Mr Tony Burke (Watson, Australian Labor Party, Leader of the House) Share this | Hansard source

I want to deal really specifically and very directly with the final part of the question about why the arrangements we have with Nauru are really important for Australia to have. On the issues that the member raises with respect to some of those contracts, when I last met with the President of Nauru, David Adeang, who I have dealt with since 2013, when I was previously immigration minister, the various allegations were taken seriously by him, and I trust that the government of Nauru is dealing with that. But why these arrangements are in place is for a very good reason. Let me go back, first of all, to 2013, when I was previously minister for immigration. At that point, through our arrangements with Papua New Guinea and Nauru, we took the number of people who were risking their lives at sea by boat in just three months to be cut by 90 per cent. That would not have been possible without those arrangements.

When I first came into that portfolio, the boats were at the highest rate they had ever been. There was a real human cost in that. I had 33 people die on my watch, drown at sea. The youngest of them was a baby. His name was Abdul Jafari. Today he should be 12. He should be 12 today, but he's not. To make sure that we have a pathway to stop that trade in misery is an important and decent thing for Australia to do, in the same way as the more recent arrangements, which were referred to in the question as being about asylum seekers. There was no mention in the question about the fact that the particular people we're talking about are people who have committed serious crimes in Australia. It's a bit of a big detail to leave out, because these individuals have had their visas cancelled for a reason, and Australia has to be a country where visa cancellation is meaningful.

When we had the High Court decision on NZYQ, we had a situation where, all of a sudden, for some people it meant that, if your visa was cancelled, you would have to return to your country of origin or go somewhere else, but for others, visa cancellation would, in fact, be meaningless. They would live in the community in the exact same way, and that's not the way to run a serious immigration system. As a nation, it is right and proper that any country is able to have control of its visa system. Almost everybody in Australia on a visa is a good guest in this country, respects this country, and is welcome here. But, when people have their visas cancelled—and there are some extraordinary levels of crime for people in that particular case load—it has to have meaning. If we can't return them to their country of origin, then I am grateful that the government of Nauru has given us a pathway for third-country resettlement arrangements, which were put through this parliament.

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