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

What a disgrace. What an absolute disgrace we are confronted with today: the complete and utter failure and inability of this government, led by this Prime Minister, to protect our borders. This Prime Minister is the all-rounder of failed border protection, the very person who as the shadow minister for immigration, on the rare occasion she was able to do so, would get out of the policy and say, 'Another boat, another failed policy.' And what do we have now? We have another boat, another 100 policy failures. Ms Gillard, the current Prime Minister, has now made her maiden test century. She is the Shaun Marsh of failed asylum seeker policy. The big question, of course, is whether she will go on to do more than 151 runs, as Shaun Marsh did the other day in Sri Lanka.

But of course Prime Minister Gillard is not restricted to being a batsman; she is a bowler of the most hapless form, the hapless hat-trick. What were her three failures? Firstly, there was her failure to stop the arrival of asylum seekers; secondly, her abject failure of the so-called East Timor solution; and, thirdly and most recently, her failure in the Malaysia solution. How inconvenient are umpires when you are completely and utterly afield as a cricketer! It is far too serious an issue to be dealt with like this.

I was in East Timor, in Dili, only five weeks ago and one of my purposes was to try and establish what I thought of the prospect of us joining with East Timor to set up an asylum seeking facility there. You would only have needed to visit to find it would not work. Those of us who have lived and worked in Malaysia, particularly under the then prime ministership of Mahatir Mohamad, would know the way in which illegal immigrants were dealt with by the government—off the end of the cane, off the end of the stick. It would be no different.

Earlier this afternoon we heard my colleague Senator Scullion referring to the 15.4 million refugees around the world. We know, as a result of the discussions over Malaysia, that more than 90,000 genuine refugees are rotting in asylum camps and refugee camps in Malaysia, and we know the story of the Horn of Africa. I have made the observation in this place before, and I believe it to be true, that there is a high degree of corruption in the actual refugee camps, where people who are legitimate refugees accepted by this country get somewhere near the top of the queue but never, ever get a guernsey. Why? Because of the corrupt payments that are going to those who manage those refugee camps from others who jump the queue and suddenly find their way. I have not yet seen any action taken by this government to investigate that shocking scenario to see if it is true.

The worst feature of the failure of this government is the increased number of unaccompanied children who are being put on these leaking, rotting wooden fishing boats and put to sea under the most horrific conditions—and we are doing nothing about it. I have reflected on a more generic term. If you wish to try and smash the business model of somebody else, how do you go about it? In this case, of course, it is the so-called business model of the people-smugglers—one which, incidentally, Prime Minister Howard and his then immigration minister, Mr Ruddock, were very successful in smashing. But, as we all know, the Howard government inherited a problem and found a solution. They handed it to the then Rudd-Gillard government, who picked up that solution and turned it back into a problem.

If you want to smash the business model of an opponent, what are your options? The first one is to compete on better terms. Only last week we saw Clarke and Dawe parodying this situation, ridiculing this government, talking about the fact that we brought Irish and English immigrants and even convicts here in the 1700s and 1800s. Brian Dawe even asked the question of John Clarke, parodied as Treasurer Swan: 'Why don't you have a weekly ship or a monthly ship out of the Middle East?' That is the stupidity of that particular circumstance.

The second thing you would do is to make the business illegal and successfully prosecute the perpetrators. This draws me to an article in the Age on 30 August. We now see in Melbourne that Victorian Legal Aid lawyer Saul Holt is telling us that they are appealing to the chief judge of the Victorian County Court to overturn the crime of people-smuggling based on the fact that although these people, the asylum seekers, have no visas they will argue that under international and Australian law genuine refugees seeking asylum from persecution should not in fact lead to people-smugglers being charged. What are we going to do—give them medals? What is interesting is that this is in Victoria. What is the proportion of people-smugglers that end up in Victorian prisons? I can tell you that it is very few. But I can tell you the answer for Western Australia, as my colleagues would know. We have 130-plus in Western Australian jails at the moment either awaiting trial or who have been dealt with, costing the Western Australian taxpayer $100,000 each a year, in excess of $13 million a year. So here is the success of my second item of the business model, making it illegal. Victorian Legal Aid do not want to make people smuggling illegal. They presumably want to put it on a pedestal.

The third that I would suggest to you if you are trying to smash the business model is convincing the consumers that the product is unattractive so that they do not want to buy it—in other words, so they do not want to come here. Taking the opposition out of the market is another option. But the fifth one—and I will deal with the third and the fifth together—is to completely change the product, change it completely, so that the consumer is disinterested.

It was in 1954 that Australia signed up to the UNHCR. That is nearly 50 years ago. Surely the circumstances have changed in the world—