Scott Morrison (Cook, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Immigration and Citizenship) Share this | Hansard source

Australia’s immigration detention network is collapsing under the strain of Labor’s failed border protection regime. Under Labor, our immigration detention network is in a rolling crisis. Last Sunday week, after a series of breakouts on Christmas Island, the Prime Minister said to reporters here in Canberra that ‘this is a situation that is well in hand’. Within 24 hours of the Prime Minister claiming that the situation was in hand on Christmas Island, tear gas was being dropped, beanbag rounds were being fired at protesters and Christmas Island had descended into a week of chaos.

Yesterday morning the minister at the table, the Minister for Immigration and Citizenship, boldly assured the nation, with the same assurance that the Prime Minister sought to assure people around the country last Sunday week, that his advice was that all asylum seekers had been accounted for. Yet last night on Lateline he had to admit that there were still at least two missing—there may well have been more; he was not able to be exactly sure—after a face-to-file check failed to accord with a headcount. This is the status of the management of our immigration detention network.

What concerns me about this is that the government is pretending that there is nothing here to see. I asked the minister whether he knew, when he went out yesterday morning and sought to assure Australians that everything was under control, that further checks had to be undertaken. I asked him whether he knew that there is not just a headcount but that you have to do a face-to-file check, as he mentioned last night. If he did know that, why was he so quick out of the blocks to try to create the impression that everything was under control, just like the Prime Minister was?

As is usual in this portfolio, the government protests as to certain facts but, as the facts become known, it is clear that the minister is in charge of absolute chaos. Yesterday on the ABC the member for Wannon nailed this pretty accurately. He knows, as I do—particularly as I come from New South Wales—that the minister is known in the New South Wales Right as a numbers man. But it is clear that he could not get his numbers right on Christmas Island yesterday. The numbers that he should be concerning himself with are the ones on Christmas Island, rather than the numbers within the New South Wales Right faction here in Canberra—where I understand he has been exceptionally busy of late. Perhaps I could suggest to the minister that to find those asylum seekers an all-points bulletin should be put out to the bowling alleys of the country, where they lost the last people who had broken out of the system. Or perhaps they are down at the Melbourne aquarium, where they found the last one. There is a whole series of places they could be. The minister may be advised that, next time, before he goes out and starts pretending that everything is okay, he might want to check that they have done all the checks, so that he can give proper assurance rather than giving false hope, as he continues to do on a daily basis about the status of our immigration program and about the status of our detention network that is in complete chaos. It is a rolling crisis.

I remind those in the House that on 21 November 2009 a bloody fight—as it was described—broke out on Christmas Island, involving 150 Afghans and Sri Lankans. They attacked each other with broom handles, pool cues and tree branches. Three detainees were medivac’d to Perth, 10 were admitted to hospital on Christmas Island and 27 others were injured. On 20 to 22 September 2010 there were rolling rooftop protests at Villawood. Literally, beds were burnt—

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