Alan Eggleston (WA, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

I also rise to take note of answers given by Senator Lundy to the questions asked by Senator Cash, who, as has been said, advised the Senate that some 25,000 boat people have arrived in Australia since the ALP came to power. Mr Deputy President, you will forgive me for sounding somewhat like a broken record but, unlike the government's toing and froing with bureaucratic bungling and misguided policies, the coalition has always maintained the same policies and successful approach to illegal boat arrivals. What the Gillard government is essentially doing as a result of the Houston report is copying one of the Howard government's most successful approaches, namely offshore processing in Nauru with Papua New Guinea to be considered in the future if the Houston report is followed. It is a turn in the right direction but it is not all that is needed.

One of the other really successful policies of the Howard government in dealing with refugees was temporary protection visas, or TPVs. The Howard government used TPVs quite extensively and under this scheme people were offered refugee status in Australia until the situation in their homelands improved. However, I think and the coalition thinks that the real answer is a regional solution, a cooperative relationship between Indonesia, Malaysia and Australia in dealing with boat borne refugees, but this will only be achieved by proper negotiations between the other regional countries, not the kind of pre-emptive announcement by former Prime Minister Rudd that East Timor would accept refugees when, in fact, there had been no consultation whatsoever with that country and in the end, of course, they did not accept refugees.

What we have seen in recent weeks is a near total about-face by the ALP against the policy they had when they first came to office of reversing the very successful coalition measures. Those measures stopped the flow of refugees and reduced to a trickle the number of people coming to Australia as refugees by unconventional means. The coalition has always argued that the full suite of measures that stopped the boats—including offshore processing in Nauru, TPVs, and turning the boats back when safe to do so—should be reimplemented if the strong tide of boats is to be stopped.

We are very pleased that at long last the ALP has seen the wisdom of our policies and has decided to reinstate at least the policy of offshore processing using Nauru. The figures speak for themselves. When the coalition left office just four people who had arrived illegally by boat were in detention. As of a few hours ago, some 40 boats carrying more than 2,500 people have arrived since only a few weeks ago Labor announced its policy of placing refugees on Nauru. It is extraordinary to think of those numbers when you compare them to the number of people who came to this country under the Howard government—very few indeed. More broadly, less than nine full months into this year there have been over 10,000 people on more than 150 boats as this government has still refused to introduce the coalition's full suite of vital border protection policies. Yet in the last five years of the Howard government just 18 boats arrived, an average of one boat every 101 days, not almost one boat a day as under the destructive and non-effective policies of this government.