Chris Bowen (McMahon, Australian Labor Party, Minister for Immigration and Citizenship) Share this | Hansard source

The advice is clear. The advice has been made available to the opposition. That advice is that to break the people smugglers' business model it is necessary to remove the product they sell. The product they sell is a better chance of resettlement in Australia. Well over 80 per cent of the people who arrive in Australia by boat begin that boat journey from Malaysia. The most important and clearest message we can send is to return them to where they began that boat journey—not to Nauru, where they will be processed and the vast majority resettled in Australia. This is an arrangement which was been negotiated with Malaysia in consultation with the UNHCR. It involves an increase in our refugee intake and improved protection outcomes across the region.

The very clear advice has now been made available to the Leader of the Opposition. We know the Leader of the Opposition is not big on experts. He does not like climate change experts, he does not like legal experts, he does not like experts when it comes to people smuggling. But the advice has been made clear: an outcome which involves Nauru alone, which would involve over 90 per cent of the people who are resettled from Nauru being resettled in Australia or New Zealand, is no disincentive at all.

We know Nauru will not work. We also know that it is an expensive option. The member for Cook said earlier this year that Nauru would cost 'significantly less' than the Malaysia arrangement. The opposition leader said that Nauru could be up and running 'at a relatively low cost'. We know costings are not their strong point but they got this one particularly wrong, because advice released by me on the weekend shows my department's estimate of the cost of a detention facility at Nauru over four years at just under $1 billion.

Mr Simpkins interjecting—

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