Petro Georgiou (Kooyong, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

Thirty years ago, after a long and hazardous journey, a small group of Vietnamese refugees landed on a remote beach in Northern Australia. In today’s parlance they were ‘unauthorised arrivals’. These Vietnamese inaugurated Australia’s modern era of boat people. There were shockwaves. The new arrivals were Asians and the White Australia policy had only recently been abandoned. The Fraser government decided that the refugees would be accepted and helped to settle successfully. But then, in 1992, the Keating government introduced a policy that the Fraser government had rejected—the mandatory detention of asylum seekers. Later, further stringent measures were implemented by the Howard government to prevent and deter asylum seekers from arriving here. Temporary protection replaced permanent protection, more punitive reception centre procedures were introduced and, in 2001, with the agreement of the opposition, parliament legislated to excise some Australian territory from the ambit of the Migration Act. Further excisions followed.

The rationales advanced for the harshness of these policies were that asylum seekers were being transported for profit by people smugglers—smugglers who were cruelly indifferent to the fate of their desperate passengers—that asylum seekers had passed through other countries and not sought protection en route to Australia, and that asylum seekers were not fleeing persecution but seeking economic benefit.

I do not disclaim responsibility for the measures adopted by the Howard government. Whatever my reservations at the time, I voted for them. The rationales for harshness, however, have been undermined in recent years. The overwhelming majority of asylum seekers have been found to be legitimate refugees. A combination of factors has led largely to unauthorised arrivals ceasing. The disturbing consequences of the mandatory detention regime became more apparent. It was recognised that vulnerable children, women and men had been harmed, that they had been physically and mentally damaged. It became transparent that people who had committed no crime were being detained for years with no certainty of them ever being released. The fact that the policy itself was open to abuse progressively became exposed. Revelations about the treatment of Cornelia Rau shocked us all. Other revelations have continued to shock us.

Public attitudes shifted. Australians who had once accepted the policy as being necessary came to see that it was cruel and wrong. These were not the usual suspects; these were the people who said: ‘I believed in the policy at the time. Now I know what the consequences are and I think it’s wrong.’ Fewer Australians felt threatened by or hostile towards the new arrivals. More Australians believed that we should treat asylum seekers with greater compassion. The government, to its credit, did respond. A year ago the Prime Minister announced a program of significant measures. He said:

The broad framework of the Government’s approach is unaltered.  ... There can however be significant improvements which will mean that current policy is administered with greater flexibility, fairness and, above all, in a timely manner.

These changes were long overdue. Under the government’s broad framework, people who sought asylum on our mainland—and Tasmania—were all assessed under Australian law and granted protection in Australia if they needed it. There was no difference between an asylum seeker who arrived by boat or one who arrived by plane. Within that broad framework the improvements were, as the Prime Minister stated, significant. In fairness, the improvements did not go as far as some of us wanted, but the improvements were significant.

The most important reform was that families with children were no longer to be detained in detention centres while their applications for refugee status were considered. Instead, families with children would be permitted to live in the Australian community and conditions would be set to meet their individual circumstances. Where they were found to be refugees, they would be given protection visas in Australia. Our monitoring and supervision systems were strengthened. Those improvements which required legislation were promptly enacted by parliament in a spirit of bipartisan consensus.

The reforms have generally been successful and, I believe, welcomed by the community at large. Asylum seekers in Australia are now treated more humanely and efficiently than has been the case for years. This was exemplified in the fair and timely processing of the West Papuans who arrived in Australia in January. It is a matter of sadness that, within months of the most recent piece of reform legislation being enacted, parliament is now being asked to approve a new and severely regressive measure. Barely having overcome our fears and introduced a more decent system, we are asked to turn back.

The Migration Amendment (Designated Unauthorised Arrivals) Bill is the most profoundly disturbing piece of legislation I have encountered since becoming a member of parliament. The bill proposes a radical change to the broad framework that the government committed to a year ago. If parliament agrees, the consequences will be draconic. The whole of Australia—and, in deference to you, Mr Deputy Speaker Quick, Tasmania—would be excised from the refugee protection regime afforded by the Migration Act for people seeking asylum who arrive on our mainland by boat. These asylum seekers will be sent to Nauru.

In a number of key respects the treatment of asylum seekers who come to Australia by boat will be unacceptably worse than at present. This remains the case despite a number of improvements the government has agreed to regarding the bill as initially introduced. I will focus on three issues. First, families with children will not live in ordinary community settings either while their claims are being processed or after they are found to be refugees. If Nauru agrees, the government will establish what it calls a village where women, children and families can live so that they are not in the processing centre. The village will have a fence around it. The government says that the fence will be a non-intrusive one to ensure the security of the refugees or the asylum seekers. In the evening, again for their safety we are told, the residents will be required to stay in their accommodation and the village will be patrolled by private security personnel. The residents may be confined to their homes for as many hours a day or days of the week as the Nauruan government determines at various times. The Australian government insists that this is not detention.

A second major difference between the current situation and that proposed under this bill is that asylum seekers on Nauru will not have available the protections that exist in Australia. For example, they will not have a right of appeal to an independent statutory body against decisions by departmental officers on the merit of their applications.

To understand the importance of this, one has to look at how many departmental decisions the Refugee Review Tribunal has overturned. In 2004-05, for example, the statutory Refugee Review Tribunal set aside 90 per cent of decisions on application from Afghanis, over 90 per cent relating to Iraqis and 33 per cent of all decisions. To dampen concerns about the absence of an independent review, the government says it will consider establishing a panel of non-departmental decision makers to review failed applications. But there is to be no statutory basis for this critical function. Panel members will be making decisions that could mean life or death for applicants without a legislated framework of accountability.

The third and most disquieting thing is that people found to be refugees may remain on Nauru indefinitely. This is not a fanciful prospect; look at the historical record. The excision of islands around Australia was introduced in order to deny protection in Australia to asylum seekers who landed on the islands. These asylum seekers were sent to places like Nauru. In the event, even though the refugees’ claims for asylum were sustained, few countries were willing to take them off Nauru, and we ended up resettling around 60 per cent in Australia. We resettled some of those after a number of years when we could no longer ignore a situation in which their health, their mental health and their ability to subsist and exist on Nauru were seriously being put at risk. Today there seems to be even less possibility of finding other countries prepared to take refugees whom Australia refuses to accept.

In evidence to the Senate Legal and Constitutional Legislation Committee’s inquiry into the bill, the representative of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees said:

I do not see any likely candidates. I think the countries who do accept resettlement of refugees ... would see this legislation in its current form as being a deflection of Australia’s responsibilities to provide solutions on its mainland, therefore adding to the resettlement burden of the other countries in the world.

The Australian government has said that it would consider taking people who would not be resettled otherwise, but even this vague, non-binding offer comes without a timetable. Would consideration start after a year, three years, 10 years? The majority report of the Legal and Constitutional Legislation Committee recommended that the bill should provide an obligation on Australia to resettle refugees who could not be resettled elsewhere. But the government’s amendments provide only that the minister have a non-compellable, non-reviewable power to grant a visa if this would be in the public interest, a term which is not defined.

According to the Indonesian foreign minister, the Australian government has assured him that West Papuan refugees will not be allowed to settle here. So far as we members of parliament are concerned, the only certainty is uncertainty. If we approve the bill, we do so knowing that it will result in refugees who are transferred from Australia to Nauru remaining there for an indefinite period. This will apply to children as well as to women and men. It has been suggested that the government is simply asking parliament to rectify an incongruous situation which came to light when a group of unauthorised people landed on the mainland in January this year. The incongruity was that people landing on the mainland were being treated differently from people arriving on excised islands. In fact, the difference between the mainland and the islands is well known. The decision to have different asylum regimes applying to the mainland and to largely uninhabited islands was quite deliberate. The government’s primary concern, which was shared by others, was that people smugglers who might take the risk of landing their passengers on the islands would be reluctant to venture to the mainland where the risk of detection was greater. The possibility of unauthorised arrivals coming to the mainland was noted and discussed in the parliament, and the government rejected any proposition about excising the Australian mainland.

So why has this heretofore rejected policy become an important strengthening of Australia’s border control measures? There is no new threat from a criminal gang of people smugglers trying to penetrate our defences. Earlier this year, 43 West Papuans came directly, not through other countries, and they have been determined to be refugees fleeing persecution. They were only the second group of boat arrivals on the mainland since July 2003. One vessel with seven West Timorese arrived in November 2005, and that event did not cause the government to change its views about what was needed to protect us.

The Indonesian government has protested at Australia’s granting of refugee status to the Papuan asylum seekers. The Indonesian government’s complaint is understandable. Of course, it does not like being accused of persecuting its own citizens and, of course, Australia should be sensitive to the feelings of its neighbour. But we should not sacrifice Australian law. When Australians criticised Indonesian laws, our governments reminded us that we must respect Indonesia’s right to determine and apply its own system. That was right—as was the decision made on the 43 Papuans. The decisions were made properly by Australian officials acting properly in accordance with our law and policy and appropriately reviewed by the Refugee Review Tribunal. From what we know of the situation in West Papua, the decision was not perverse. There is substantial evidence to support claims of persecution which, under the Migration Act, entitle people to receive protection in Australia—for example, the US State Department’s report on the human rights situation in Indonesia.

The general human rights situation in Indonesia has improved in recent years, and I think we all welcome that. I am pleased that Australia is providing assistance to further that process, but, clearly, the problems have not all been resolved. As a supportive neighbour, we should make clear to the Indonesian government that we support its territorial integrity, that we do not support separatist movements and that if victims of persecution come to our door and ask for asylum we should not turn them away.

The act of taking in a stranger in need is an ancient and universal virtue. It was well captured in the acceptance speech of the UNHCR, when it was honoured with a Nobel Peace Prize in 1981. Throughout the history of mankind, people have been uprooted against their will. Time and time again, lives and values built from generation to generation have been shattered without warning. But throughout history mankind has also reacted to such upheavals and brought succour to the uprooted. Be it through individual gestures or concerted action and solidarity, those people have been offered help and shelter, and a chance to become dignified, free citizens again.

Through the ages, the giving of sanctuary has become one of the noblest traditions of human nature. Communities, institutions, cities and nations have generously opened their doors to refugees. The ancient and universal tradition of providing sanctuary to those in danger is part of our refugee regime in Australia today, and it is demonstrated by the community at large when Australians respond generously to the suffering of others, both at home and abroad. The Migration Amendment (Designated Unauthorised Arrivals) Bill 2006 does not reflect this tradition. It does not uphold the deeply held Australian values of giving people a fair go, and of decency and compassion. I regret that I cannot commend this bill to the House and I will be voting against it.

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