Ann Sudmalis (Gilmore, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

My question is to the Minister for Immigration and Border Protection on something that concerns us all. Will the minister update the House on the implementation of the government's full suite of border protection policies and on any impediments that the government has faced in implementing these policies?

Scott Morrison (Cook, Liberal Party, Minister for Immigration and Border Protection) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I thank the member for Gilmore for her question because she knows that, when this government was elected, we had two very big problems. The first one was that boats were arriving with people at the rate of over 1,500 people per month. That is what we inherited when we came to government. In addition to that, the previous government had left 30,000 people here, onshore, of which more than 23,000, who had arrived after August 2012, had not been processed at all.

We have been doing what we said we would do, and we have been getting the results we said we would get. Fewer people have arrived under this government. Fewer people have arrived illegally by boat under this government than the actual number of ventures that occurred under the previous government over the same period of time. There were 157 people on just one venture this year, and 270-odd ventures themselves with people crammed onto them, boat after boat after boat.

We have continued the offshore processing policy that those opposite, when they were in government, had to be dragged kicking and screaming to. On turnbacks, we implemented the turnback policy which they said could never work and could never be done. When they see the results of that policy staring them in the face they cannot support it now. The people of Australia know that, if they cannot support turnbacks now after the results they have seen, they will never support them and they can never be trusted to put them in place.

Also there are temporary protection visas and denying permanent visas to those who have arrived illegally by boat. Despite the opposition of Labor and the Greens to temporary protection visas we have continued to deny permanent visas to those who have come illegally by boat. It is interesting to note that over the five years after they abolished temporary protection visas just 150 people decided voluntarily to go home. But in just 12 months when we were denying permanent visas more than 400 people decided to go home—an increase more than 13-fold.

There is another benefit of TPVs which means that we can get on with the processing, because we have a product at the end which is not a permanent visa in Australia to reward the people smugglers and the promise they made to those who came on the boats. In addition it provides an alternative to the policy that we currently have to deal with the post 19 July arrivals and the, around, 500 children that are affected by that which would see them go from the mainland to Nauru. At present, as those opposite seem to be suggesting, they should be brought onshore and given permanent visas. That would compromise our border protection policies and would see the boats come again.

Fortunately, those on the crossbench are interested in looking at temporary protection visas because they know that they provide an alternative.

Mr Burke interjecting—

The member for Watson says that this cannot be done, but it is clear that the Labor muppets are not just in the Senate; it is a whole muppet show across that bench.