Scott Morrison (Cook, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Immigration and Citizenship) Share this | Hansard source

The Treasurer will get to his feet tonight and engage in what can only be described as another act of fiscal fantasy. Such will be the fictional nature of what the Treasurer will say tonight that I suggest that he begins his budget speech with the phrase 'Once upon a time …'. What will be true about tonight's revelations by the Treasurer is that while Labor's record failures on our borders mean that they have not been able to stop the boats those record failures under this Treasurer have, however, ensured that they have been able to stop a surplus.

Labor's record border failures have no peer. That is why they are records. This afternoon there is an opportunity to go through in some detail the nature of those border failures, which are entirely an act of this government's own making. What is important is to understand the impacts and consequences of this record level of failure.

Under this government, what we have seen occur in the short space of time of just five years is an average of two people illegally entering Australia by boat every month in 2007-08 expand this financial year to an average of over 2,000 per month. From two per month to over 2,000 per month: that is an extraordinary act of growth on this government in terms of the border failures that we have seen—it is absolutely extraordinary. It is important to note that, over this period of time, what we have seen is a constancy in the level of pressures that have been brought to bear. As we all know, push factors are, sadly, a tragedy that is always present. What changes is government policy that enables the border failures to present as they have under this government. So we have gone from an average of two per month to over 2,000 per month. And just this year we have set two monthly records. In March we had a record of over 2,500. In April we had a record of over 3,300. And in May, in just less than 10 days, we have had over 1,500 people arrive in this manner. We had a record last financial year, 2011-12, of 8,300 people arrive, and more; but this financial year we have had a record of 20,861 people arrive in this manner—and we are not even at the end of the year yet.

What we also note is one of the other records this government achieved in 2011-12—the 2012-13 figures will be released at some time. I will refer here to the Parliamentary Library publication which refers to IMA refugee status determination requests received—that is, those who have arrived by boat. In 2011-12 the figure for those who came by boat was 7,379. For those who came by air, it was 7,036. For the first time, in 2011-12, more people came by boat than came by air, according to the Parliamentary Library and the Department of Immigration and Citizenship. That was at a time when the arrivals for that year were 8,300. This year they are almost 21,000, and we are not even at the end of the year, so one can only imagine the disparity between the figures.

That is the record, but what has been the impact? This government, while in government and in opposition, always took the opportunity to lecture the coalition side of politics on the morality of their policies. One area in particular where it was particularly keen to talk about the impact of the Howard government's policies was the impact on children. But this government's record, because of these record arrivals, is that more children are turning up on boats than at any other time in our nation's history. In this financial year alone, more than 3,000 children have come on the boats. That is up on around 2,000 in the year before that and around 1,000 the year before that. It is estimated that around 40 per cent of those coming on boats now are in family groups. In addition, we have more than 2,000 children who are in the detention network as we speak and over 1,000 of those are in formal detention itself. The previous peak was back in 2000-01, which was under the Howard government, and it was 1,344.

The government have set the record for children coming on boats, flowing as a consequence from their failed policies. So their lecturing and their hectoring of the Howard government over our border policies and their impact on children is dumbfounded by their own record. They should be ashamed of themselves, with their grand acts of pretence to compassion. Their policies have put those children on boats for years, and now in record numbers. They should be aware of their own record of failures and of the impact: when you fail on the borders, children and families get on boats. That has occurred in record numbers under the government.

It was the Prime Minister herself in 2010 and the former minister, Minister Bowen, who said they were going to remove children out of formal detention. There were about 750 in detention at that time. Today there are more than a thousand. She said:

We did not believe that children should be held … in high-security detention … And so, we have worked to have more appropriate accommodation for family groups and for children.

What that turns out to be is more children now in formal detention and, if that is not enough, they have just announced they are going to build more facilities at Curtin and at Wickham Point to take more children into formal detention and, as the minister himself has said, for a period of around 120 days. That is the consequence, the implications and the impact of the government's failed border policies. The hypocrisy is breathtaking. If they are going to make those accusations and criticisms of the Howard government policy then it is time to look in the mirror of their own policy record and policy failings.

The record detention population today is a result of the record level of arrivals. We had four people in immigration detention who had arrived illegally by boat in November 2007. Today? I should say at the end of February, because the government have not released the figures since the end of February, but there were 7,528 at the end of February and another 10,000 on top of that who are on bridging visas.

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