Speeches

Matter of Public Importance - Rudd Government's immigration and border protection failures

Tuesday 15th June 2010

Today’s editorial in the Sydney Daily Telegraph highlights the matter of public importance before the House today. It says:

The constant arrival of claimed asylum seekers off Australia’s northern coastline comes with a dreadful toll. More than 150 men, women and children, lured by the promises of people-smugglers and a belief that Australia offers easy sanctuary, have drowned at sea since 2008.

This is a cost rarely mentioned in considering the ongoing issue of asylum seekers. And then there is the financial cost which, while of lesser concern, is now becoming outrageous.

It goes on to say:

… the Rudd Government seems unable or unwilling to take serious action to stop it.

Inaction is driving the various costs involved in this higher by the day.

There is nothing humane about policies that encourage people to risk their lives in the hands of people smugglers. People die on boats. This is the inconvenient truth of the asylum seekers debate and the reality for at least hundreds who have perished at sea.

People smugglers are not the modern-day equivalent of Oscar Schindler, as some in the public debate romantically suggest. Today’s people smugglers are criminal syndicates. They put others’ lives at risk for their own profit. If the Prime Minister spent as much time and energy in this House trying to destroy the profits of people smugglers as he does trying to tax the profits of our minerals sector, then perhaps things would be different. But they are not different today. Today we have boats arriving at a rate on average of three per week. This compares to an average of just three per year over the last six years of the Howard government. More people have arrived this month than arrived in total during the last six years of the Howard government once our full suite of measures was in place.

In fact, we have had more people arrive illegally by boat in the first five months of this year than in the 13 years following the end of the Vietnam War. Contrary to popular myth, large numbers of people and boats did not arrive on our shores following the Vietnam War. The boats and their passengers were diverted to offshore processing centres, in places like Galang in Indonesia, as part of a plan supported by the Fraser government. During this genuine regional crisis, Indochinese asylum seekers were processed offshore and resettled in the same way as they were processed at Nauru and Manus Island and resettled under the policies of the Howard government. In this context, Malcolm Fraser was indeed a pioneer of offshore processing.

Whatever our critics might argue, the Australian public know that John Howard and his government stopped the flow of boats. They have now returned, under this government’s failed policies, at an unprecedented rate of arrival. Under the Howard government’s policies, people were no longer risking their lives on boats, as they had previously. People smugglers were no longer earning the superprofits they are today. In fact, they were not earning superprofits or profits at all at that time. Our courts were no longer jammed with endless appeals from those seeking to have the rejection of their asylum claims overturned and to have their stay extended. Our detention population had fallen by the time we left office to just 449 people, of whom only four had arrived by boat, and just 21 children were being detained.

Detention centres such as Curtin and Baxter were closed. New state-of-the-art facilities were built on Christmas Island to cope with the modest arrivals anticipated under the coalition government’s policies—not the policy failures of this government. The coalition introduced reforms to remove children from formal detention and to process health, identity and security checks in parallel with refugee status determination. Those reforms made detention more humane and significantly improved processing efficiency to reduce the time people spent in detention. Those reforms remain coalition policy. The Howard government was confronted with a problem and it delivered a solution. This was done in the face of global asylum applications which at that time were more than 50 per cent higher than they are today.

Sadly, the number of refugees and people seeking asylum around the world remains high today. Of the 10½ million people around the world who are refugees—or the 10.4 million, I should say, having just seen the latest report for 2009, which is slightly less—less than one per cent will receive a resettlement in a third country such as Australia. This is a genuinely unique and very precious opportunity that is on offer to a very small number of people.

Throughout the coalition’s time in government, we maintained a strong resettlement program and we remain committed to this program today. We are still the most generous country per capita in terms of resettling refugees around the world and we boast, as we have for many years, of one of the best resettlement programs anywhere in the world. But, in contrast to the coalition’s policy, the Prime Minister’s policy serves to provide these places to those who seek to gain places by an illegal mode of entry, displacing those who have come by legal means and who have sought their asylum from offshore places in refugee camps. Those who have come by an illegal method have effectively taken the place of those who would have come by another method and who would have been given the support which is so precious and which is so given by a generous Australian community.

But what about those who come to this country by plane, as is often said? Those who arrive by air typically have a valid visa for entry and only a small minority arrive illegally without documentation. I am yet to learn of an asylum seeker who has perished on a 747 heading for Australia. That said, the coalition’s temporary protection visa policy will apply equally to those arriving illegally by air or those who have overstayed their visas and have sought asylum as it will to those who arrive illegally by boat.

The natural consequence of the Rudd government’s failed border protection policies is that our detention centres today are full again and the costs are spiralling out of control. There are now more than 3,600 people in detention. Since the abolition of temporary protection visas, the number of children being detained...

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