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

No amount of shouting from those opposite will change that fact. It will not change the fact that 17,528 people, at least at the end of February, had arrived illegally by boat and were in detention. Since the end of February there have been over 7,500 more who have turned up. So on top of these record figures even more have arrived. And if we go to just in May, we know that there were 2,962 people on Christmas Island. I do not need to remind the government, I suppose, that when they burnt down, and the Australian Federal Police had to retake by force, the facility on Christmas Island there were roughly 2,500 in the facility at that time.

The compounding border failures of this government continue to compound the problems and the impacts that flow from that, which are children getting on boats, children going into detention, and detention centres overcrowding and overloading. The riots and various other things that we have seen that flow as a consequence of those things stem from one key problem: a failure to be able to deliver on the responsibility of a government to protect our borders and ensure proper border security.

Labor is putting the consequences of their failed policies off to the other side of the election, and they did this before at the last election as well. Before the last election, Senator Evans was the minister who failed to act on recommendations and reports, which were coming through his department at the time, that said that more detention capacity needed to be created, and he sat on his hands. It was only after the election that the incoming minister, who was given that hospital pass by Senator Evans, went and, I admit, expanded that network—and we commended him at the time—but it was all too late. The consequences of that stalling before the last election were already set in train, and nothing the government could even do at that stage would be able to take them off the fast train they were on to the crisis that we saw in the immigration detention network, which literally exploded in February, March and April of the following year.

We are seeing the same thing happen again today, because there are currently around 18,255 people who have turned up on boats since 14 August last year and what we do know is the government have not been processing the people that have turned up since that time. So what we have now is a detention population, and a population within the system more broadly, that is growing by the thousands and currently sits around an estimated level of 18,000 to 20,000. I am happy for the government to confirm the numbers and give me a fresh number if they have got one, but by the time we get to an election that number could well be over 30,000 of a backlog in the system, pushing the consequences and responsibilities for dealing with this issue until after an election.

All of this comes at a record cost, and the record cost of this government is spectacular. Since the last election alone, the blow-out in the government's budget—actual figures from the government's budget based on the estimates released in February this year—is $5.2 billion. They said it would cost something just over $1 billion, and it ended up costing, based on the estimates we have at the end of February, $6 billion plus—a $5.2 billion blow-out since the last election. So tonight the Treasurer has the opportunity to be honest in the budget and tell us what the real costs over the next few years will be. If you simply just put into the budget for the next three years what the estimated cost for this year is then the Treasurer has a $5 billion hole in the budget as we speak today. The Treasurer will need to detail tonight whether he is going to budget on this issue on the basis of the coalition's policies that will stop the boats or he is going to budget on the policies of his own government that have failed to stop the boats. If that budget tonight does not come up with at least the $5 billion that is missing currently in the estimates, then he must be budgeting for a change of government, because that is the only way we are going to see a change in those figures.

The budget blow-outs are extraordinary and they are costing Australians every single day. They have led to record chaos more broadly in the immigration department and they have led to the chaos we have seen not just in immigration detention but also in the bridging visa program in the community. We have now seen the government not engage in a policy of community release; we have seen the government engage in a policy of community dumping. This is a government that is dumping people into the community with no care and no responsibility—out of sight, out of mind. It is putting more and more pressure on the charitable organisations that are out there and other service providers who have to step into the gap created by this government.

Do not kid yourself that this government has somehow embarked on this policy of bridging visas out of a sense of compassion. They have embarked on this policy because they cannot cope with the level of arrivals. Not only did the detention network get overrun—they had to let single males out on bridging visas—but now the community detention facilities have been overrun and they are now going to dump families into the same situation we have seen single adult males in over the last 18 months. So it is not surprising that the Salvation Army's Major Paul Moulds has said:

We are stepping into a gap created by the federal government. … These emergency relief services are usually for people who desperately need help here, but what else are we meant to do? What else do you do when a hungry child turns up at your door?

Anthony Thornton, the national president of the St Vincent de Paul Society said:

It is a matter of great sadness for the St Vincent de Paul Society that the federal government is abandoning asylum-seekers to fend for themselves in the community with minimal, or even no, support and no right to work.

They are the comments of the St Vincent de Paul Society.

These are the policies and the consequences that have come as a result of the government's border policy failures. The coalition's alternative has always been there for this government to adopt, and they have used excuse after excuse not to embrace that and they still continue to do that today. That will not change between now and the election, and so the opportunity at the election is to change the government and change the outcome by changing the policy. That is what the Australian people will have the opportunity to do on 14 September.

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