Mr MARLES (Corio) (15:22): Let me start by making one clear point: there has been no reduction in the boat arrivals today compared to where they were at immediately prior to the federal election. In the two weeks prior to the federal election, four boats came to this country. As far as we know, in the last 14 days there have been at least five boats that have come to Australia—albeit we cannot be completely sure because we will not know exactly until Friday. Let us be clear: in the two weeks prior to the election, when Labor was still in power, there were four boats that had arrived. In the two weeks to today, that figure is now five. The piece of policy which has changed the game when it comes to stopping the tide of boats from Indonesia is the PNG arrangement. There was almost a 90 per cent reduction in the numbers of people arriving at the time of the PNG arrangement before the election. Indeed, in some weeks, there was more than a 90 per cent reduction. This is an inconvenient truth for the now government, but it is the truth indeed. We hear the government out there talking about 75 per cent reductions or saying that they are out there stopping the boats, but the simple fact of the matter is that, since prior to the election, compared to now, there has been no reduction in the flow of boats from Indonesia. The PNG arrangement, 19 July, and other important measures such as the refusal of automatic visas on arrival for Iranians entering Indonesia—a matter that was negotiated through cooperation by the then Rudd government in Indonesia—are the issues, the pieces of policy, which have changed the game. This is an evolving area of policy. What we have on the government side are people who are inexperienced and who have found themselves in a time warp, believing that the policies that existed in 2001 such as TPVs, turning back the boats and the Pacific solution would represent a solution to this problem in 2013. The fact of the matter is: had all of those policies stayed in place after the Howard government, they would be dealing with the issue as this country faces it in 2013. The contemporary solution to the contemporary problem has been the PNG arrangement and other measures such as what was negotiated for Iranian arrivals in Indonesia. That was the game changer. All we have seen from the government since the election are bells and whistles. We have seen a language edict issued requiring officials of the Department of Immigration and Border Protection to now refer to asylum seekers as 'illegals'. We had that in October. We now have a grand Operation Sovereign Borders. We have seen the militarisation. We have seen weekly briefings, but there is nothing in all of this which amounts to a hill of beans of substance, nothing at all. What we have seen is a culture of secrecy. What we have seen from this government— Mr Morrison: Less boats. Mr MARLES: no less boats—is an attempt to have the military answer its questions. What the minister has sought to do is set up a situation where it is a general who is arguing the government's policy against the opposition. Let us be clear: the information management strategy which the government is adopting now is a purely political decision. We are not reflecting on the general, and that is precisely the point. The minister would love a situation where there is the opposition debating a general, but the fact of the matter is that the minister cannot run away from the fact that the way in which information is being managed is a political decision. The minister has come into this place during question time and on seven separate occasions, an eighth today, refused to answer questions on the basis of 'operational matters'. It says everything about the standing in which this government holds the parliament and the contempt of this government for the Australian people. All we have had is a refusal to answer questions here. When there are briefings on those Fridays, limited information is given. By the way, we need to remember that there is a big difference between a press conference and the parliament. If the minister were to mislead a press conference, it would be a bad article. But if you mislead parliament then you lose your job. That is why it is so important that the parliament remains the pre-eminent place by which the government is held to account. That is why it is an appalling state of affairs that we have the minister coming into this place day after day and simply refusing to answer questions on the basis of things being operational matters. This reached farcical levels last night when Lieutenant General Campbell was in fact able to answer a precise question that the minister himself had been asked last week when the general confirmed that there had been no boats purchased from Indonesia, none. When asked that question in this place last week, the minister unequivocally said that was an operational matter that he could not answer, but the general could answer it last night. What that says is this: Lieutenant General Angus Campbell has shot a bullet right through the concept of operational matters. It is completely dead as an idea, and it says everything about the fact that that was a political idea. It was never an idea which went to the question of whether or not there were indeed any operational reasons why this information could not be provided to the Australian people. The real reason why there is secrecy about the way in which this government is pursuing its asylum seeker policy is because of the ridiculous commitments that it made prior to the last election that it has not been able to fulfil. No boats have been turned around. Indeed on the first attempt, as far as we are aware, of trying to tow a boat, the boat broke up and it sank. That is how this government defines a matter as being safe to do so. No boats have been turned around. No boats, as far as we are aware, have been towed back. We learnt last night that no boats have been bought from Indonesia—none; absolutely none. So that is why we have secrecy here: to hide the fact that the policies which this government took to the last election are not being fulfilled today. But, to top it all off, we have also seen that the relationship with Indonesia in relation to asylum seekers must be maintained on a cooperative basis. This is our neighbour. This is the country from which these boats are coming. It is plain common sense that we will not be able to make progress in relation to asylum seeker policy unless we have a positive, cooperative relationship with Indonesia. That relationship has been handled with total ineptness by this government in the context of asylum seekers. We had the coalition before they even became the government announcing the turn-back-the-boats policy—or talking about it—and, in response, they elicited the very unusual circumstance of the Indonesian foreign minister, Marty Natalegawa, saying: … such a policy would constitute a unilateral type of measure that we do not support. In relation to the boat buyback policy, again before the election, we had Mahfudz Siddiq of the parliamentary commission for foreign affairs in Indonesia saying: This is really a crazy idea, unfriendly, derogatory and it shows lack of understanding in this matter. That is what the Indonesian government was saying in relation to the coalition before the election about the policies that they have sought to but have not implemented since the election. They sought to dictate terms to Indonesia, and in the process egg has ended up on their face. Indeed when they had their stand-off with Indonesia between 8 and 9 September, within 24 hours they had backed down—no resolve at all on the part of this government. You look at the Liberal Party policy. It says this: An incoming coalition government will treat the border protection crisis as a national emergency and tackle it with the focus and energy that an emergency demands. We have seen nothing other than a lack of resolve. We have seen nothing other than a lack of competence. They sought to differentiate on the issue of competence at the election, but there has been none of that here. All we have seen is inexperience mixed with arrogance. That is a dangerous cocktail, and it has left the policy in disarray.