Annette Hurley (SA, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

The Rudd Labor government are taking all possible steps to ensure the integrity of our border, but we are certainly winding back some of the more punitive aspects of the Howard government’s border protection policies and its Pacific solution. The Rudd Labor government has taken strong steps since it came into power in 2007 to combat people-smuggling, principally by regional engagement and cooperation, including through the International Organisation for Migration. It has taken significant steps to enhance border protection at both sea and air ports and to ensure that the integrity of our borders are protected.

Where the Rudd Labor government differs from the Howard government is in not assigning blame to the people who come to our border seeking protection. Senator Bernardi referred repeatedly to ‘illegals’. I take exception to that description of people who come to our borders by boat. They are often people who are quite legitimately seeking protection as refugees. I believe it is wrong and extremely misleading to refer to them as ‘illegals’, and it does indeed hark back to the former attitude of border protection and the Pacific solution policy. Senator Bernardi referred to the way that the Rudd government had ended the Pacific solution policy, under which asylum seekers—not ‘illegals’; ‘asylum seekers’—who arrived offshore were processed overseas.

The Rudd government also abolished the temporary protection visa for asylum seekers who arrived unauthorised, which was much hated, and announced reforms to the policy of mandatory immigration detention for unauthorised arrival. The Rudd Labor government has people detained only for as long as necessary to perform initial health, identity and security checks. The checks are in place. The protections are in place. It is just that they are in place in a way that is more humane and that allows for the fact that the people seeking protection on our borders might indeed be trying to seek, as Senator Bernardi said, a better world and a better life. And who amongst the opposition would blame anyone for seeking a better world, a better life?

Many of the people opposite have come from immigrant backgrounds. I do not accuse anyone in the opposition of any racism or prejudice against immigrants, because I know that most if not all of the opposition members, certainly in this place, support what immigrants have done for Australia and the backgrounds they have brought to Australia, which have improved and enhanced life in Australia and the success that Australia has been able to enjoy. But I think that, by overenthusiastically adopting the border protection package and the Pacific solution, the former Liberal government fostered a culture which was harsh and unreasonable in terms of its attitude to asylum seekers in our country.

Nowhere is that clearer than in the attitude towards detention debt. This was a means by which, having allowed people to stay permanently in our country, the then government continued to punish immigrants to our country by allowing the threat of debt to hang over them. This was indeed very difficult for many people. In my office I dealt with several people in exactly this situation. One was an Iraqi citizen who was granted asylum on his arrival. But, after a period of detention, because he had come through Germany and was deemed to have come through another country that might have given him asylum, this person, who was eventually allowed to stay in Australia because of his pre-eminent expertise in chess, was asked to repay a debt totalling just over $150,000. This person, although he immediately got jobs in Australia and participated in the life and culture of Australia, and was very happy to be here, was overshadowed by this enormous debt of $152,000, which he was unable to get waived. He spoke to lawyers through his contacts in the Chess Federation but felt that he could not get married, he could not start his life in Australia with this debt hanging over his head. Through my office I did take his case up, but this poor man felt that he could not make a life at all. Before the Rudd government was able to come in and abolish this detention debt, he declared himself bankrupt and has had to start all over again.

Another person who came to my attention, through the Blackwood Hills Circle of Friends in Adelaide, was a Sri Lankan person who was given a bill of $187,000 for his detention. This person arrived in Australia as an unauthorised air arrival in August 2005. He was granted a bridging visa—removal pending—and released from detention. But in February 2007 this Sri Lankan refugee lodged an application for a permanent protection visa and was granted it in December 2007. Until very recently he was still uncertain as to whether he would have to pay that money back. Even though he had been living in Australia with friends and was prepared to undertake an active part in Australian life, he was nevertheless prevented from fully participating by the, again, enormous debt hanging over his head.

It is clear, even though we still have the opposition claiming that it is not so, that most of those unauthorised arrivals did get refugee status—they were recognised as genuine refugees. Yet some in the opposition continue to propagate the misleading impression that people who have come to Australian shores are illegal refugees who are sent back. It was the Howard government that in fact said to people, ‘Go back home and apply again.’ We heard a senator here today decrying the fact that someone is trying again, when in fact that was something that was encouraged under the Howard government.

In view of the fact—and it has been repeated many times by all parties in this parliament—that we in Australia have benefited from immigration and from the children and grandchildren of the immigrants that we have seen in this country, it is hard for those of us who do believe strongly in the value of immigration, and those immigrants who take up citizenship, to see people in this place still decrying immigration. Governments in America, in Europe, in countries such as Italy and Greece and even in little Malta would laugh at the hysterical reaction to increasing numbers of people coming to Australia given the many, many thousands more people that they see coming to their shores.

The minister has said, and it is demonstrably true, that the latest wave of people seeking asylum in Australia is part of an international trend. These trends will continue from time to time, depending on what is happening around the world. Countries around the world have noticed an increase in people seeking asylum and people taking the most extreme measures to seek asylum, including coming to Australia by boat. The latest figures are not extreme at all. In 1999, there were 86 boat arrivals in Australia. We have something like a third of that number at the moment. It might increase or it might decrease. But we should not condone again the hysterical reaction of the government to that increase that saw the border protection policy and the Pacific solution. It demeans our country and it demeans the contribution of immigrants to this country. To call anyone who seeks asylum in this country an ‘illegal’ and talk again about queue-jumping is going back in time. It is a place that most people in Australia do not want to see us go back to. That is not the place that we want to go back to. I think that has been demonstrated very clearly by the general public reaction to the Rudd Labor government’s policies.

In the last few minutes I want to talk a little bit more about citizenship. I also want to congratulate the minister on the proposed changes to the citizenship laws. Once we do accept immigrants to this country we should encourage people to take out citizenship. That is something that we probably did not do enough in the wave of citizenship that came through after the Second World War. Clearly a number of people did take up citizenship and proved to be very valuable citizens. They did not have to pass through the hoops that were put in place, such as citizenship testing and English testing, in order to become citizens. We have measures in place now and I do support education in civic responsibility and in what it means to be an Australian citizen.

I am very pleased to see some changing in the period of time that permanent residents have to be in Australia before they are allowed to take up citizenship. I have one case that I am pursuing at the moment where a person is an actor and model and is out of Australia fairly frequently. He is clearly a successful person in modelling and gets contracts overseas fairly regularly. He has so far been prevented from taking out citizenship, even though he has an Australian wife and has been living in Australia as a permanent resident for eight years. I think that sort of case illustrates that we must not complicate our systems too much otherwise we miss out on accepting as citizens people who are going to be very valuable to our country. It is not only those persons themselves; it is their children and grandchildren. I do not need to repeat the stories of the immigrants and their children and grandchildren who have been extremely valuable to our country even when they have not completely complied with the rules when they have come here. Even back in the immigration wave after the Second World War people lied about where they came from and lied about their religion in order to get to Australia to have the better world and the better life Senator Cory Bernardi referred to. I do not think anyone would now complain about that wave of immigration after the Second World War because many of us—not me but many others in this parliament—are children or grandchildren of that wave of immigrants. But I think all of us value the contribution that those people made to Australia and I am sure we will value future contributions by migrants.