would illegally enter Australia in preference to those who have been waiting their turn in squalid camps right around the world. These people waiting their turn in these squalid camps around the world have been determined by the UNHCR to be genuine refugees. There is no suggestion with those people about whether they are just economic refugees or whether there are other reasons why they might be trying to come into our country, and that has to be gone through before people are determined to be genuine refugees. But that does not matter to the Greens political party. They let in these people who are not yet determined as refugees while those 10 million people who have already been determined as genuine refugees wait in their squalid camps around the world. Thank you, Greens political party!

About the only thing that Senator Ludlam said that bore any semblance of truthfulness and accuracy was the fact that the Labor Party is remarkably absent from this debate. I can well understand that. Poor old Senator Evans, the Leader of the Government in the Senate. The Labor Party is just renowned for their backflips but poor Senator Evans, when he was Minister for Immigration and Citizenship, said:

Labor committed to abolishing the Pacific Solution and this was one the first things the Rudd Labor Government did on taking office. It was also one of my greatest pleasures in politics. Neither humane nor fair, the Pacific Solution was also ineffective and wasteful.

Poor old Senator Evans! Having gone on the record saying that—and he said a lot of other things at the time—and here he is today leading a party in this chamber that is introducing the Pacific solution that he said was neither humane nor fair, was ineffective and wasteful. Well, Senator Evans, if, as immigration minister, you thought it was neither humane nor fair and you thought it was ineffective and wasteful, tell me why your government is now introducing the Pacific solution—well, one element of the Pacific solution?

It just shows how completely dysfunctional this government is. It also shows quite clearly that I, like most Australians these days, have simply come to the realisation that nothing the current leader of the Labor Party—that is, Ms Gillard—says anymore does anyone take any notice of. Similar to Senator Wong in question time, as I said to her by way of interjection: 'Say what you like in non-answer to your questions, nobody these days anywhere in Australia takes any notice of what Ms Gillard says.' And, of course, why would they, when she promised on the eve of the last election never to introduce a carbon tax? Immediately she got into power, thanks to the Greens and a couple of Independents, she broke that solemn promise to the Australian public. Had she said before the last election, 'I'm going to introduce a carbon tax,' there is no way in the world she would ever have been elected. So she duped the Australian public. They know that and, regardless of their views on the carbon tax or otherwise, they will remember that Ms Gillard broke a solemn promise and duped them.

Similarly, with Senator Evans on: what do the Labor Party believe? Do they believe in the Pacific solution? The Leader of the Government in the Senate said just a couple of years ago that is was neither humane nor fair, was ineffective and wasteful. Does the Labor Party believe Senator Evans when he said that a couple of years ago or do they believe him today when he says that this is going to solve our problems, that this is going to be the solution?

You can understand, Madam Acting Deputy President, that these days nobody in Australia takes any notice of or believes anything that this Prime Minister, the former Prime Minister, the Leader of the Government in the Senate or in fact any Labor minister says. You can well appreciate why no-one believes that anymore. In fact, nobody even listens to them anymore.

This motion today is to re-establish Nauru as a regional processing centre and a place where would-be illegal immigrants into Australia are taken to be properly assessed and then dealt with in accordance with the UNHCR rules—that is, wait their turn. If they are determined to be genuine refugees then they will wait their turn and be processed in accordance with the UNHCR rules. Although the Labor Party were dragged kicking and screaming to this result that we are taking part in today in this debate, they have not gone the whole hog, so it is not going to work. I can guarantee that the boats will not stop coming because, unfortunately, the Labor Party—

Richard Di Natale (Victoria, Australian Greens) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Why are you voting for it?

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

Why am I voting for it? Because it is a step in the right direction. It is one of three elements. I can assure senators here that if the Labor Party do not introduce the other two elements—the temporary protection visas and turning the boats around—then the coalition will when next we are in government. That is why I think we could save the Labor Party—indeed, everyone—a lot of problems by the Labor Party adopting the full Howard government solution this time and not just one element of it. Whilst I will be supporting the amendment—I will certainly be urging people to support the amendment—if the amendment is not carried—

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

Order! It being 6.50 pm, I am required to interrupt the debate to move on to consideration of government documents. Senator Macdonald, you are welcome to use the remainder of your time once we return to this order of the day.