Christopher Back (WA, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

I rise to speak on the Anti-People Smuggling and Other Measures Bill 2010 and I pick up the point from my colleague Senator Cash, which is in summary that we can see that the Howard government saw and inherited a problem and found a solution for it. When this government came into power, Prime Minister Rudd had a solution at his hands and rejected every platform under which that solution had been developed. Of course, he now has a problem.

The fundamental point is that to stop this trade the people smugglers have got to be stopped in the first place. Why do they do it? Because, as we know, it is a very lucrative trade—up to $US10,000 per person delivered onto vessels upon which in the first place they should never be placed. Where do we have to stop the problem? We have to stop it at its point of origin. We have to stop the advertisements that we know exist in Sri Lankan newspapers, in Afghani newspapers and in other locations that are saying that Australia is now open for business. And we have seen nothing and they have seen nothing, regrettably, and neither will this proposed legislation provide any more that is going to discourage them. What a shocking, lamentable, despicable trade it is in human cargoes, yet that is what we actually see: a trade in human cargoes.

Let me put it to the perspective here in Australia regarding one of those costs that is not often recognised. I asked a question in Senate estimates earlier this year of the Australian Federal Police and they have provided me with this information. Between September 2008 and February of this year, in Western Australia 106 people smugglers were apprehended. Seventy-six of them are on remand and 28 of them have already been dealt with and found guilty and are now in our prison system. So we have 106 people who we did not budget for for whom there should be no burden on the Australian taxpayer or the Western Australian community. It may be of some interest to the Senate to learn that that figure alone equates to in excess of $10.6 million per year of cost to the Australian taxpayer for those people. According to the annual report of the relevant department in Western Australia last year, it costs just on $100,000 per annum, $2,000 a week, to keep somebody in our prisons. That is $10.6 million each year for that group, and that is only for those who have come since September 2008 through to February 2010. The cost, unfortunately, is borne by the Western Australian community in the main because there is no direct payment back from the federal government to the state government to actually take account of those costs. I learn that it is picked up in the GST calculations by the Grants Commission. We all know what Western Australia’s share of GST is this financial year. For those who do not, it is a mere 68c in the dollar, a 68 per cent return. So those hard-earning taxpayers of that state are picking up the $10.6 million. As I learnt in the media only yesterday, in most instances we are looking at a minimum of four-year terms of imprisonment, so you can multiply that $10.6 million by four.

The other cause of concern I have, and this legislation is not going to change this position one iota, is the question of how these people are arriving at our shores in the first place. In many instances they are people of Islamic background. Over the years we know that they have come into Asia, into Malaysia, another Muslim country, where they had been made very welcome but only in transit. They make their way then from Malaysia down to Indonesia, where they are made welcome in transit but not to remain. Of course, their objective is Australia.

I have asked myself over the years why it is that those of an Islamic background, keen to pursue an Islamic tradition, for which I applaud them, want to move through Islamic countries—through Malaysia; through Indonesia—to come here to Australia. But the case gets worse for them: they are, for whatever length of time, left in camps. They have not come through the front door in their application to come to our country. For whatever period of time, these poor people are left in camps and then they are put on leaking, unseaworthy vessels to come across some of the more dangerous of waters. We saw only this week a case where there have apparently been drownings of would-be asylum seekers.

The people smugglers, at $10,000 or more per head, are reprehensible. Do many of them actually make the voyage from these countries to Christmas Island or to Ashmore Reef? The answer is: no, they do not. In some instances they pay impoverished Indonesian fishermen—and that was the situation with a case that was dealt with in the courts in Darwin the other day. They pay them a meagre amount of money.

But it gets even worse than that. I want to draw attention to the exercise involving the Customs contracted vessel, the Oceanic Viking, in the northern waters in October-November last year and draw attention to what is actually happening in many of these cases. These vessels are unseaworthy and have insufficient water and insufficient fuel. They are going outside the territorial waters and the people smugglers are being taken off those vessels to return to the safety of home ports. In the case of the 78 Sri Lankans, when they actually made their call last year to Australia for some degree of assistance for survival at sea, their vessel was disabled—the rudder was not functional and there was insufficient fuel. They were simply at sea, in the water. So we had the circumstance where there was an incredible amount of money paid, yet these people were left to their own devices.

Did that group make contact with the Indonesians, given the fact that they were in Indonesian territorial waters? We think, no, they did not. According to Mr Carmody, the Chief Executive Officer of the Australian Customs and Border Protection Service, when answering questions from me in Senate estimates, direct contact was made from the vessel to AMSA here in Australia. We of course then had an obligation under the safety of life at sea convention.

But did the issue stop there? No, it did not stop there. As we know, people were transferred onto the Oceanic Viking. It is true that, at the time they went on board that vessel, they were inspected, checked and searched for, amongst other things, mobile telephones. So you might say, ‘Well, this is all fine; this is safe. We’ve got an Australian vessel,’ and you would think that, for that complement of crew, including the security officers, the commercial crew—the vessel being under contract to P&O—and the 78 asylum seekers, a contingency plan would be in place should any untoward activity take place. You might ask: ‘Why would there be any untoward activity?’ Go back to April last year when we had SIEV36—which has now played out its role in the coroner’s court in Darwin. On that occasion, fuel was thrown into the bilges and as naval and other Australian Defence Force personnel were either on board or approaching it the vessel blew up.

So one would have thought that there would definitely be a contingency plan in place to assist the security and other personnel on the Oceanic Viking should there be a similar event—for whatever reason. I learnt, to our regret, that there was no contingency in place. We had an Australian flagged vessel in international waters, close to Indonesia—well away from Australia—and that group of personnel had no back-up. It was then said to me, ‘The Indonesian Navy were to supply some form of back-up and assistance.’ The advice to me was that that group never came within a kilometre of that vessel.

So you go a bit further and ask under what circumstances people might have been at risk. Surely, if it was possible for any vessel to come within a commutable distance of the Oceanic Viking, it would have caused some degree of concern. But we learnt from the Australian that a correspondent actually got close enough to throw a mobile phone on board the Oceanic Vikingand great jocularity took place. In the words of the journalist: ‘Threw the mobile phone on board. They slipped it; couldn’t catch; couldn’t bowl; and the mobile went over the side.’ So what did they do? Typical journalists—they threw another mobile phone on board and it was through the agency of that mobile phone that the asylum seekers were continually in contact with the Australian media.

When I put to the head of Customs that this was potentially a dangerous circumstance for all on board, he rejected that. He said, ‘No, I can’t see where your concern was.’ I can assure you that those in the security contingent on board that vessel certainly saw the cause for concern. Under their rules of engagement, they had no capacity at all to inspect those on board—to search them and to find out if there were any items at all on board. So the mobile phones remained and the calls remained. But the question must then be asked: if it is possible to get close enough to throw a mobile phone onto the deck of the Oceanic Viking, what else may have been able to have been thrown on board? What else may have been able to be propelled from a vessel onto the Oceanic Viking? Remember who was on board: Australian border security personnel, the asylum seekers, the commercial crew actually in charge of the vessel and the various officials who were trying over time to negotiate with the asylum seekers—a totally and utterly unsatisfactory circumstance which could have had a similar outcome to SIEV36.

I then asked the question, ‘In terms of those on board, who was actually negotiating with the asylum seekers?’ You may recall the asylum seekers were refusing to leave the vessel. I could get little information as to the qualities, the competence or the qualifications of those who were undertaking it. We were then told by the minister opposite that there was no special deal done with those asylum seekers. Of course there was a deal done. I do not know why the minister persisted with that line for as long as he did when we know that a deal was definitely done. Ask them on Christmas Island whether a deal was done.

Then, worst of all, we had the scenario in which a person on board that vessel was the spouse of somebody who had already been refused entry to Australia as a result of ASIO investigations. I tried to establish whether it was known that that person was onboard the Oceanic Viking and the answer was that I could not be supplied with that information. As we know, subsequent to them being taken off the Oceanic Viking, one of those people was in fact denied entry to Australia as an asylum seeker. This is a totally unsatisfactory set of circumstances.