Mr RUDDOCK (Minister for Immigration and Multicultural Affairs and Minister for Reconciliation and Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Affairs) (10:24 AM) —in reply—I hope the member for Paterson might wait a moment so that I can take up some of the points he has made, because I think informed debate in relation to these issues is helpful. His exit speaks for itself, regrettably—he does not wish to know. I will at least put some of the information on the record. I thank the honourable members for Bowman and Moreton—and to a lesser extent the member for Paterson—for their comments. In relation to the member for Bowman comments, I welcome the opposition's support for this measure. The member for Moreton exhibits, as always, his very keen interest and knowledge about these issues. His comments were well informed. I welcome the comments from the member for Paterson because I cannot remember having heard many speeches on these subjects from him before.

This Migration Legislation Amendment Bill (No. 5) 2001 will allow private sector organisations such as airlines, travel agents and shipping companies to continue to provide information to the Department of Immigration and Multicultural Affairs concerning people's travel. It will enable certain organisations that are required to deal with personal information to continue to receive it. Because of the Privacy Act those organisations were required to collect it under certain national privacy principles. It is for that reason that we are legislating to enable this information, which can be personal, to be still provided to the department and used in its automated systems.

It is not practical to get each person to consent to the information that is needed. We need to be able to have people's names, sex, date of birth, country of birth, passport number and flight details. The only viable solution to ensure that we are able to gather that information is to amend the Migration Act. Of course this information is needed to ensure that people can be effectively cleared. The department does not compel any organisation to provide information, but this authorisation ensures that it will be able to continue to do so. It is intended that it will facilitate speedier processing and not compromise the integrity of our arrangements for entry into Australia.

The member for Paterson has taken up the argument that I have heard from some members of the Labor Party—that, because we have had an increasing number of border arrivals, in some way the government has been derelict in the way in which it has dealt with these issues. Let me explain why we are getting border arrivals by sea. In comparison with other countries, Australia has been seen as reasonably accessible and the outcomes people are able to achieve if they come by boat are beneficial to them. There are two reasons why the outcomes are beneficial. Few countries provide those within their borders who can establish a lawful basis for being there with full income support of the nature we supply here in Australia. If you are in Indonesia and are found to be a refugee, you will get something like $4 a day. If you are in Australia, you get access to special benefits at the same level we pay an Australian welfare recipient, you get access to family payments, you get access to a range of other entitlements in relation to Medicare and you get rent assistance. On top of that a range of Labor state governments around Australia are providing supplementary benefits that put them in an even better position than many Australians. It is extraordinary.

Arguments have developed over a period of time and have taken hold in parts of the Labor Party—they have taken hold in the state Labor governments in Victoria and Queensland; they have not taken hold in New South Wales. These benefits are not necessary for people's overall wellbeing, because most of the people who have been released on temporary protection visas in Australia in various other states have travelled to New South Wales where the additional range of benefits are not available. The provision of benefits—and we have had this argument on benefits—with state Labor governments bending over backwards to provide additional support, has been one of the signals going to people abroad indicating that Australia is a soft touch in relation to these matters.

The principal reason we have seen an increase in the number of border arrivals by boat is that people ascertain that if they get rid of their documents it is difficult to determine who they are and where they are from if all you have is the story they tell you, and that as long as they consistently stick to their story they are very likely to get asylum claims up. We have had a series of court judgments over a period of time. The courts have adjudicated on what it is to be a refugee and that has expanded the refugee convention in a way which has led to it being interpreted here under our jurisprudential model far more liberally than it is interpreted anywhere else in the world and certainly far more liberally than it is being interpreted by the UNHCR.

Just sit back for a moment and contemplate. Four years ago 147 people came by boat and established that it was fairly easy to get refugee claims up. The following year we saw 900 people. The following year we saw 4,000 people. What was guiding them and the smugglers? The two factors were the relative ease with which you get an asylum claim up in comparison to having it assessed elsewhere by the international body responsible for it, the UNHCR, and the level of support that is given if you get your claim up here as against the level of support that is given to you in, say, Indonesia or Pakistan, where claims might be accepted. You might be a Pakistani or an Afghani who has lived out of Afghanistan for 20 or 30 years, or you might even be an Afghani who was born in Pakistan. You are able to raise in the order of $US16,000 or $A32,000 and get on a boat. You know that if your claim is assessed in Indonesia you have a 14 per cent prospect of success. If it is assessed here in Australia there is an 84 per cent chance of success. On those odds, if the prospect of having your claim accepted here is four or five times greater than if it is assessed by the UNHCR, where will you want to have it assessed? It is obvious. If your claim is accepted in Indonesia, you will be perfectly safe. Refugee status is about security. If you were going to be perfectly safe in Indonesia, why would you want to move on? It is because the level of support that is given in Australia is probably 20, 30 or 40 times higher than the UNHCR will be able to provide if you happen to be in Indonesia. With those odds, why wouldn't you move? That is what we have seen.

The suggestion is that the government has been sitting on its hands. I have had legislation before the parliament to deal with the issue of the extension of the coverage of the refugee convention for something like three years. People want to quibble about whether or not it is a matter of justice that these people ought to be able to access our courts when we have used legislation before to deprive Australians of their opportunity for justice. I find it absolutely extraordinary that you have had the use of what is known as a privative clause, which boosts the validity of tribunal decisions, challenged on the basis that it is a matter of justice and that somebody who has come to Australia unlawfully ought to be entitled to get access to our courts when legislation that has been enacted since the 1940s has stripped Australian workers of the right to challenge decisions of industrial tribunals in our courts.

Mr Sercombe —Mr Deputy Speaker, I rise on a point of order. As interesting as this may be, it has nothing whatsoever to do with the bill. That point was brought to the attention of earlier speakers.

Mr DEPUTY SPEAKER (Mr Hollis)—As I understand it—and I was watching some of this debate in my office before I came up—it was quite a wide ranging bill, and the previous occupant of this chair permitted various speakers to range widely. There is no point of order.

Mr RUDDOCK —I am responding specifically to the remarks made by the member for the Paterson.

Mr RUDDOCK —You were there. I am simply making the point that this is not a government that has been sitting on its hands; it is a government that has been frustrated in relation to these matters. Only now are we at the point where community views have been clearly focused on these issues and the Labor Party are saying, `We've got six bills, and we're going to help you get them through before the end of this session.' The Labor Party know that, even though they have sat on their hands on judicial review—

Dr Martin —That is rubbish, and you know it.

Mr RUDDOCK —Stephen, you have sat on your hands. The bill is before the Senate. It has been before this parliament for three years.

Ms Kernot —We have not sat on our hands.

Mr DEPUTY SPEAKER —Order! The minister has the call.

Mr RUDDOCK —Judicial review: you have cherry picked, and that is the reality. We would not be dealing with six bills at the moment if you had supported the measures in relation to class actions and if you had supported the measures in relation to judicial review. Let me make that very clear. These bills have been important to ensure that we are able to deal with a whole range of issues. I think it will be the most significant set of reforms that we have seen in this area, when these measures are introduced and enacted. It will change the way in which Australia is perceived in relation to these issues, and I do welcome the Labor Party's belated support for the measures.

Dr Martin —You fixed it; we supported you.

Mr DEPUTY SPEAKER —Order! The member for Cunningham knows that he should not be interjecting. The minister should not respond to interjections. Let us get on with the debate.

Mr RUDDOCK —You are going to support judicial review now, you are going to support class actions now, but it has been put on the backburner—in one case for three years, in the other case for two years—and you know that is the reality. Let me deal with a couple of other comments from the member for Paterson. I was fascinated by the points that he made in relation to the Newcastle port. If he gives me details that we can follow up and investigate, I will be very keen to do so. I do not recall those points ever having been made to me before. I simply make the point that there are obligations in relation to vessels received in the ports for people to be immigration cleared, and there is no evidence that I am aware of that there is a significant breach of our border requirements by people who have arrived on vessels in our ports and who have left them. We do discover a number of stowaways through our compliance actions, but the numbers are relatively small.

Let me put it into perspective: we have evidence that there are in the order of 50,000 people unlawfully in Australia at any one time. It is not 50,000 a year; it is 50,000 people at any one time. We locate, through compliance action, something like 16,000 people a year. I might say that that figure is considerably up on where we were with respect to locations when we came into office. I think it was about 8,000 at that time. So we have effectively doubled the number of locations, which is very important in itself. When we undertake an examination of the people whom we find to be unlawful, we find that most of them are visitor overstayers or people working contrary to visa conditions.

We have never found somebody who has arrived on a boat clandestinely and who has simply disappeared into the Australian ether. We have never found such a person. But if you are finding 16,000 out of an estimated 50,000, you are locating one out of every four. If people have been arriving on boats, we would be finding some of them, with that rate of location. As I say, we do locate some stowaways, but when you locate something like a dozen or a couple of dozen stowaways, it is not a major problem. Obviously, if there are issues that ought to be addressed, particularly in relation to unauthorised arrivals in the port of Newcastle, we will follow that matter up.

In relation to the numbers of overstayers, we get about 14,000 or 15,000 people who overstay each year. So the locations and the new overstayers generally are balanced, which means the 50,000 figure is largely constant. What do we know about the overstayers? That number also includes the unauthorised boat arrivals, so the 14,000 or 15,000 figure includes about 4,000 boat arrivals. So the number of overstayers in comparison to boat arrivals today, in proportionate terms, is relatively small, particularly when you look at these things historically.

The substantial difference, and why we take the point that we do in relation to security and character questions, is dealt with in this bill. The provision of the information that we get under this bill enables us to assess people who have told us who they are and where they are from. We are able to make a risk analysis as to whether they are likely to present problems. We are able, in appropriate cases, to require people to lodge more information for us to assess their claims to come to Australia. It means those who assess security and, particularly, character issues are able to have information that these people are intending to come. We can make inquiries with appropriate police organisations—Interpol and the like. We can deal with international security agencies and get information. In other words, our vetting in relation to people who deal with us up front and provide their documents is very much easier than it is in relation to those who come clandestinely by boat, have no documents with them and simply say, `We're coming, ready or not.'

At the end of the day, when you are dealing with people, if you still have no documentation that tells you exactly who they are and where they are from, if you are relying simply on what they tell you, the task of assessing character and security issues is very much more difficult. We try to deal with it, and deal with it comprehensively. Many people are held because there is not sufficient information to enable us to make those sorts of assessments, and then I get complaints that some people are being held in detention for an unreasonably long time. But it often occurs that people remain in detention because of the very way in which they have arrived, the inadequacy of documents and the concerns we have in relation to character and the like.This bill is to be supported.

Mr Sercombe —Oh, you're talking about the bill now?

Mr RUDDOCK —I have been talking about the bill and the debate. This bill is to be supported because it is to ensure that we have the information that enables us to undertake the very checking about which I have just been speaking. If this bill were not there and we could not get that information without being in breach of privacy requirements, the checking that we need to do in relation to those people who are coming as tourists would be very severely compromised. That is the reason we need a speedy passage of the bill. I hope that it will go through this chamber quickly and that those in another place will recognise its importance. I thank the members who have participated constructively in the debate.

Question resolved in the affirmative.

Bill read a second time.

Ordered that the bill be reported to the House without amendment.