Chris Evans (WA, Australian Labor Party, Leader of the Government in the Senate) Share this | Hansard source

I can confirm that the government provided Senator Humphries with a detailed breakdown of the cost of flights to and from Christmas Island at estimates, last fortnight of the parliament. I can also confirm he was not interested enough to ask any follow-up questions at the time and we went home early. So that was his level of interest in the issue at the time. But can I just make the very clear point that the Rudd Labor government does believe that the excision and mandatory detention of offshore arrivals is important as part of Australia’s risk management of unauthorised boat arrivals. We accept that there is a cost to the Australian taxpayer from running that system, just as the previous government accepted it.

What the charter flight costs reflect is the increased numbers of asylum seekers who we have had to deal with. The last time we had to deal with this issue was between 1999 and 2001, when the Howard government spent $1.5 billion on processing irregular arrivals. They had 12,000 people arrive in three years—more than 240 boats—and what did they do? They increased the detention capacity and they had to increase resources to deal with that increased number of arrivals. That was the third period when we had a large number of arrivals. We are currently dealing with the fourth. So it is true that the costs have gone up in accordance with those needs, and it is true that operating a detention centre on Christmas Island adds to your transport costs. Senator Minchin and the Howard cabinet built it there, we use it and there is no doubt that the transportation costs are higher as a result of where the detention centre is located.