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

I will cover the questions raised by members and I thank the previous member for his kind remarks. The previous government introduced offshore processing in late 2012. It was done after a report that came down in August 2012. For the five years prior to that, and the 10 years prior to that, the Labor Party had completely opposed offshore processing—up hill, down dale, in season and out. They said it would never work and it was never part of the solution. They described it in the most barbaric of terms and they vilified those who proposed those policies, in particular the Father of the House the member the Berowra, and also former Prime Minister John Howard.

One day, they may come into this place and actually apologise to John Howard and the member for Berowra for getting it so wrong. They were dragged kicking and screaming to restore offshore processing, as the member for Corio has acknowledged. They introduced offshore processing under sufferance, under protest and under extreme political pressure. The problem with the way that the previous government went about it is that they only introduced one element of the plan and they still remained completely opposed to the other two elements of the plan.

Let me tell you what we inherited in terms of offshore processing from the previous government. The most significant thing when we came to office was that we found that there was a $1.2 billion funding shortfall in the effective implementation of that policy. What did that comprise? Under the previous government's funding arrangements, only one in six people who had arrived illegally in Australia had been funded to be transferred to offshore processing. Though it was boldly claimed that no-one would be resettled in Australia but they had only funded one in six people to actually be sent offshore.

The infrastructure arrangements on both Manus Island and Nauru were completely deficient. This was found, in the Cornall report, to address the type of policy they announced on 19 July. The infrastructure was just not up to standard. They were not even close to that standard. We had to immediately fund both the processing and the support costs for the running of those facilities to meet a very simple proposition, which was the policy articulated by the previous government. But they did not actually fund it and they did not think through the implementation.

Their implementation of offshore processing was the classic 'fire, aim, ready' approach that we saw in everything from pink batts to school halls. It was the same thing with offshore processing. The previous government were always keen on the announcement, but when it came to implementation they always left the country in a very disadvantaged position. There were no family-friendly facilities on Nauru, but they were planning to send every family member to Nauru. The facilities just were not there. We have had the fund those. There was no playground. There was no air-conditioning in the marquees or anything like that at Nauru. There were no plans to do it, either. These were all things that had to be funded by this government. The upgrade of health facilities on both Manus and Nauru are things that are being funded and had to be done by this government.

The member makes claims about the results of the introduction of offshore processing. I am not surprised that offshore processing had an impact, because I have been making the argument for five years. I am pleased that ultimately, under sufferance, they decided to actually implement it. But when people implement policies that they do not believe in, they rarely get it right. That is what we found when we came to government. Those resettlement arrangements, which the member speaks proudly of, were a blank sheet of paper. There were no resettlement arrangements—none at all. They are only now in the final stages of being put together by the government of Papua New Guinea as a result of nine months of work.

The member asked me when I first met. I met with my counterpart of Papua New Guinea in the first few weeks. It was the first place I visited. I was the first minister from this government to visit Papua New Guinea. I am surprised the member opposite does not know that. It was followed up by two other meetings by Christmas, and the issues of resettlement and the processing centres were discussed at all of those meetings. He claims that I never met with them till after the terrible incidents in February. He is just wrong. He claims that no-one died at sea from 19 July to the end of the year and he was wrong. Seventy-nine people died. So the member opposite, if he is going to raise issues, really needs to get a handle on the facts around the portfolio and understand what the government which he was a part of left the new government to implement. We had to clean up a mess. We had to clean up a mess on Manus Island. We had to clean up a mess on Nauru—through no fault of the Nauruans or those in Papua New Guinea, by the way, but as a result of a government that was more keen on announcement than they were in actually believing in and implementing a policy.

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