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The crisis on our borders is just getting worse. This is a government which has completely lost control of our borders, and as we saw earlier this month, with six boats in six days this government has no answers, no answers whatsoever to the deepening crisis.

 

Now, the essential problem is that this government’s policies have given the people smugglers the perfect business model. Now, we in the Coalition want to reintroduce the policies that have been proven to work and to refresh your memory, essentially they are: rigorous offshore processing at Nauru, temporary protection visas so that the people smugglers don’t have a product to sell and the option of turning boats around where it’s safe to do so. But today Scott Morrison and I announce three enhancements that would immediately be put in place by an incoming Coalition government.

 

First, there would be a strong presumption that illegal boat people who have destroyed their documents not be given refugee status. Second, the minister would exercise the right to appeal against affirmative decisions, an existing right which has never been exercised under this government, and third, we would establish an integrity commissioner who would report every six months to the Minister on what is happening to the processing success rates, because what’s happening now is that effectively 90 per cent of people who arrive illegally by boat are given a successful outcome. Effectively, in this country, the people smugglers are able to deliver on their promises. Now, other countries have much heavier rates of rejection. We want to know why this is and the integrity commissioner would there to ensure that our system was working properly.

 

I want to say what an outstanding job the Shadow Minister Scott Morrison has done on the border protection issue and Scott, over to you.

 

 

Thanks very much Tony. Labor has trashed confidence in our immigration programme because they’ve lost control of our borders. Confidence in our immigration programme is critical to the success of that programme and that’s why Tony and I and the Coalition are just so committed to getting these controls back in place.

 

The amazing adventures of ‘Captain Emad’ have only highlighted the end-to-end farce that is happening on our borders and there remain very serious questions for the Government to answer, in particular, Minister Bowen, when you have a situation where the Australian Federal Police have known about this individual for two years, yet it seems that Minister Bowen only found out when the programme went to air on Four Corners on Monday night.  So Minister is still yet to answer the question, when did he find out about ‘Captain Emad’ being an alleged people smuggler on his books?

 

These circumstances highlight again the problems that we have with the integrity of this process. We have a situation where alleged people smugglers can find their way in and then we can’t stop them from finding their way out, which, I think all Australians just shake their head in amazement, as the Indonesian Government has expressed also, this week.

 

Now, there are two issues. First of all, we’ve got 90 per cent of people turning up in this country who arrive on illegal boats without any documentation at all and those who indicate that they have come into Indonesia or Malaysia by plane in almost all cases, they are found not to have documents when they turn up in Australia. The second issue is, is we have a rate of acceptance, as Tony has just outlined, which is extremely high by international standards and extremely high in comparison to those who arrived on planes with documents and these discrepancies, I think, are undermining the people’s confidence in this country about the integrity of this process and we have to restore the integrity of that process and that’s what these measures are designed to do. Otherwise you simply have a system where I think the perception can be created that this government is just basically ticking and flicking people through the process in order to try and remove another headache of their own making, which is the record rate of arrivals coming into Australia, the $4.7 billion blow-out on this process, chaos in our detention network and so on.

 

So the measures Tony outlined are using existing powers. Section 91W of the Act enables the Minister to form a unfavourable view about someone’s identity and status and citizenship. That power can take the form of a directive which would instruct assessors that where, they believe, someone has destroyed their documents, then they will be able to presume against refugee status in those cases. Secondly, as Tony said, the Minister would be in a position to exercise his own calling powers, his own appeal powers, to ensure that yes’s are checked, not just no’s. Under our current system, no’s are checked by the appeal process by applicants but yes’s never get checked and it’s important that we have some balance in the system to ensure yes’s come under scrutinies, not just no’s and that leads to the role of the integrity commissioner. The integrity commissioner will do a comprehensive analysis of these decisions, both the initial decision and on the appeal decision where there is a review decision in place, so we can have confidence that if someone is accepted as a refugee in this country, they are fair dinkum refugees and a government can say to the Australian people that these claims are fair dinkum, and at the moment, I don’t think Australians have that confidence with this government.

 

So these measures combined with the measures that Tony has already outlined and we’ve outlined on many occasions will restore integrity in the process, will restore control of the borders and will restore public confidence in our very important immigration programme.

 

 

Ok, do we have any questions?

 

You’re saying that there are a lot of people who are arriving in Indonesia and Malaysia by plane and then coming on here in boats. How can you back that up? What numbers do you have for that?

 

 

Well, everyone who comes to Indonesia from Iran, Pakistan, Afghanistan, normally comes by plane. That’s the way it normally happens. Now, if you arrive in Indonesia or Malaysia by plane you have documents. You are not allowed to board a plane without documents. You’re not normally allowed to get through customs at an airport without documents, so the vast majority of the people who get on boats to come to Australia had documents before they got on the boats and if our people, our officials think that those documents have been destroyed, henceforth under a Coalition government, there will be a strong presumption against granting refugee status.

But it doesn’t necessarily follow that just because there are people arriving in Indonesia and Malaysia with documents that they’re the ones getting on the boats. What evidence do you have? What numbers do you actually have with the people coming here and people who actually had that documentation because they initially arrived by plane in Asia?

 

Well, it’s the evidence of officials at Senate Estimates over numerous hearings, and these hearings go back now over several years and I’d refer you to Mr Moorhouse’s own evidence at the more recent hearings and what that evidence showed is that around 99 per cent of people who turned up in Australia and said they’d arrived on a plane in Indonesia had no documents when they arrived in Australia. Now, that’s the evidence provided by officials and the evidence provided by officials at countless estimates hearings under the questioning of Senator Cash has been that they are aware that documentation is thrown away. Now, on occasion, that’s at the instruction of the people smugglers, on occasions it’s at their own initiative. But that is the evidence before the Senate.

 

You do know those documents are usually fake? They travel on fake documents to get there. We know that, that’s established as well.

 

Well, there are fake documents and there are real documents and the point here is, the most important document a genuine refugee would have is documentation which tells us who they are. That information is gold to a refugee, it’s the most precious thing that they have because it proves their claim. Now, what I don’t think Australians will put up with is when we have situations where – and the ‘Captain Emad’ saga proves this – where we had someone who came into the country and the AFP and the Indonesian authorities clearly know about this fellow, and his family came in earlier and said that ‘Captain Emad’ was dead. Now, clearly people are putting stories over on our officials, and they need to get a strong message that the Australian public are not going to be mugs and the Australian Government is not going to have a system which allows them to be played for mugs.

 

Do you think that the AFP’s activities with people smugglers needs to be investigated?  Might have been paying informants, involved in people smuggling themselves?

 

 

Look, we strongly support the police. We believe that the police are doing a good job under difficult circumstances. More than $200 million has been cut from border protection agencies’ funding under this government, most significantly from the AFP and is it any wonder, then, with funding cuts and with evidence of weakness on the part of government, that these sorts of things happen? But I don’t hold the police responsible for the disaster on our borders, I hold the Government responsible for the disaster on our borders.

Back to the issue of paperwork, surely if there was an easy way to tell the difference between people who’ve thrown their documentation away and people who genuinely didn’t have it, surely we’d already be doing that. I mean, isn’t it quite hard?

 

 

There is no evidence, none, that this government is taking seriously the problem. There is no evidence whatsoever that this government is saying to these illegal arrivals, ‘If you don’t have your documentation, if you have destroyed your documentation, it will go ill with you’. Now, we, an incoming Coalition government, on day one, will be putting in place these three important enhancements and it’s very important that a strong message goes out to people smugglers and their potential clients: if you don’t have documents, well, if you destroy your documents, there will be a presumption against refugee status.

 

Your saying that it’s so easy and that it’s a tick-and-flick system would be highly offensive to the case managers in immigration who work flat out trying to assess these very complicated assessments. They would be terribly, terribly dismissive of your tick-and-flick allegation.

 

And the very least we can do is to support their work by saying if people don’t turn up with documents, if there’s evidence that people have destroyed documents, well, then there’s a presumption against refugee status. We want to support the work of the assessors. We want to support the work of our border protection agencies. We want to make it easier for them in the difficult circumstances they find themselves, and insisting that people have got to come with the documentation that they’ve got is a very good way to help them.

 

[Inaudible] often they don’t have documentation, that they don’t know whether their relatives are alive or dead until they turn up in another country. I mean, it is the nature of fleeing your homeland that you might not have documentation.

 

Well, and that point is acknowledged in the policy document which we’re releasing today but this is the difference: this government has not given our assessors the support they need through a directive under Section 91W of the Migration Act, to allow them to do anything other than what they’re doing now, which is to give the benefit of the doubt. They have no back up. If they actually form the view – and many have – that documentation has been deliberately destroyed to frustrate their assessment, then this minister and the one before him gave them no back up to ensure that they could presume against refugee status under the powers he has. See, Minister Bowen will always give you an excuse for what he can’t do, or won’t do, but he’ll never give you an answer and I’m sure today Minister Bowen will give you plenty of excuses, but he won’t give you an answer, just like he won’t answer when he found out about Captain Emad.

Can we just go back to this documentation and how you’re actually going to prove that it’s been destroyed? What sort of feedback have you got from officials to say this is what you can do to prove that it’s destroyed?

 

The evidence already before the Senate is that officials already know that there are cases where documentation has been destroyed. That is the evidence from entry interviews that are undertaken when people arrive at Christmas Island. There is already a process and it’s quite a rigorous process and they are able to form a reasonable judgement. Now, this is the advice, this is already coming through the system. It won’t be in every case, but what this will do is send a very clear message: if you have documentation, hold onto it because if you don’t, we won’t be played for mugs.

 

 

And let’s make it absolutely crystal clear because there seems to be some doubt in this room, the vast majority of people who get on boats to Australia illegally arrive by air in Malaysia or Indonesia. You cannot get on a plane without documents. You are not admitted into a country from a plane without documents. The vast majority of people who get on a boat to come to Australia illegally, they have documents. When they get to Australia, the vast majority of them don’t have documents. Now, the clear message that we are giving today is that if you don’t have documents, if there’s evidence that you have destroyed the document, well then there will be a strong presumption against getting refugee status. Now, we want to let the people smugglers and their clients know that the Australian people and the Australian Government will not be played for mugs as we have been so often over the last few years under the current government.

As that’s going on in Indonesia and Malaysia and not Nauru, why don’t you just agree to the Malaysia Solution, because that would send that message very clearly?

 

 

Well, if the Government really wants Malaysia they have a clear option available to them: declare that this is a matter of confidence in the Government and demand that their Green Coalition partners support it. If they want Malaysia, they can get it. The only reason they don’t take that step is because they know in their hearts that this is a dud deal for our country, as well as being a cruel deal for boat people.

How far does this unfavourable view of people’s identity go? I mean, will assessors be told to basically disbelieve, reject people without documents, even if, say, someone turns up saying they’re an Afghan refugee and they can only speak Hazaragi, are they to be disbelieved?

Well, we want our assessors to do the best professional job, but we will be using existing powers under the Act, powers that a fair dinkum government would have used long ago, to say to the assessors that if you reasonably believe that these people had documents, now don’t have them – that is to say, have destroyed the documents – well, then there’s a strong presumption against the granting of refugee status. Simple as that.

 

 

[Inaudible]

 

Scott?

 

I didn’t hear the question.

 

 

Will that be open to judicial review, like all these other decisions?

SCOTT MORRISON:

 

Well all the decisions under the current government’s process, which now go to the RRT and then onto appeals to the Federal Court, I mean, those arrangements will be in place for people who are existing in the country and going through that system, if we’re successful at the next election. So those normal procedures would apply. But it’s important to understand here that the powers of Section 91W may leave an assessor in a position where they’re in no position to make any finding at all and it may mean that further time will be required for that person to establish their identity and to prove their identity. So the outcome here would be that at the moment, what you’d get is a presumption in favour of status, a best guess, a benefit of the doubt for someone who’s thrown away their documentation. Under our policy, the best outcome would be a no decision at all or a negative decision and when a decision is ultimately made, then the normal processes would apply to that decision.

 

 

Scott, you actually mentioned a lot of this back in April 2010, your concerns about the presumption of innocence, I guess, when people come into the country without documents. So, I mean, what kind of work have you done since April 2010 to now, to make you announce this policy?

Well elements of this I have referred to before, as you rightly say. The other elements that I’ve added today with Tony is the integrity commissioner, which is a new announcement today, and the Section 91W concerns and the need to enforce those powers and give our assessors the benefit of those powers is only reinforced by the evidence which we’ve continued to receive in Senate Estimates since the last election, but also the detention inquiry that the Coalition established which also highlighted these problems. This problem is getting worse under Julia Gillard, not better, and she promised the Australian people before the last election that she would end the people smugglers’ business model. She’s supercharged it, and these are the sorts of remedies that I think the Australian people expect to be in place which this Minister and this Prime Minister have refused to put in place.

 

 

You say you’re concerned about the 80-90 per cent, the high acceptance rate, but I’m happy to be corrected on this, but surely the acceptance rates proportionately were as high under Coalition governments and it’s just the number of arrivals that’s gone up. If this is just a departmental change, I mean, weren’t the numbers just as high, the proportions just as high under a Coalition government?

 

 

Well I’ll ask Scott to add to this answer but the fact is, it is surely significant that the arrivals have shot up under this government. I mean, that’s the whole point. This government has given the people smugglers a model. This government has put the people smugglers back into business. The Howard Government, as we know, found a problem and crafted a solution. The current government inherited a solution and created a problem. I mean, that is the fundamental fact here. We did not have a people smuggling problem between 2002 and 2007. This government, in 2008, decided that it couldn’t leave well enough alone, it had to boast about its compassion credentials, it closed down the Pacific Solution and in so doing, it put the people smugglers back into business.

 

Now, everything this government has tried has failed because the things that this government won’t try are the things that have been proven to work, essentially: temporary protection visas, rigorous offshore processing at Nauru and the option of turning boats around. We will restore the policies that have worked, but Scott and I are here today to announce these three important enhancements that would operate from day one under a Coalition government.

 

Just specifically on the point, 30 per cent of those who went through the Pacific Solution went home. There were four people in detention, in the system, when we left office in 2007, who’d arrived by boat. Those figures now in the system are well over 7,000 and even if your assertion was correct, 90 per cent of nothing is still nothing, 90 per cent of 7,000 is a very big number.

 

 

Thank you.

[ends]