Brandis, Sen George

Senator BRANDIS (Queensland—Deputy Leader of the Opposition in the Senate) (13:27): Senator Hanson-Young asserts that the government has adopted Mr Tony Abbott's policy in relation to asylum seekers. If only that were true, because, although the government has adopted one element of the coalition's policy—that is, the reintroduction of the Pacific solution and the reopening of Nauru—unfortunately, for reasons that are incomprehensible to me, the government has not adopted the other two critical elements of the coalition's successful policy—that is, temporary protection visas and turning boats around in the limited but occasional circumstances in which that can safely be done. The Pacific solution was a suite of policies. Those were the three elements: offshore processing on Nauru and Manus Island, temporary protection visas and turning boats around where it was safe to do so. All three elements were necessary in order to deprive people smugglers of the capacity to say to vulnerable people, 'We can guarantee you a permanent settlement in Australia.' All three elements were necessary. So it is beyond my comprehension why the government, having protested for years that it would never embrace the Pacific solution, at last, and at the cost of many hundreds and perhaps more than a thousand lives, swallowed its pride and decided to do so and yet still resists adopting the other two elements of the suite of policies that worked. So while we are glad that the government, after so many years, after so much stubborn pride, after the loss of so many innocent lives, at last saw the wisdom of returning to offshore processing, it is still resisting adopting the other two elements of that successful suite of policies. So we can have no confidence at all that this incomplete, partial adoption of the coalition's successful policies will produce the outcome the government hopes it will produce. Having told us for years it would not produce a favourable outcome, the government now says, 'Well, we think it will produce a favourable outcome.' But we in the coalition say to the government, 'Unless you adopt all of the elements of the successful policy, there is no reason to be confident that the tide of refugee arrivals will dry up.' I listened with care to what Senator Hanson-Young had to say and I am bound to say that many of the claims she made were simply false—in particular, the claim that the Howard government did not adopt a compassionate policy when it comes to refugees. Senator Hanson-Young, you are evidently unaware of the fact that under the Howard government the refugee intake under the humanitarian settlement programs run by the Australian government were increased to the highest level they have ever been—a level which remains today. Senator Ludlam: That is why people were sewing their lips together! Senator BRANDIS: It was the Howard government that lifted to the highest level that any Australian government ever did our humanitarian intake, and yet that is mocked by the Greens in their posturing moral vanity. Senator Hanson-Young asserts that the loss of life is the responsibility of those who adopt a tough policy. The reverse is true. The wicked people in this business are not the refugees. The refugees are the gullible people. Refugees are vulnerable people. The wicked people are the people smugglers. Senator Hanson-Young: What are you doing about it? Senator BRANDIS: I will tell you what we are doing about it, Senator Hanson-Young. What we did about it in 2001 was deprive the people smugglers of a product to sell, so they could not entrap or induce these gullible and vulnerable people to part with, in many cases no doubt, their life savings to embark on an inherently hazardous risk and put themselves and their wives and their children at risk on the high seas. That is what we did. If you want to know whether that policy worked, let the statistics answer your question, Senator Hanson-Young. From the time that the Pacific Solution was adopted by the Howard government in September 2001 until the time when the Pacific Solution was, in a moment of folly, abandoned by the Australian Labor Party in 2008, do you know, Acting Deputy President Edwards, how many asylum seekers came to Australia, how many asylum seekers put their own lives, their families' lives and their children's lives at risk on the high seas? It was 301 people in six years. Those are the statistics. Since the Labor Party in its foolishness in late 2008 abandoned that successful policy do you know how many people have embarked on that hazardous journey, put themselves and their wives' and their children's lives at risk? As of today, 24,697 human souls have embarked on that perilous journey—in the case of the children, unbeknownst to them the risks to which they were being exposed—in less than five years. In fact, the statistics I quoted include the first year of the Rudd government up to the time when the Pacific Solution was abandoned, so I should correct myself. It was 24,697 people since the election of the Rudd government, but almost all of those people—all bar 25 in fact—have arrived since November 2008. So in less than four years 24,697 people compared with 301 people over six years. And you say, Senator Sarah Hanson-Young, that we were not compassionate! How many lives were saved by depriving the people smugglers of a product to sell? How many lives were saved? We will never know, but this we do know: in addition to those nearly 25,000 people who arrived in Australia in the last four years, we know for certain that another 704 have drowned—men and women and boys and girls and babies have drowned. And those are only the bodies that have been recovered or accounted for. We know that an additional inestimable number as well—undoubtedly many hundreds—have also drowned. That is the price of bad policy. That is the price of giving people smugglers an incentive to entrap gullible and vulnerable people by assuring them safe passage to Australia and then loading them onto leaky vessels which have led to the deaths of more than a thousand of them. That did not happen after the Howard government reintroduced the Pacific solution. There could not be a debate in which the issues are more serious because we are talking about the lives of innocent people. I honestly do not know how Senator Hanson-Young and her Greens collaborators can sit over there in that corner of the Senate chamber and say that a policy which led to the deaths of more than a thousand innocent people is a policy that is acceptable to them but that a policy that avoided the loss of those lives and that reduced the number of unlawful asylum seekers to a trickle—301 people in six years—was not a compassionate or an effective policy. Senator Hanson-Young: What about the children who— Senator BRANDIS: 'What about the children?' I hear Senator Hanson-Young ask. Yes, Senator Hanson-Young, what about the children who would be alive today if the Howard government's policy of putting the people smugglers out of business had not been abandoned with your support? As I said at the start of my remarks, we are glad that the Labor Party has seen sense. It took Air Marshal Houston and his committee to bring them to see sense but we are glad that the Labor Party has seen sense by restoring the Nauru processing centre and the opposition will of course support the motion moved by the government. But it gives us no joy or pleasure that it has come to this, that the government, through its hubris and stubborn pride, delayed for so long reinstating policies which for so long it refused to accept because they had been policies embedded by its political opponent. It is a shame but nevertheless the government has at last seen that it was wrong and that John Howard was right. Senator Hanson-Young got that part right, that the government had seen that the Pacific solution denounced, condemned and anathematised for so many years by the Labor Party was right and that the Labor Party's approach for all those years was wrong. I suppose in a spirit of generosity one gives credit to an opponent who eventually acknowledges they were wrong and their opponent was right, but this is not a political game. This is a decision of policy choices on which people's lives depend and therefore we on the opposition benches implore the government: if you are prepared to take that important first step and reinstate Nauru, take the remaining steps which so far you have not been prepared to take and reinstate temporary protection visas so that no people smuggler will ever be able to say even to a credulous client, 'I can guarantee you a permanent resettlement in Australia,' because even the most credulous refugee will know that at most they will get a temporary protection visa. We implore the government as well to strengthen the deterrence of people smugglers by adopting a policy of turning boats around. We acknowledge that that will rarely be possible but there have been occasions in the past when it has been possible and the fact that there is the threat that that might happen is itself part of the deterrence of people smugglers. I want to finish by saying a word about temporary protection visas because there has been a lot of foolish and ignorant talk about the justice of temporary protection visas. The temporary protection visa which was issued by the Howard government to asylum seekers gave, as its name suggested, those people protection. It gave them a right to stay in Australia for a period of years and if at the end of that period, a three-year period, the circumstances in their country of origin from which those people were fleeing had not improved, so if the peril from which they fled had not abated, they were entitled to renew the temporary protection visa and if on the expiry of that period again the circumstances in their homeland were unimproved they could renew it again. So the temporary protection visa gave to refugees everything that a genuine refugee can legitimately ask for under the refugee convention; that is, protection from persecution in their homeland for as long as the circumstances of that persecution remain. Now I struggle to see what is wrong with that. I struggle to see what is unjust about that. The very definition of a refugee in the refugee convention is a person driven out of their homeland by the justified fear of persecution. A genuine refugee is not a person who leaves their homeland because they want to; a genuine refugee is a person who leaves their homeland because they have to. If you were a genuine refugee who had left your homeland involuntarily and under the threat or fear of persecution, you would want to return home if that fear had gone away—for example, if there were a regime change in your homeland, if militias who were responsible for persecution had been brought under control, or if a change in the political circumstances that caused you to flee from your homeland had gone away, you would want to go home. Everybody wants to be in their own homeland. So a genuine refugee has nothing to fear from a temporary protection visa. If they still face the risk of persecution, they are protected for as long as they need to be. But, if the risk of persecution has disappeared, then they no longer need to seek refuge. Why on earth the government would not adopt this just measure, which complies with the refugee convention and whose only effect is to act as a disincentive to people smugglers, is beyond my comprehension. This has been a bitter debate. The bitterness is in part, no doubt, a product of the frustration that people have felt at the intractable nature of this problem. But at last—way too late in the piece but at last—the government is grasping towards a solution by adopting one of the three elements of the Howard government's demonstrably successful policies. It is not too late, Senator Bob Carr. It is not too late for the government to complete the job and embrace the other two elements of the Howard government's successful policies. But I fear that the half-heartedness that lies at the heart of this Labor government continues to dominate this debate.