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

by leave—On 18 October last year, the Prime Minister and I announced that the government would move the majority of children and vulnerable family groups out of immigration detention facilities and into community-based accommodation by June this year. This was an important announcement and I want to update the House on its implementation.

Let me say at the outset that the government will be meeting this commitment. Through to the end of June, there will be carefully managed movement of several hundred people into residential arrangements. Since October, my department has been managing the expansion of the community detention program, with my advisory Council for Immigration Services and Status Resolution (CISSR) working closely with them to support this process. I want to thank the chair of the council, Mr Paris Aristotle, and the other members of the council for their invaluable assistance as we implement what is an ambitious program. I would also like to thank the Australian Red Cross and Life Without Barriers, who have been working intensively with the government to source suitable accommodation for the minors and families released into the community, as well as appropriate carers and case managers, particularly for unaccompanied minors. I would also particularly like to thank the CEO of Red Cross Australia, Robert Tickner, for his support for this initiative and his assistance in ensuring that the Red Cross has been able to devote the appropriate resources to this undertaking.

We need to make sure that a comprehensive and people-focused care plan is prepared for all people placed into the community to ensure that appropriate services and support arrangements are in place for each person. We need to ensure that appropriate health and support services are available and we need to ensure that they have access to schools and other education services, such as English language classes. This sometimes takes a little bit of time but we are making progress.

Since our announcement in October, 268 people have been approved for release into the community. This includes almost all of the male unaccompanied minors who are under 15 years old and all but one recently arrived female unaccompanied minor. The focus at this stage is on the youngest unaccompanied minors and families with young children, single-parent families, families with pregnant women and other particularly vulnerable families. As we work through these groups, the priority will be extended to older unaccompanied minors and other family groups.

A great deal of preparatory work has been done to set a sound platform for this program. A reference group has been formed, including representatives of faith-based, not-for-profit and welfare agencies, the Australian Red Cross, Life Without Barriers, members of CISSR, senior departmental officers and a representative of the Department of Families, Housing, Community Services and Indigenous Affairs. This group is providing ongoing advice about the development and implementation of the program. Roundtable meetings with key stakeholders and potential partners have been held in Melbourne, Sydney, Adelaide, Perth, Brisbane and Hobart, enabling more detailed discussions about the ongoing implementation of this undertaking. A number of organisations have been engaged by the Australian Red Cross through an expression of interest process to provide services to support the expansion, and this process continues. These organisations are providing high-quality expert services to support families and unaccompanied minors in the community.

The location of community-based accommodation is largely driven by the availability of appropriate housing, while regional and rural locations may be used depending on the availability of other services. Public housing will not be used. Housing is being sourced through faith-based, not-for-profit and welfare agencies and other non-government organisations. Some of this housing is currently unused or is being used for another purpose, such as office space. Market rent will be paid for properties housing people in residential determination arrangements.

I update the House on this because of the significant community interest in the release of children from detention. This is a controversial and emotive issue. When the Prime Minister and I announced this measure, an Essential poll, for example, found that 53 per cent of people disapproved of the government’s decision to move children and their families out of immigration detention centres. Only 33 per cent approved. We clearly did not do this because it was popular. We did this because it is the right thing to do. Whatever one’s views about asylum seekers, I would hope the House would agree that we have a special duty of care to children. It is well known that I believe, and the government believes, there needs to be an international solution to break the people smugglers’ business model. But, while children’s refugee claims are being processed in Australia, they should be treated with care. Regardless of whether they are recognised as genuine refugees or returned to their homeland after consideration of their claims, they should be given the chance to learn and grow while they are here.

In this vein, I call on the opposition to support the removal of children from detention facilities—something they have not done since this decision was announced on 18 October. In recent weeks, more Australians have seen the human face behind the issue of children in detention facilities. Perhaps, if another poll were held today, the figures I shared with the House earlier in relation to public support for the removal of children from detention facilities would be different. However, this is not a matter of political popularity—it is a matter of providing appropriate care for vulnerable people. The government will meet its commitment to remove the majority of children from detention by June. I will provide the House with further updates as we approach the end of June and also beyond that date. We will meet this commitment because it is the only responsible thing to do.

I ask leave of the House to move a motion to enable the member for Cook to speak for five minutes.

Leave granted.

I move:

That so much of the standing and sessional orders be suspended as would prevent the member for Cook speaking in reply to my statement for a period not exceeding five minutes.

Question agreed to.

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

I join the minister in acknowledging those working with the department to implement the residence determination orders for the 268 individuals who, the minister has advised, have been subject to these decisions. In particular I commend Mr Paris Aristotle, a respected and long-time adviser to governments on these difficult issues over many years.

In October last year the minister announced his intention to use the residence determination powers established by the Howard government to release children into the community. That is what those laws are for. Those laws are coalition policy and are the legacy of the Howard government’s management of these difficult issues. These powers have been available to this government from the day they were elected. It is they who chose to wait three years before using them.

In November 2007, the Howard legacy also included the fact that there were just 21 children in the detention network—15 of them in the community and the other six in alternative detention arrangements. There were none on Christmas Island. The grand total of people in the detention network who had arrived illegally by boat when the Howard Government left office in November 2007 was four. Today that same figure is a record 6,382, and there is a record 1,027 children in the detention network.

In June 2005, the Howard government removed children and families from formal detention. No child has been held behind razor wire since. I note that the Prime Minister sought to deceitfully appropriate these changes to her own government last year. It seems she was being as economical with the truth on that occasion as she has more recently been with her decision to introduce a carbon tax.

When the Howard government announced that children would be released into the community in June 2005 there were just 59 children in the detention network. Six weeks later they had all been released into the community. When the minister made his announcement last October to use the Howard government’s residence determination powers to put children into the community, there were 752 children in the detention network and only 10 of those children had been placed in the community. The other 742 were in places like the Asti Motel, Port Augusta and, of course, Christmas Island. Four months after this announcement, the minister advised today that 268 people have been subject to residence determination orders. What he did not say is what he said last Monday in an interview—that only 120 have actually been released into the community.

The minister spoke today about the special duty of care we owe to children. I have no doubt about the minister’s personal commitment and sincerity to that duty, and I share his commitment. The challenge, though, for the government is to explain why it took so long for the government to exercise the residence determination powers available to it under the act that were established and utilised by the Howard government. Why would we oppose the government’s use of such powers when we created them?

By contrast, between November 2007 and October 2010, on Labor’s watch the number of children in the community fell from 15 to 10, while the number of children in the network rose from 21 to 752. Why did it take the government so long to act? Since making their decision in October, another 275 children have entered the network after turning up on boats. Under the government’s failed policies we now have more than 1,000 children in the network who have come here by boat. There is nothing compassionate about that.

The government will use the Howard government’s powers to place children in the community but refuses to restore the Howard government’s powers and policies that stopped children getting on these boats. Our detention network is in crisis. This is a product of failed policy. The government has rolled back a successful border protection regime that reduced the number of people coming on boats to fewer than 300 people over six years. We have had more people turn up on boats in the last two months, including more than 100 last Saturday, than in the six years after the Pacific solution was introduced. Is it any wonder this government has sought an additional $290 million in operating expenses for asylum seeker management this year, more than what it cost to run the Pacific solution for almost six years?

Under Labor’s failed policies, more than 200 boats, carrying more than 10,000 people, have arrived, including the ill-fated SIEV36 that was set alight and SIEV221 that tragically crashed against the rocks at Christmas Island last December. And there was the disgraceful asylum freeze policy introduced by the government to deny refugee assessments to Afghan and Sri Lankan asylum seekers. That side of the House is the only political party and government that has introduced, while I have been in this House, a discriminatory immigration policy in this country. This asylum freeze resulted in 500 more children in the detention network and a doubling of those in detention. The government’s asylum policy is in crisis, yet it remains in denial and unrepentant of its failures. If the government wants to look after children, then my message is simple: stop pursuing these policies that have encouraged more than 1,000 children to get on boats.