Mr CADMAN (10:52 AM) —I rise to speak on the Migration Legislation Amendment (Immigration Detainees) Bill (No. 2) 2001. I am appalled at what I have heard, because it seems that the Australian Labor Party is advancing the argument that we will accept anybody who hits our shores as a refugee.

Mr CADMAN —You called them refugees. The honourable member called them refugees in the generic sense. They are not refugees; they are illegal immigrants until their refugee status is established. The only logical way to deal with the vast, difficult, worldwide problem of refugees, of whom there are 100 million, is to systematically approach the process through the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees and to have an orderly program. If you give comfort to people who jump on a boat and hit Australia's shores and who throw away their documentation before they arrive so that their status cannot be established, you are asking for problems. I would like to hear compassion from the Australian Labor Party, but with some rigour in the way in which they intend to administer the programs. There appears to be a willingness to give comfort to those who have arrived. I will give comfort to the circumstances of those who are living in conditions similar to those from which they have fled, but I cannot give comfort to some of the actions or processes that so-called refugees have adopted in seeking to gain entry into Australia. The member for Sydney used the plural term `guards' who had been charged while looking after illegal immigrants waiting to be assessed. There was one case only. There are no allegations. Only one case has hit the court.

Ms Plibersek —Who held him down when he was assaulted?

Mr CADMAN —If there are allegations, take them to court. Tell your friends to go to court, and the court will hear the case in detail. I know of people who have been convicted of all sorts of activities, including incitement to kill guards, to destroy property and to riot. The court transcripts and the judges' and magistrates' decisions, which are available to the honourable member, show the conduct of some of the people in the camps. We cannot condone strongarm tactics being adopted by people who are trying to use the processes of Australian law to stay here, whether or not they are eligible. There was a recent case—I have read the transcript—involving a person from Jordan, who was rejected as a refugee not on one occasion but on three occasions. He has gone through all the forums and tribunals that we have established to impartially assess situations. In court, he acknowledged that he had taken a piece of glass from a window that he had broken and held it through the wire at one of the guards and said, `I will kill you.' Those are desperate efforts and they should be dealt with firmly.

The member for Sydney nods her head, but she gave no indication that there should be a process to deal with such conduct. Instead, she said that we should release people into the streets because 98 per cent of them are found to be refugees. The honourable member knows that to conduct any sensible refugee program we need a case by case assessment of whether they are genuine refugees. The honourable member should have gone on some committee investigations of detainee centres, as her colleague Senator McKiernan did. Many members who present reports in this place and who claim to have an expert point of view have never visited the centres to interview personnel or to see conditions for themselves. Senator McKiernan did—he went to every one of them. He visited refugee camps overseas. The honourable member and the Australian Labor Party, including the shadow minister, should read Senator McKiernan's report. He has fairly established what the accurate situation is. But no, they choose to ignore that process and the facts of the matter and choose to give comfort to people who must be classified as illegal immigrants or illegal non-citizens until their refugee status is established.

The process of establishing refugee status can be long and complex, but, typically, Australia—generous and almost soft-hearted and soft-headed—gives open access to court appeal after court appeal and tribunal after tribunal. The Jordanian whom I mentioned, who was charged with threats and damage to property and who first entered Australia in December 2000, had his case heard within 64 days and was ready to leave. Most of them, if you can establish whether they are genuine, can have their cases heard quickly. The generosity of the Australian legal system gives them opportunities for appeal after appeal if they feel aggrieved. That Jordanian was found to be a non-refugee, and that is the case with many people who have lingered here. They think that by force, disruption and even the abuse of their families and the people around them, they can convince the Australian authorities and the minister that they should stay. That is inappropriate and it needs to be dealt with. It would be no different if the Australian Labor Party were in government. They would take decisions similar to those being taken by Philip Ruddock. I commend the minister. He is one of the most compassionate people in this parliament. He knows what is going on in the camps. The honourable member may be on committees and she may have visited the centres, but I doubt it. She did not say that she had visited the centres. I have visited the centres, both here and overseas. As Senator McKiernan has indicated, the centres are operated in a way that is appropriate for the conduct of the people within them.

We have moved past the time when we could have open gates and people could come and go as they want and have somewhere to sleep. If you are going to use threats, intimidation and destruction of property as one of the arguments for refugee status, that is not an argument that many courts will hear, and that is not an argument this parliament should listen to. It is not an argument any democracy should stand for, because the result is that the one who shouts the loudest and has the greatest number of weapons wins their case. The poor, the disregarded and the derelict are the ones who lose out. The ones with the loudest voices and the physically strongest will win the argument— not the women and children that you appealed for.

Let us get to the facts on refugees. Any member of this House who has talked to a refugee will know that one of the most valued assets a refugee has is their identification. Any refugee out of Europe, southern Europe, Asia or the Middle East has identification. They have identification to establish their circumstances, who their family is, their station in life, their professional status, and whether or not their refugee status can be traced to country of origin. Any refugee would rather perish than let go their identification. That is their only link with a legitimate escape from a regime that is seeking to destroy them. In so many cases of people who have hit Australian shores, they have thrown away their ID before they got here, to try to make it harder for the Australian authorities to establish who they are and where they have come from. The honourable member for Sydney shakes her head, but those are the facts. If she wants to argue about these things, she needs to investigate whether people are throwing away their ID before they get to Australia and whether they are seeking to convince the Australian authorities, by invention rather than fact, that they are refugees. Let me assure you: Australia's compassionate acceptance of refugees, proudly established by this party against the wishes of the Australian Labor Party—

Mr CADMAN —You were not in this parliament; you did not understand the processes. It was Malcolm Fraser and the Liberal Party who said, `We will take Vietnamese refugees.' We took refugees from South America and everywhere else. The honourable member really does not understand the compassion exercised by coalition governments over a long period of time, despite the opposition of people like Bob Hawke in the ACTU, and others.

Let us get to the facts that are being ignored. A refugee's most valuable possession when fleeing a country is their ID. If they throw away their ID, they are seeking to mislead Australian authorities. Under those circumstances, I do not believe they can be considered as refugees. Why should we spend endless hours and legal expense trying to establish for a person whether they are a refugee or not? If they have chosen to get rid of their identification—the single most important thing a refugee can keep; even more important than clothing and food—I believe they are seeking to falsify their entry and they should be rejected on those grounds.

The minister has found it necessary to introduce this bill because of the riots in detention centres, the hidden weapons, and because of the way people who were being given the hospitality of Australia have conducted themselves to make a political point. It has nothing to do with refugee status; it is purely about making a political point. They want to appeal to people and to have Australia condemned for providing humane conditions. Australia is one of the few refugee countries in the world. This bill will introduce powers to strip search immigration detainees, and it will introduce search powers in state and territory legislation for immigration detainees held in state or territory prisons or on remand. In his speech, the minister says:

So an officer can have a suspicion that weapons are concealed but they cannot ask a person to reveal what is in their hand, a pocket, a piece of clothing, or something else they may be carrying. There are serious repercussions for officers of the Department of Immigration and Multicultural Affairs and for those responsible for the care of detainees.

I referred briefly to the case of one man, but I have also looked at reports provided by magistrates about cases that they have heard after riots in detention centres. In one instance, I believe in Curtin, the magistrate commented that the nature and circumstances of the riot were frightening and at the high end of the scale, and it lasted for 30 minutes. ACM officers were subjected to a violent barrage of projectiles, they were injured, and $180,000 worth of damage was done to property. The magistrate said it was only fair to conclude that, should an officer have been felled, they would have been seriously injured or killed. Only six kits were available for protection of the officers, and they were not equipped. That is the nature of Australia: we are not equipped to deal with that ferocity, and neither were the people at the detention centre. They were not equipped to handle the ferocity of the riots.

Mr Brough —They should not have to be.

Mr CADMAN —My colleague is right: they should not have to be. There was also a case of a woman who entered a not guilty plea. In the magistrate's findings on her conduct, he said that she was worse than either of the other two rioters he had previously sentenced in that, in addition to committing violence, she had encouraged others to violence. This encouragement was continuous. It was not one-off or isolated. He believed that she was culpable and that she was heard many times by several witnesses to shout `ACM Mafia' and `ACM Nazi', and had participated with several other residents who had teamed together to break up concrete and throw it at officers. There was nothing mitigating in these circumstances, which the magistrate said were `grave and of the worst type' and for which sentences near or at the maximum were imposed by the magistrate. The lady in question showed no remorse or contrition. The magistrate found that this woman in particular hates ACM staff. He said that her intention was clearly to injure officers, at the very least. She and others needed to be deterred from such actions. The deterrent aspects of the sentence were particularly important. She needed to be adequately punished and, in addition, he had to consider what was in the best interests of the community.

Mr Deputy Speaker, I know that you would be concerned about the sentencing of this woman and about her conduct in claiming to be a refugee. This was pure political thuggery, incitement to riot and a willingness to conduct damage to property or individuals. It was purely to make a political point. That is not the way the Australian refugee processes operate. We cannot accept a process where people adopt that sort of action to prove their point. I understand that four children were presented by defence lawyers and a psychologist as evidence of how badly this family had been treated. In an examination in the court the magistrate found that, in fact, it was the woman's neglect of her children and the fact that she put a 17-year-old in charge of the rest of the kids and spent her whole time abusing the circumstances in which she found herself that were the cause for the poor condition of the kids, their not feeling confident and their not being well looked after. It was the mother's conduct, not the conditions of the detention centre, that created this situation.

I think it is appalling that we saw a misrepresentation of that process on television and that we have a misunderstanding of it in this place. We need to understand that people in very difficult and desperate circumstances will take desperate steps to present their case. They will use their children, they will use their family, in order to convince the Australian authorities that they should be allowed to stay here and that they are suffering because they are not allowed to stay. These are desperate actions and the court found them to be desperate actions, but they are self-inflicted. If people have a genuine belief that they are refugees, Australia has one of the best systems in the world. There is not another country on earth that takes, proportionally, more refugees than Australia does. I am proud of that record, and I really must say that I reject completely the arguments of the Australian Labor Party, which has not come forward with any plan whatsoever for the attention that claimed refugees or people in detention should receive. I think most Aussies know that we have a fair system. They think we are overgenerous in the way in which we provide legal aid to so-called refugees. I think there needs to be more factual information out there, and I really do believe that we have a minister who is working between the compassion and the strength needed to make sure that this matter remains under control.

I commend those who are responsible for the care of refugees and, further, I encourage consideration to be given to the fact that, if a person has no identity, if they have destroyed their identity, their refugee applications should be rejected. It is only through the positive identification of an individual that they can claim refugee status. Anybody who destroys their identity should be seen as a person wanting to abuse the Australian legal system. (Time expired)