Shayne Neumann (Blair, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

My question is to the Prime Minister. Will the Prime Minister outline for the House what steps the government is taking to combat people smuggling?

Julia Gillard (Lalor, Australian Labor Party, Prime Minister) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I thank the member for Blair for his question. As the House is aware and the member for Blair is aware, the government determined a number of months ago to commence negotiations with Malaysia. We did that because we wanted to have a policy with the maximum deterrence effect. We wanted to have a policy that would work to smash the people smugglers' business model—a policy that would work to deter people from getting on leaky boats and potentially losing their lives at sea; a policy that would build on what was achieved in the regional forum at Bali; a policy that would make possible bringing 4,000 more genuine refugees to this country from Malaysia, many of them people who would have waited years and years for an opportunity for a new start and a new life; a policy so that we would not see people losing their lives, but we would smash the people smugglers' business model and take more genuine refugees. That was the right policy then and it is the right policy now.

In order to implement that policy, given the view taken by the High Court, we are determined to come to this parliament and seek to amend the Migration Act. The amendment that we bring to this parliament will be a broad amendment. It will enable this government, as it will enable any government in the future, to implement the policies and plans it believes best in relation to offshore processing. I understand that there is a difference between the government and the opposition on which policy and plan is the best one. The opposition has determined to support as its primary policy a processing centre in Nauru. That is despite the fact that we have clear advice that a centre in Nauru will not work. That is despite the fact that we have clear advice about the hundreds of millions of dollars of cost. That is in defiance of the advice that says people smugglers now know, because of processing on Nauru in the past, that people come from Nauru to this country. People smugglers now know that, of the people who were processed and resettled from Nauru, more than 90 per cent of them came to Australia, and so they are able to say to asylum seekers, whom they seek to prey upon and whose money they want to take, 'If you go to Nauru, you will get to Australia.' I want to send a very different message. I want to send a message which says, 'If you get on a boat then you will go to Malaysia.'

We have made a different decision from the opposition, based on facts, based on advice and based on reality. We are not out there trying to pretend that black is white the way that the Leader of the Opposition is. That debate can continue but what is vitally needed in the national interest is putting the Migration Act in a form that puts executive government in the position it believed itself to be prior to the High Court case—that is, that it can implement decisions as it sees fit about offshore processing. We await to hear from the Leader of the Opposition, in this vital area of national interest, whether he will continue with sound bites and slogans or whether he will stump up and work with the government on a solution to the legislative issues that we face as a nation following the High Court case. We await the answer.

Warren Truss (Wide Bay, National Party, Leader of the Nationals) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

My question is addressed to the Prime Minister. I refer the Prime Minister to her statement that Labor would end offshore processing:

… because it is costly, unsustainable and wrong as a matter of principle.

Given your announcement today of a planned processing centre for asylum seekers on Manus Island, on what basis can the Australian people ever believe anything you say?

Julia Gillard (Lalor, Australian Labor Party, Prime Minister) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Once again we see that when the opposition has a choice between talking about the future or talking about the past they always live in the past. The Leader of the Nationals seems to be unaware that the policy that he referred to was announced by the government in May. If he is interested in that policy I suggest he catch up with the policy announcements made at that time.