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

A fanciful suggestion, I am sure you would think, Senator Feeney! If they happen to do that, I imagine that a new government would be very much of a mind to make sure that a strong signal was sent to people smugglers that Australia's borders were no longer open borders and that Australia would take every measure it possibly could to ensure that their business of smuggling people was smashed. If the threat, or perhaps the actual use, of a power to turn boats around in circumstances where it was safe to do so added to that policy and made that policy real and effective then it would be employed by an incoming government.

It goes without saying that the policy this government has pursued generally on the protection of the borders and on ensuring that people, wherever possible, seek asylum in this country through lawful means has been a spectacular and unmitigated failure. I think that barely needs to be stated. The government has had, on my reckoning, five different positions on how to deal with the flow of boats across the Timor Sea, and no doubt before the election there is time for a sixth version if it decides that the policy is just too malodorous for the Australian people to be able to support.

So we will see what comes out of the coming election campaign, but what I do know is that the Australian people want a policy which is effective. They want our immigration policy to be strong and resilient and to have support across the entire community. They want the policy on the treatment and handling of refugees to be one which maximises Australia's generosity towards those who are deemed to be genuine refugees and ensures that, wherever possible, a person applies to Australia for asylum in a way which ensures that their processing is done in an orderly fashion and, if possible, offshore through application in such places as refugee camps under the auspices of bodies like the United Nations High Commission for Refugees or the International Organization for Migration so that once again Australians can have confidence that we are, as one of the most generous nations in housing and offering refuge to refugees, able to process such applications in a fair, merit-based arrangement where the cost to the Australian taxpayer is not prohibitive. None of those things can be said at this point in time.

We make it very clear that, if we are the government that is elected later this year, we will radically alter the policies which have been by applied so ineffectively by this government. We will ensure that we have a policy which strongly discourages people from using unseaworthy boats to enter Australia's waters in order to obtain status as an asylum seeker, processed by Australian authorities. We will do our best to make sure that this vile business is brought to an unceremonious end. Of course we can only do that if we have the full suite of powers available to us that were available to the Howard government. It is very clear that the judicious use of that policy was an effective tool in the hands of the previous government to ensure that boats did not arrive in anything like the numbers that have arrived since 2008.

For those who have a vision in their mind of the circumstances of a boat being turned back that might conjure images of chaos on the sea or of something being done which is extremely unsafe, which is unsatisfactory from a humanitarian point of view, I want to make the point to senators that Australia has exercised this power in the past in a way which did not produce those sorts of outcomes and which were an aid to effective public policy in preventing and discouraging people from using that device to enter this country. If we take the example of an Indonesian fishing boat captained by an Indonesian captain with an Indonesian crew having departed from an Indonesian port perhaps a couple of hundred kilometres off the coast of Indonesia, which an Australian naval vessel decides to turn around, one could hardly say that was a particularly onerous or unfair arrangement to enter into if that resulted in that presumably unseaworthy vessel being forced to return to an Indonesian port.

Senator Feeney interjecting—

That may be the case, Senator Feeney, or it may not. But until we apply the policy we will not know. Let us see what happens. It was not the case in the past. We know how to do this. We have done it before. If you are not confident in exercising a power in those circumstances, let somebody who has done it before exercise such a power. I predict that it will not take long for these businesses—that is what they are—designed to exploit the misery of human beings who are seeking refuge to very quickly get a message about what it is that Australia is prepared to do to protect the integrity of its borders and to ensure that an orderly process for processing refugees is applied once again, one that creates a system which Australians and others around the world can respect for the way in which it is operated.

I urge the Senate to consider very carefully the powers that are in this legislation but even more carefully consider what is not necessarily in the legislation. I look forward to the minister clarifying what the status of that power is. As I said, I would be greatly mollified by an assurance that the power is absolutely preserved. Perhaps it does require the authority of a minister to make the statement that we are seeking.