Gary Humphries (ACT, Liberal Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Citizenship) Share this | Hansard source

I am very pleased today to support the matter of public importance that Senator Parry has proposed. The opposition knows, the government knows and the Australian people know that the federal government’s border protection policy has comprehensively and utterly failed. The never-ending procession of small boats limping across the sea between the north shores of Australia and Indonesia and elsewhere has spoken eloquently to Australians about this government’s powerlessness in dealing with this major challenge to its capacity to determine who comes to Australia and under what circumstances. The embarrassing failure of this government is going to resonate more and more profoundly in the days and weeks leading up to the next federal election. It is plainly clear that we as a society no longer exercise any control over that flow of people, and we jeopardise our capacity to contribute to a sensible, balanced approach to the care and treatment of refugees when we leave in place a policy of this kind.

The problem is that back in August 2008 the government swallowed its own propaganda. It decided then that it would relax the strong border protection policies of the former government. It decided that the policies which had deterred people smuggling and people smugglers for so long—policies like offshore processing and temporary protection visas—were no longer necessary and that it could relax the ‘hard line’, as the government put it, taken by the former government and still achieve a relatively small number of arrivals by boat, allowing Australia to focus its humanitarian resettlement program on other areas. However, as we now know, the result of that change of policy was almost immediately catastrophic. The boats, which had virtually ceased to arrive between 2001 and 2008, began to arrive in huge numbers. Within days of the announcement by the Minister for Immigration and Citizenship, Senator Evans, that a new, more compassionate policy was in place, the boats began to return. And a torrent it certainly was.

The first boat came on 30 September 2008, the next on 6 October, then 20 November, then 28 November, then 3 December, then 7 December, then 16 December and so forth. The year 2009 began no more auspiciously. Boats arrived on 18 January, 14 March, 1 April, 7 April, 8 April, 16 April, 22 April, 25 April and 29 April—and another boat arrived on the same day, 29 April. The policy of strong border protection was falling apart before the very eyes of the Australian people, and the Australian government appeared to be absolutely powerless to do anything about it. The torrent of boats had resumed and, sadly, that torrent continues to this day.

Since the government announced the relaxation of its policy in August 2008, there have been 139 boats and 6,496 unauthorised arrivals—and counting. If those opposite continue to maintain that it is just a coincidence that those numbers have been so large, look at the results of the policy that was put in place by the former government in 2001. In 2002-03, there were no boats. In 2003-04, there were three boats. In 2004-05, there were no boats. There was an average of only three boats each year between 2001 and 2008 when the policy was changed. Today we see an average of three boats arriving every week. That is not a coincidence. It is not a consequence of international turmoil and conflict; it is a consequence of this government’s decision to relax a policy which had deterred people smugglers and which today continues to be flouted and ignored by those people who trade in human misery by conveying people across the sea in small, unseaworthy boats. This is clearly a failed policy. It is a policy which is on its knees and has lost the confidence of the Australian people, as opinion polls clearly indicate, because the government is too paralysed by indecision to confront and change a policy which it knows is no longer working.

That is not to say that the government has not tried to change the policy. It knows the policy is on its knees, and it wanted to do something about that several weeks ago. On 9 April, the Minister for Immigration and Citizenship announced that a new policy was being implemented which would deal with what the government regarded as an unacceptably high number of people coming from certain countries. The government announced that from that time it would freeze the applications of Afghanis and Sri Lankans for a period of time between three and six months and that it would decide later whether it was appropriate for those arrivals to resume. It clearly acknowledged with that announcement that it had a problem. People were seeing the passageway between other countries—particularly Indonesia—and Australia as essentially open and that there was no deterrent for people to use the services of people smugglers. Yet that policy change has also been a failure. It has failed to deter those people smugglers and those who use their product. Since that announcement on 9 April, there have been 33 boats carrying almost 1,500 people. The evidence that a change in circumstances in both Afghanistan and Sri Lanka is sufficient to warrant the kind of freeze the government has put in place simply does not exist. It is simply not available.

At least in the past the government was able to point to the fact that a majority of the people who were arriving by boat were genuine refugees. They were people who deserved to be treated compassionately by the Australian community because, even though they came here in circumstances which perhaps were less than desirable, they were still genuine refugees. Unfortunately, what the Senate estimates committee examining the Department of Immigration and Citizenship heard in the last few weeks undermines even that argument quite comprehensively. As members who peruse the budget papers will see, the cost of offshore asylum seeker management is to rise from $149 million this year to more than twice that amount—$327 million—next year, even though, according to the government’s calculations, the number of unlawful arrivals is expected to fall from 5,000 or so to just 2,000 arrivals next financial year. Why the increase in cost despite the fall in the number of people arriving? The answer the committee was given was that the government expected a significant increase in refusal rates—which of course pushes up the cost for those people who have to be processed even though they have been refused refugee status.

In fact, looking at the figures, it is clear that more than half of the people the government expects to arrive in 2010-11 will not be considered genuine refugees. So the question has to be asked: what is the point of keeping in place an increasingly expensive policy—a policy whose cost is rising precipitously every year—when fewer than half of the people who arrive by boat to be treated through the processing system in Australia actually turn out to be real refugees? What a comprehensive failure of policy on both counts: it is not tough and it is not compassionate, despite what the Prime Minister said just a few weeks ago when announcing his change in policy.

Perhaps, however, the most powerful reason for rejecting this failure of a policy is that it lacks compassion. It has a deadly consequence. The policy which builds into Australia’s immigration policy a role for people smugglers actually encourages people to use their product. What is their product? It is passage on small, unseaworthy boats across the seas to Australia’s north. We know that those journeys sometimes end in tragedy. Reportedly, 18 months ago some 100 Afghanis perished at sea. More recently, five people drowned and probably another boatload of people died—170 or more who have perished in this way. That is the consequence of this government’s policy, because this government’s policy says, ‘We want people to use the service of people smugglers.’ That is the reason this policy should be rejected. It is not tough, it is not compassionate and it does not lead to an orderly and fair system for treating refugees. It is a failed policy.