Subjects: Migration Legislation Amendment (Regional Processing Cohort) Bill; Sham Marriages; Newspoll.
E&EO…………………………………………………………………………………………..
JOURNALIST:
Labor is suggesting they might move amendments to this legislation. Have you spoken to them about those or have any idea what they are?
PETER DUTTON:
My understanding is that they are going to go through their Caucus process today. Obviously in the normal course of things the Bill would be provided to the Labor Party today or indeed tomorrow – we provided the Bill to the Labor Party last Friday so that they could properly consider it.
The Bill was very clear and straight forward, that is that we are not going to allow people that seek to come by boat to settle in our country ever and we have used the date of the 19th of July 2013 which was then Prime Minister Rudd's stated date of applicability of that policy and he wanted a start date because he had entered into the arrangement with PNG. That's perfectly sensible and it is essentially putting into law what Kevin Rudd had to say, what Julia Gillard had to say and what Tony Abbott had to say and what Malcolm Turnbull has repeated.
Now it is quite bizarre today to send out Chris Bowen of all people that Bill Shorten would send out to front the media on this issue because Chris Bowen was Australia's most hopeless Immigration Minister. He presided over 25,000 people coming on 400 boats – bearing in mind that 800 people came on 50,000 boats – he was responsible for half of the number of people who came illegally by boats and tragically as we know over Labor's period, including when Mr Bowen was Minister, there were 1,200 men, women and children that drowned at sea.
Now it is unbelievable that they would have the audacity to send Chris Bowen out as the spokesperson on this issue because it shows to me that the Labor Party has lost control of their internal dynamics. Once again on border protection policy the Left has got control over the sensible Right and Mr Shorten obviously has lost out to the crazy Left within the Labor Party.
JOURNALIST:
If Labor doesn't support it as is, how confident are you that you will convince the crossbenches to vote?
PETER DUTTON:
I am confident that we can get this Bill through the Parliament because it's sensible. It's sensible and it is measured. It has Ministerial Intervention for the cases that Mr Shorten talks about in 40 years' time for goodness sake. I mean that is just a nonsense red herring.
The problem is with us now and if Labor don't get the fundamental issue that this problem of people smuggling has not gone away, then it shows that they have not learnt one lesson since the time that Mr Bowen was Minister and 25,000 people came on 400 boats. I mean the problem has not gone away.
Germany is having a look at implementing the exact policy that we've got that has worked successfully over the course of the last three years. We have closed 17 detention centres and we have taken 2,000 children out of detention and my priority now is to get family units off Nauru and the rest of the people off Nauru and Manus, but I can only do that if people are willing to accept that arrangement, to go to that third country. So Mr Shorten telling Insiders on Sunday that, 'oh we'll just send these people back,' is a nonsense and it shows the fundamental misunderstanding of the problem.
But at the core of Labor's difficulty now is if they are arguing to the Australian people, as Ms Plibersek and Mr Albanese and Mr Bowen it seems have done in the last 12 hours or so, if their argument is that look there's no problem here, the boats are not going to restart, that people smugglers have somehow gone to another line of business, then it shows that they have not learnt one lesson of the failure of their years in government.
JOURNALIST:
What deterrent could this law send that the policy simply couldn't?
PETER DUTTON:
Because at the moment when you speak to people, particularly…I'll give you the example of an Iranian male who has been found not to be a refugee. The Iranian Government policy is that they will take people back if it is on a voluntary basis, but they will not issue travel documents, they will not accept that person back to Iran in any circumstance if it is not done voluntarily. Now so of course that Iranian male who is in Manus or Nauru at the moment will say, 'well look I am not going to accept the $10,000 that you are offering me, I am not going to accept the support that you are offering to provide to help my family establish a business or to get accommodation or education in Tehran.'
So the difficulty [inaudible] to compound that, they then say, 'well look you know we have got this article here from The Guardian or from the ABC or this Tweet or this Facebook post from an advocate saying don't negotiate, they know they can't send you back to Iran, eventually you will come to Australia,' that's the problem that we face.
Now there are other reasons for the implementation of this Bill and that is that the Government's been very clear that we have been in negotiation with third countries for a long period of time and we are going to land a deal. We are going to provide third country options because I don't want to see people on Nauru and Manus, but the problem at the moment is, they can say, 'no eventually we believe that your policy will fold and we'll come to Australia.'
This puts into black letter law the words of Kevin Rudd, the intent of Bill Shorten I thought at the last election when he said to the Australian public that apart from Temporary Protection Visas his policy was exactly the same as ours. And if he wants people smugglers to get back into business well that's an issue for Bill Shorten, but we are not going to allow the vacancies that we've created by closing 17 detention centres to be refilled by new arrivals and I am not going to – I can tell you this much – I am not going to allow people to drown at sea during my period as Minister in this portfolio.
I work every day to make sure that we stop those boats, but 14,000 that are in Indonesia will hop on boats tomorrow and if people get through on boats. Let me promise you that if they think the door to Europe is closed or it is more difficult to get in then they will trek in their tens or hundreds of thousands through Indonesia to get here and if the Labor Party wants to pretend to the Australian people that this problem has gone away, the Australian people know that Bill Shorten has no idea what he is talking about.
JOURNALIST:
Do you agree with Russell Broadbent that some in the Coalition are cuddling up to the 'Hansonites'?
PETER DUTTON:
Look, I haven't seen those reports and I don't have any comment to make in relation to it.
JOURNALIST:
Just to clarify, is there a clause or a component within this law that would allow the Government to force that man, that Iranian that you spoke of, back to his country?
PETER DUTTON:
You can't force people back if you've got no travel documents being issued by the host country. I mean that's the reality of the situation.
JOURNALIST:
But you were indicating that this might change his circumstance.
PETER DUTTON:
No his circumstance changes because if he has a third country option to go to then that's the option that will be available. And if we offer a reasonable third country option to people, I can assure you those people will not be coming to this country because the best advice that I can get from people who actually know what they are doing – as opposed to the Labor Party and the advocates in this space – if we allow people to come to this country and the people smugglers can say, 'look you know, see, we told you, hold it out for a couple of years and you'll end up in Australia,' people will drown at sea again and we are not going to allow that to happen.
JOURNALIST:
Minister you refer to a deal, we've been waiting for a deal for a very long time, when is this deal coming?
PETER DUTTON:
Well we've had a problem that we inherited from Labor. Labor put these people on Nauru and Manus, Labor put in place polices where 1200 people drowned at sea. Let's deal with the facts in relation to this matter; we are cleaning up Labor's mess. Labor entered into an agreement in July of 2013 with PNG that provided that if people were found to be owed protection they would stay in PNG, that's not an agreement that we signed or negotiated, it was signed by Labor and Mr Shorten was in that Cabinet.
If Mr Shorten wants to pretend that somehow there's another policy that applies or just send them home, it just shows that he doesn't get it. And it shows that he is not with the leadership ability to govern on this very important national security issue.
JOURNALIST:
….[inaudible]….are we talking before the end of the year?
PETER DUTTON:
Look at the lessons of history here. The lessons of history indicate...that Labor with East Timor, which is a third country and their proposed deal with Malaysia, again a third country, they were completely botched deals because the timing of the announcement was wrong. The negotiations were poorly handled and the outcomes were unimplementable.
And so any arrangement that we are able to negotiate will be done in a timetable which is in the national interest and we will make an announcement when we have the right time to make that announcement.
But at the moment, at the moment,… well I can tell you what's happening with Malaysia at the moment, we've accepted the people from Malaysia in the deal that Labor signed up, but no one's gone to Malaysia so the people swap really was a complete dud that was negotiated under Julia Gillard and all you can do is deal with the facts of this that Labor have not presided over anything, but a mess and we are cleaning up Labor's mess.
I want to get people off Nauru and Manus, but I'm going to do it in a way that provides a third country outcome, it won't provide an outcome in Australia and it will be structured in such a way that we are not going to allow people smugglers to use a propaganda message to allow innocent men, women and children to again get on boats because I'm not going to have the vacancies that we create filled by new arrivals. I've been very clear about that.
JOURNALIST:
Is your Department aware of the reports that refugees on Manus Island have married female staffers and if the Department is aware, what are they doing about that?
PETER DUTTON:
I've seen those media reports and I've seen some reports otherwise which I won't speak about in relation to individual cases, but it is obvious that some people are – obviously well intentioned in their own mind – but entering into sham arrangements to try to provide for a visa outcome, to provide a spousal visa outcome for people off Manus or Nauru to come to Australia and its completely unacceptable and this Government won't tolerate the law being subverted, we're not going to allow the system to be gamed because that is unfair on others who are waiting in queues.
We're bringing in a record number of refugees each year, we are doing that the right way, but we are not going to allow the process to be subverted and we're not going to allow people smugglers and others to somehow find a backdoor way of coming into Australia.
We're not going to allow people who have sought to come by boat to come to Australia through a backdoor and we are not going to allow sham marriages to facilitate that.
JOURNALIST:
Why is Labor six points ahead in the latest Newspoll? What's the Government doing wrong?
PETER DUTTON:
Look we're two and a half years away from an election and people can make judgements over the course of the period of the next two and a half years as to who should lead this country.
What I'm concentrating on at the moment is my area of responsibility. I don't want Labor to get back into government because people would again arrive by boat, they would lose control of our borders and people would drown at sea and I think that's a policy that the Australian people voted against when Ms Gillard and Mr Rudd were leaders of the Labor Party and frankly I'm sorry to say it's obvious now that Mr Shorten deceived the people at the last election when he pretended to them that he had a policy on border protection that was the same as ours.
JOURNALIST:
…[inaudible]…this poll comes after you announced your visa ban doesn't that suggest that people don't like…[inaudible]….
PETER DUTTON:
Well I've dealt with that issue.
JOURNALIST:
Minister that policy hasn't actually changed though, just because they don't support this piece of legislation their policy still stands.
PETER DUTTON:
No, their policy is a shambles. There are three ways in which our policy works it includes Temporary Protection Visas – they propose to abolish Temporary Protection Visas. So if people make it to the mainland including get close to the mainland then they're here for good. So Labor's policy is completely and utterly a dud and by sending out Chris Bowen this morning, the Minister was the most unsuccessful, biggest failure, as Immigration Minister since Federation; it demonstrates that Labor hasn't learnt the lessons from those failed years and I'm sorry to say that Mr Shorten thought that he had the Left contained by offering up the change on Temporary Protection Visas in the run-up to the last election, by saying that 'oh well we'll still keep regional processing centres and we'll still keep turnbacks as our policy.' He only stitched that deal up because the CMFEU did a trade off with him otherwise he wouldn't have had the numbers at the conference last year.
The amazing thing for Bill Shorten is that he's had 26 members go out and oppose this policy before Mr Shorten uttered a word and it shows that Mr Shorten does not have control of his party when it comes to this important national security issue and it's why Bill Shorten demonstrates again today that he cannot be trusted with border policy in this country.
Thanks very much.
[ends]
