Andrew Robb (Goldstein, Liberal Party, Chairman of the Coalition Policy Development Committee) Share this | Hansard source

I rise to speak against the amendment put by the member for Melbourne, and I rise to strongly support the amendment put by my friend and colleague the member for Cook. Let us have a debate here on the facts, let us have policy that features a discussion and a recognition of the facts, not a political discussion which is some sorry attempt, having been made now for over five years, to hide a misguided political approach. The facts are that, when the Labor government took office, there were four people in detention. If you heard the debate in this chamber, if you listened to the discussion, over the last five years, if you were inclined to listen to what has been said on radio and television and written in newspapers, through the contributions of those opposite you would think that the Howard government Pacific solution failed. In fact, the member for Melbourne perhaps was not properly focused on this issue back in those years. Now that he is a member of parliament and taking a keen interest in this subject he must know that, when you study the facts, the Howard government Pacific solution, as my colleague the member for Cook just explained, was enormously successful. It was appropriate for the times, just as a different solution was appropriate in the Fraser years and was, again, very effectively managed by a coalition government.

When Labor took office there were four people—not even a handful of people—in detention. Over the six years before Labor took office the push factors of Iraq, Afghanistan and Sri Lanka were in play. If anything, the last five years has seen Iraq disappear as a push factor and we are left with just two. We had all of those factors in play and there were in the order of 272 people in those six years. This was after something in the order of 10,000 to 12,000 people in 1999-2000—do not hold me exactly to the figures, but there were a lot of people—numbers not dissimilar to those we have seen in recent years where there has not been a policy that has been an effective deterrent.

The Howard government's policy was crafted under all of the pressure, all of the debate and all of the experience that came to this place in those years. It was put in place, and for six years it was enormously successful. There were three boats a year on average; now we are seeing more than three boats a week on average. For two of those six years there were no people. Not one single person arrived and not one single person died on the high seas, as a result of those deterrents. These are the facts. These are the things that people do not want to consider in the context of this debate. But we have to rely on the facts. Surely you can judge policy by the outcomes of the policy.

What did we see when the Rudd-Gillard government arrived? They had had six years of pontificating on the so-called failure of the Pacific solution. They had turned it into the devil incarnate despite the fact that only 272 people had arrived and that it was enormously successful in saving lives on the high seas. It was enormously successful in guaranteeing that those people who had been living for many, many years in detention centres were able to come here under our formal refugee program.

I had the great privilege in 2006 to have ministerial responsibility for refugees, and in that year we brought in 13,000 people. They came, not on boats and not jumping the queue, but from refugee centres. I visited with refugees who came from Africa and Myanmar that year. They were people who were roundly criticised by the very same people who today want to further encourage boat people. Those same people criticised us for bringing in too many Africans and too many people from Myanmar. I am very proud of the fact that we brought those people in. Some of those people were in Dandenong and other places I visited and told me how they had spent all of their lives—and some of them were only 18 or 20—in refugee camps. They had seen mothers raped and fathers shot, killed or with their throats cut by those presiding over those refugee centres in parts of Africa or on the Myanmar border. The people had been put into all sorts of destitute situations. They were refugees who held great hope and finally got to these shores because of our refugee program. Bear in mind we are one of only three countries in the world who, over the last 60 years in an uninterrupted way, have brought in refugees. It is a great and proud record and is shared by both sides of this parliament.

During those six years before the Labor government came to power, only 272 people came to these shores.

All of the other refugees were people who had spent time, often their whole lives, in refugee camps, people who did not have a dollar. Most of them had never seen any money. They did not know what to do with money when they got here. They had to be taught for months what money means, how to spend it, how to save it, how to use it and how to acquire it—how to get a job to earn it. These were the people that we were bringing in.

Over the last five years, people in that situation have been denied the opportunity to come to Australia because others who have $10,000 or $5,000 and can afford an airfare to Malaysia and the money to come down on a boat have been able to jump the queue. What about people who have spent 18 years of their lives in refugee camps, have been tortured and have been deprived of education? These are the people we have a proud history of over 60 years of bringing into this country. We are one of only three countries that have done that, and it has been done by both sides of the parliament.

Let's look to preserve that record, not to play politics, as has been happening the last few years. This is politics, pure and simple. It is grubby politics because it has ignored the facts. It has just been an attempt to find some way to denigrate a political party, the government at the time, the Howard government. It is cheap politics which has used people's lives. What have we seen as the result of the change of that policy—a simple policy which meant there were four people in detention when this government took over? We have seen over 1,000 people die on the high seas. What a despicable result that is, and it is the result of politics. It is not a result of considered policy; it is a result of politics contrived to answer Labor's made-up criticism—the rhetoric that they have come to believe over six years.

The amendment moved by my colleague the member for Cook would take us back to that simple formula. Nauru would simply be a place for processing people, temporary protection visas would be reintroduced and boats would be turned around where it was safe to do so. That worked. You do not have to take my word for it—just look at the outcomes. It worked. Two years out of the six, not even one person tried to come to our shores. In the whole six years, we had 272 people, and three boats a year on average. Compare that with the situation since these changes. We now have three boats a week, or more—sometimes almost three boats a day.

This is of great consequence. I had a year with refugees from Africa and from Myanmar. I very proudly helped to settle these people. We spent $600 million in the first year, and did so each year since, to settle those people. Yet, now, the lives of similar people are being played with—people who have been waiting in refugee camps around the world for the privilege and opportunity to come to Australia under these longstanding programs. Their lives have been thrown into total disarray because they are finding at the last minute that those spots are no longer there.

What do we have now? In five years, we have had 25,000 people—5,000 people a year. We take in roughly 13,000 a year, and have done for a long time, under our legitimate refugee program. Now all of these boat people have jumped to the front of that queue. It is not fair to people who have been waiting out there, have done what is required and have expected for years and years that they would eventually be able to come and be a part of the refugee program that has been such a proud part of our Australian community.

We are looking to adopt a solution to minimise the chance of people getting on boats. As the member for Melbourne said, that is the objective, and I agree with him. Just look in the rear-vision mirror for a minute and you will see what worked not so long ago, up to just five years ago, and worked for six years. It worked and it worked and it worked. Despite endless denigration and misrepresentation of the facts, it worked. And, by God, it gave great succour and great opportunities to refugees who, at the time, were living and had lived for many, many years in refugee camps, in appalling conditions, all around the world. What about those people? They never get mentioned in this place. Yet they are the most deserving refugees of this world.

Of course anyone who does not live in the circumstances that we do would want to bring their family here. I do not blame one person, not one of those boat people, for trying to get to this country. I would do the same if I were in their circumstances. I would seek to do the same. That is not the point. There are tens of millions of people moving around the world, and we cannot accommodate them all. The reason we have been so successful in being able to bring in such large numbers of refugees for so long is we have carried this community with us. Both sides of parliament in the past carried this community with us. People felt comfortable that we were managing that program in an effective and compassionate way. We were, and we had success.

But it has been mauled by a simple exercise in political grubbiness, an exercise to denigrate the government of the day, in the pursuit of power. That is what it was. Let's call it what it was. What has happened is a disgrace. They are now trying to go back, after five years of mismanagement under this poor policy, which has led to over 1,000 people dying at sea, and which has led to 25,000 people arriving here, displacing legitimate refugees who would have otherwise been here—people who have suffered, often for a lifetime. What we have now is an attempt by this government to go just part of the way back. They have finally been mugged by reality. But they are only going part of the way.

Let us do the job. For goodness sake, let us do the job properly. Let us back the member for Cook's amendment, which seeks to reinstate the essential elements of a program that worked, a program that on any measure worked. Let us swallow some pride on the other side there and let us do something for the true and very disadvantaged refugees around the world—those that would otherwise come to our country except for the fact that there are boat loads coming in by the thousands. This is one of the most important pieces of legislation before the House. Let us get it right and back the amendment moved by the member for Cook.

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