Media Release

Transcript - 7.30 Report

Monday 20th December 2010

Subjects: Andrew Wilkie, Christmas Island asylum seeker boat tragedy, Coalition immigration and border protection policy

EandOE

HEATHER EWART:

Did you make that offer to Andrew Wilkie, to double the humanitarian intake?

SCOTT MORRISON:

No. What we had at the last election was a policy to marginally increase the refugee and humanitarian intake as part of a private sponsorship pilot based on what was done on the Canadian experience which we thought was worthwhile pursuing. So that was our policy. We also said we would increase the mandated UNHCR refugee component from within the overall cap because we believe our policies would reduce the number of illegal boat arrivals and free up more space in the program for those mandated refugees from camps.

HEATHER EWART:

Are you suggesting Andrew Wilkie invented this or what?

SCOTT MORRISON:

I am not suggesting anything, I am just telling you what we understood took place during those discussions and that was our policy at the election, so there is nothing surprising about the fact that we said we were planning to take more but the suggestion of doubling, no.

HEATHER EWART:

So why would he say something like this?

SCOTT MORRISON:

You would have to ask him.

HEATHER EWART:

Moving on, on the Christmas Island accident, you left it a few days before the gloves came off but now they are well and truly off, is this the right time to be using the tragedy for political and policy discussion?

SCOTT MORRISON:

Well as I said on the day of the incident and the days that followed that certainly wasn’t the time. The nation was shocked, I was shocked. This was, as I said at the time, my worst fears realised and I don’t know what worse fears there could be than those scenes we saw. At an appropriate time and I believe we are in that phase, we cannot allow the policy to go unchanged in our view. There must be a change of policy. We have advocated that for a long period of time, we have had these views for 10 years and we have been attacked for them. We have been called everything from racist to inhuman in terms of our views. I do know that over 6 years when we had our policy measures in place there were just ten boats and less than 250 people arrive. That happens in half a month these days.

HEATHER EWART:

But does that take into account various push factors? Is it a distortion of the figures? Because you have had various events in Sri Lanka and Afghanistan and so on.

SCOTT MORRISON:

There have always been push factors. For decades and decades. The fact is that the number of asylum applications made in industrialised countries back in 1999 to 2001 got up to over 600,000, it is in the 300,000s today. There will always be an insatiable demand for people to come and do this. What changes is the policy environment in which people smugglers operate. In the last two and a half years they have had a much more conducive environment.

HEATHER EWART:

Is the political reality here that no side has the answers here to stop the boats? There is no simplistic and quick solution?

SCOTT MORRISON:

There is no simplistic solution but there are solutions. When we had our policy solutions in place only 10 boats in 6 years arrived. That is the evidence of our policy, it is not a slogan, it is what actually happened. Those measures we have put forward again and added new measures. It is a question of resolve as well. You keep going until they stop.

HEATHER EWART:

I noticed that you now turned back to the ‘turn back the boats’ slogan of the election campaign. A couple of weeks ago Tony Abbott appeared to have dropped this, referring instead to ‘stronger borders’. Is this really a deliberate shift in strategy to make use of what has happened on Christmas Island?

SCOTT MORRISON:

No I reject that absolutely, I think that is an outrageous thing to suggest. It is our policy to stop the boats. That’s what we did in government, that’s what we would like to do again. No amount of consensus and bi partisanship is more important than that objective. We are committed to that. I said today in a statement I am happy to work with the government, as Tony Abbott said yesterday, to work together to implement our policies. But it is the policies that are important and the government needs to implement those in our view.

HEATHER EWART:

Are you prepared to try and work together with the government on this to avoid polarising the community which we have seen going on for several years now?

SCOTT MORRISON:

Well there is a different view on policy and as long as that is the case it is hard to actually have the same view. Our view is that you need stronger measure now, not weaker measures. The government has already weakened measures on the advocacy of many within their own ranks, of other parties and others involved. I don’t believe that weaker policies are the answer here and it is the time for people to make decisions and act. It is not the time for committees, it is the time for decisions.

HEATHER EWART:

You are talking for example about a return to use of temporary protection visas which actually divided members in your own party, is it worth the pain and division that this does create in the electorate?

SCOTT MORRISON:

It is worth stopping the boats Heather. I think that is the key.

HEATHER EWART:

Do you have any evidence that that does stop the boats?

SCOTT MORRISON:

Well I have just said on a number of occasions, six years those policies were in place and we went from 43 boats in 2001 and 5,500 people to 2002 not one boat. Not one boat. It wasn’t just the policy measures, it was the resolve of the government and the Prime Minister in particular at the time. This Prime Minister faces a similar test. Kevin Rudd failed the test with the Oceanic Viking, this Prime Minister now faces her test and I can assure you that Tony Abbott and I and the team would be prepared to do what is necessary to do this.

HEATHER EWART:

At a recent speech I think that you made to the Lowy Institute here in Sydney you talked of the need for regional protection processes which is the same track the government is on. Have you shifted ground on that area?

SCOTT MORRISON:

No. The point I was making was that they have got the wrong region. The region which asylum seekers are coming from is Central Asia, countries of first asylum - Pakistan, Iran - where there is 1.7 million Afghans living in just less than 100 camps, that is where the support for camps is needed, that is where processing centres already in some form exist. What we need to do is stop people moving beyond the countries of first asylum because in this process we help the few and we ignore the many and it is the many I think we should be trying to help. Those in the camps.

HEATHER EWART:

Why is Nauru, a processing centre on Nauru, your insisted solution to this issue when the government is arguing that East Timor is a solution? Is this basically an argument over semantics, that you are kind of on the same track there?

SCOTT MORRISON:

No I should be clear that they are two very different types of centres. Firstly Nauru will happen. Nauru could happen within a matter of weeks, 4 to 6 weeks…

HEATHER EWART:

Well the government again disputes this.

SCOTT MORRISON:

Well they haven’t been there. I have been there, I have spoken to the government and the opposition and I have worked through a number of the issues with them. I have said today if Chris Bowen would like to get on a plane and come to Nauru with me I would be happy to have the same discussions again and demonstrate a bi-partisan commitment to getting that centre open. The same with Manus Island in PNG. What we are proposing can actually happen, East Timor is a never never solution.

HEATHER EWART:

But it doesn’t fall under the United Nations convention that the government is insisting upon and also the government would argue that under that process 90% of those who went through ended up in New Zealand and Australia anyway.


SCOTT MORRISON:

Well on that argument East Timor is a waste of time as well but the other point I would make is this, the principle of non refoulement, which is the core principle of the convention is an established principle of international law and would apply equally at Nauru as it would in Indonesia or any other part of the world. From my point of view that is an excuse from the government not to take up an option that could exist. Papua New Guinea is similarly an option, why they are insisting on East Timor is beyond me. This is a regional processing centre so anyone who crosses an imaginary line to come into the region gets processed at this centre so it is going to draw even more people into the region which is what we see as a flaw in the policy design.

HEATHER EWART:

Do you intend to play this issue in the same way through next year? Can you see it continuing to be a major part of the debate?

SCOTT MORRISON:

I will campaign for stronger border protection until we have it. That’s what we have been doing for ten years. When we were in government we had it, this government rolled it back and we have argued consistently that it should be restored. So whether there is an election coming or not is not the issue. The problem at the moment we are seeing and continue to see is the boats keep coming. As long as they keep coming we will advocate theses policies.

END