George Brandis (Queensland, Liberal Party, Shadow Attorney-General) Share this | Hansard source

I move:

That the Senate take note of the answer given by the Minister for Innovation, Industry, Science and Research (Senator Carr) to a question without notice asked by Senator Cash today relating to asylum seekers.

This morning in the House of Representatives the Minister for Immigration and Citizenship introduced amendments to the Migration Act to try to repair the collapse of the government's border protection policy as a result of the decision of the High Court three weeks ago. The Leader of the Opposition, Mr Abbott, announced that the opposition would support that bill, which is quite a detailed bill, provided that the government acceded to one short amendment that the opposition will move. The purpose of that amendment is to instate Nauru as an offshore processing country.

Quite unbelievably, the government, rather than reach out to the opposition—whose cooperation the government has sought and whose cooperation has been freely offered—the Prime Minister refuses to accept that amendment. What does that tell you about the government? This is a government that refuses to consider the only option—offshore processing in Nauru—that has ever solved the problem of unlawful asylum seekers coming to Australia. The only option they refuse to consider is the only option that has ever worked. How can anybody take seriously the good faith of the government on this matter, faced with a catastrophic collapse of their policy?

There is a reason, and it is a very ignoble reason, why the only option they refuse to consider is the only option that has ever worked. It is because, if they were to do so, they would be conceding that the opposition had it right all along. And the one thing this Prime Minister's pride will not ever let her do is to concede that the government got it wrong and the opposition got it right.

Mr Deputy President, let me just remind you that, when the Pacific solution, based on offshore processing in Nauru, was introduced in 2001, the number of unlawful arrivals dwindled to a negligible number. In the following six years, there were 18 boats, an average of three per year throughout the period that the Nauru processing centre was in operation. Why was that? Because it did break the people smugglers' business model, because only 43 per cent of the people who were processed in Nauru ended up in Australia. A majority of those people who sought to put themselves and their families into the hands of the people smugglers so that they could get to Australia failed to do so. There were 1,637 people in all processed on Nauru, of whom only 705 were resettled in Australia having been assessed as genuine refugees—43 per cent.

Senator Pratt interjecting—

If you doubt that figure, Senator Pratt, it comes from a press release by Mr Bowen, your colleague, on 2 February 2010. Given that there is a proven solution to this problem, why then, when the opposition is moving an amendment to enable the government to reinstate that proven solution to the problem, would a government be so blind, so pig-headed, so stubborn, so arrogant, so consumed with overweening pride, as to say to a cooperative opposition: 'No. The one thing we won't do is take your successful idea on board as our policy, because it was your idea and to adopt it would mean admitting our failure'?