Watts, Tim, MP

Mr WATTS (Gellibrand) (10:58): We live in a time when the world is more interconnected, more globalised, than ever before. The impact of events on the other side of the world quickly wash up on our own shores. Australia might not share any land borders with any other countries, but we are not an island. We are 23 million people whose prosperity, security and moral outlook are heavily influenced by what the eight billion people beyond our borders are doing. That is the reality. Many people do not like it, but it does not change the fact that the currents of international events shape and impact our choices domestically. The way that we engage with the international movements of people that are underway is a prime example of this. According to the UNHCR there are currently more than 65 million people worldwide who have been forcibly displaced. That is a six-million-person increase from last year and the highest number since the UNHCR was formed in the wake of the asylum crisis after the Second World War. There are more than 21 million refugees under the UNHCR mandate today, and more than half of them are under the age of 18. They are children. This is a global humanitarian crisis. When people are forced to flee their homes by conflict or persecution they are often forced to cross international borders in search of safety. The vast majority do not want to uproot their lives and start again permanently in another country. They seek refuge in the closest countries of safety and wait it out, hoping for the dangers in their own home countries to pass. Think of it this way: if there were a civil war in Australia, most of us would prefer to wait out the conflict in New Zealand rather than move to Finland and start our lives again in a country with a different language and culture to the one of our families and friends. That is what the millions of refugees in the countries around Syria are currently on: waiting it out in hope of being able to return to their past lives. But there is a limit to this. Unless these temporary refugee camps are able to provide the essentials of life—physical security, food, shelter, medical treatment—people will move on, quickly, crossing more international borders in order to survive. Unless these temporary refugee camps are able to provide the essentials of hope—education, dignity, meaning and a realistic pathway to enduring safety, either a return to their previous lives or international resettlement—people will move on, too, crossing international borders in the process. With 65 million displaced in the world today, these limits have been met repeatedly in recent years. In the wake of the Syrian refugee crisis we have seen an exodus of people walking and sailing from the region to Europe in search of immediate relief. But we have also seen refugees who have spent literally decades waiting in refugee camps like Dadaab and Kakuma in Kenya, or in refugee camps on the Thai-Myanmar border in our own region. They are people who tire of waiting and cross international borders on their own initiative in search of permanent resettlement. We have similarly seen refugees in limbo states, not in formal camps but not a full part of the community they live either, in transit countries like Pakistan or Indonesia. They tire of waiting and try to find their own way to permanent resettlement through the use of people smugglers. It is clear that these people movements are an international problem. The actions of individual countries influence the decisions of people and shape the international movement of people in a direct sense. If we do not provide adequate support to the UNHCR to provide an adequate standard of life in refugee camps, more people will move on seeking survival, safety and security. If we do not provide legitimate pathways through formal resettlement programs for refugees who are never able to return to their past lives, people will seek a permanent resolution to their plight through illegitimate means. Yes—if in Australia we were to open our borders and say, 'Let them all come', in an age of cheap international travel, social media and tens of millions of displaced people, very large numbers of people would respond to this message and come to Australia. We have seen more than enough evidence of this in Europe to know what the consequences of this action would be. This is the interconnected world in which Labor's asylum policy has been developed. Our policy understands that there are international consequences to our actions, and that when we are responding to complex global challenges of this kind we must always ask, 'What happens next?' How do our actions shape the decisions of those tens of millions of asylum seekers around the world. That is why Labor plans to play a leadership role in South-Eeast Asia and the Pacific to build a regional humanitarian framework to improve the situation of asylum seekers in our region. That is why Labor's policy provides for significantly increasing annual funding to the UNHCR for its global work program and its work in South-East Asia and the Pacific, in particular. At a time when the global humanitarian need is greater than ever, Labor will provide $450 million over three years to support the important work of the UNHCR. We do this not only because Australia has a moral obligation to do so—to do its share to help respond to this unprecedented humanitarian crisis—but also because it directly shapes the decisions of refugees in UNHCR camps around the world. It helps give them better choices than paying an extortionate price to a people smuggler for a very risky journey. It is also why Labor has committed to almost doubling Australia's annual humanitarian intake to 27,000 by 2025. Again this is a policy that directly contributes to giving refugees seeking permanent resettlement better options than seeking out a people smuggler. This is also why Labor maintain our clear policy position that those who seek to come to Australia using a people smuggler will not be resettled permanently in Australia. It sends a clear message to people weighing up their options not to choose to risk their own lives, or the lives of their children, by taking a very dangerous boat journey to Australia. There is simply no point in it, as you will not receive permanent settlement in this nation as a result. Again, a commitment to offshore processing and regional resettlement directly shapes the choices being made by refugees around the world and by asylum seekers around the world. There are other ways in which the interconnected world in which we live shapes our engagement with this issue. In countries around the world populist, anti-immigrant rhetoric has been growing in influence as the scale of the international humanitarian crisis has deepened. In Europe—in Germany, France and the United Kingdom, especially during the Brexit referendum—and much of Eastern Europe asylum seekers are being used by populist demagogues as scapegoats for increasing economic and cultural anxiety in the community. We saw this centre stage in the recent US presidential election campaign. President-elect Trump's ascension is something that we as a nation will manage in a strategic sense. As the Prime Minister said yesterday, our shared interests and enduring national values transcend individual leaders. I am sure that we will be able to work with President-elect Trump in the future. However, the very similarities that many of us see between Australia and the United States mean that the extraordinary nature of the recent US presidential election campaign will have ramifications for our own politics. Whatever the causes of Trump's election success, the rhetoric that he legitimised during the campaign will have an impact on the Australian political debate. That campaign and its result threaten to throw open a social and political schism. That result will be a clarion call for all of those who wish to divide us. We have already seen One Nation and the extremists in the coalition party room responding to this call. This is a dangerous moment. It is more important than ever that people of goodwill in this country do not go down this path of division. We know where it leads. If the emboldened reactionaries and extremists confront the vacuum of leadership that has existed in this government over the last 12 months, it will grow in influence. If the genuine anxieties of many in our community are not engaged by leaders willing to listen to their legitimate concerns, there will be no shortage of opportunists waiting to offer them up a scapegoat and sell them snake oil. We need to build trust with those in our community who are anxious and alienated. Without that trust—trust that our political institutions are accessible to them, that they will be listened to and that our institutions will respond to their legitimate concerns—the efficacy of our political system will flounder because the reality is that the challenges we confront of growing inequality, economic insecurity, climate change and the international asylum crisis are complex. Solving them requires judgement and nuance in the face of uncertainty; incrementalism and moderation in the face of complexity; and, yes, negotiation and compromise in the face of starkly conflicting interests. They cannot be solved by simplistic scapegoating or snake-oil politics. In addition to being immoral, this will only feed alienation as these approaches too fail to address the things that people are really concerned about in our community. I implore the Prime Minister to think again about bills like this one. Prime Minister, you know that bills like this one before the House will do nothing to help address the challenges facing our nation. Prime Minister, do not allow yourself to be led by the nose by your immigration minister and Senator Hanson. Do not reduce yourself, Prime Minister, to the politics of scapegoating. If the Prime Minister rides this tiger's back in the current environment he will soon be eaten. We need to engage with the complex international asylum crisis in the principled, nuanced way that it requires. I say to the Prime Minister: do not demand that the Labor Party supports bills sight unseen. Do not accuse us of weakness for wanting to see the legislation that we are being asked to support. Explain why you are doing what you are doing with bills like this, not just to us but to your colleagues, too. It does not instil much confidence when your own ministers are contradicting you about the application of this legislation. It does not built much trust in the community when the government's own MPs cannot articulate the problem that this legislation is trying to address, as the member for Chisholm found on the doors this week. Those opposite need to be able to answer the question: what is the point? Why are we trying to stop the tourists, stop the businessmen and stop the Commonwealth Games athletes? What possible signal does this send to the rest of the world? For our part, the Labor Party takes a principled approach to this issue. I am proud that since I came into this chamber Labor has taken a consistent, principled approach to asylum seeker policy. We have said that a future Labor government will ensure that Australia does its bit to help the unprecedented number of people seeking asylum around the world, both through supports to the UNHCR and through an increased international humanitarian intake. We have said that we will act with decency towards asylum seekers under our care, ensuring that there is the accountability, transparency and oversight of Australian-funded facilities, implementing that offshore processing and regional settlement program. We have been very clear in saying that we will do what is necessary to discourage people from using people smugglers to undertake dangerous sea journeys. The message will be clear in that respect. This approach, these principles, have led us to oppose misguided government legislation on this issue in the past, including, notably, the government's legislation to introduce temporary protection visas, and we will continue to stand by our principles on this issue in the future. We will support sensible policies to enable a third-country settlement of the people currently living in a limbo state of indefinite detention on Manus Island and Nauru. But we will not be dictated to by an immigration minister who is so out of his depth that he cannot even run an effective political wedge. At this dangerous moment for Australia we need better from this government. I say to the Prime Minister that we will support you if you want to start tackling the issues of alienation and inclusion in our communities. If the Prime Minister wants to start tackling issues like secure work and ensuring that all Australians are getting reward for their labour, we will support that. If the Prime Minister wants to do something about wages growth being the lowest on record, breaking that nexus in the Australian community between effort and reward, we will support him. If the Prime Minister wants to do something about the endemic workplace exploitation of temporary migrants that is taking place in this country, we will support that. That is a national shame on our character, and its consequences flow through our entire community. If the Prime Minister wants to do something about addressing the liveability issues in our communities and the infrastructure demands that are keeping my constituents away from their families as they sit stuck in traffic— Ms Henderson interjecting— Mr WATTS: The member for Corangamite knows this well, because the Melbourne metro rail tunnel is one of the biggest beneficiaries in my community. The Sunbury line will reach capacity in 2020, and this government is arguing about whether we should be building a new station in South Yarra. This is the kind of politics that drives people mad in this country. So I say to the Prime Minister, put away the political games. Stop playing games with people's lives like this bill. Be genuine about addressing the legitimate concerns of people in our community and we will support you. Ms Henderson interjecting— The DEPUTY SPEAKER: I ask the member for Corangamite to be quiet.