Bob Carr (NSW, Australian Labor Party, Minister for Foreign Affairs) Share this | Hansard source

The fact is that overwhelmingly, if not 100 per cent, people being brought as asylum seekers to these shores are being brought by people-smugglers. That is the transformation, and you will not accept the transformation. That is what has happened. You have now got 100 per cent of this awful traffic in human beings, in unseaworthy vessels, being brought by people-smugglers. These are not cases of people under persecution who have cobbled together, in their desperation, money to buy a fishing trawler and set out onto the high seas; these are people who have been captured by money-making criminal syndicates, and you will not recognise it. That is the transformation. That is the change. The second change is that these are increasingly not people fleeing persecution, because in respect of Iranians, for example, they come from majority ethnic and religious groups. They are paying for passage with people-smugglers. This is a transformation in the evidence before us. As the great Lord Keynes said, unprompted, 'If the evidence changes, I change my opinion.' I say the challenge for those good Australians who have argued a refugee case in the past is to re-examine their position. The evidence before us is they are economic refugees, not people fleeing persecution, and are being brought here by people-smugglers— (Time expired)