Mr SCHULTZ (2:29 PM) —My question is addressed to the Minister for Foreign Affairs. Would the minister inform the House of the government's response to recent reports that the British government is in negotiations regarding offshore processing of illegal arrivals? Is the minister aware of other views?

Mr DOWNER (Minister for Foreign Affairs) —I thank the honourable member for Hume for his question and the interest he has shown in this. Honourable members may be interested to know that the British Prime Minister, Tony Blair, announced last week that the British government was negotiating the establishment of some kind of offshore processing facility in Tanzania. This of course is not an identical situation with the offshore processing centre that we have in Nauru, but it is an endeavour by the Blair government to try to deal with the situation where, in particular, Somalis or people posing as Somalis may try to seek asylum in the United Kingdom. They can instead be processed in Tanzania so the problem does not become unsolvable. I understand from media reports that negotiations with South Africa for a similar sort of facility may be under way.

The point I am making here is that the Blair government is an example of a government that has taken a tough approach to illegal immigration and people-smuggling, for good reason. I do not think anybody in Britain or too many people in Australia think that people-smuggling is to be encouraged. It has to be stopped. The British Home Secretary, Mr Blunkett, announced last week that tighter border controls, tough new legislative measures and enforced removals had halved the number of illegal arrivals entering Britain. The Blair government is about to pass tougher legislation preventing illegal arrivals from tying up the court system. I am sure our AttorneyGeneral would be pleased to hear about that. The court system in the UK has been tied up, as has been the case here, with appeal after appeal, and of course that is not an acceptable longterm solution.

I was interested to hear, though, that within days of Prime Minister Blair making his announcements on strengthening the approach to dealing with illegal immigration the Australian Labor Party spokesperson for immigration—and this was in a doorstop on 19 February—was calling the deterrent effect of offshore processing a `complete nonsense' and saying that the Pacific solution has to go. This is quite an interesting point. The Labor Party pay lip-service to the evils of people-smuggling, but they refuse to support the government's tough measures to stamp out the people-smuggling trade. Labor oppose offshore processing, they oppose excision and they oppose, interestingly, the most effective policy of all—turning boats back. Labor would have actually allowed the Minasa Bone to land, letting the people smugglers deliver their cargo, letting 14 Turkish nationals—none of whom, as it turned out, were refugees—come to Australia and clog up our courts even more. All 14 people have, under this government's policy, been returned to Turkey. That is where they are—in Turkey where they belong.

The simple fact is that deterrence has been shown to work. I have said this before: the Labor Party say that the way to fix this problem is to close down the offshore processing centres and to get rid of the excision policy to allow the boats to land. And what else are they going to do? They are going to set up a coastguard. But they never actually tell you what the coastguard is supposed to do. After the coastguard goes out there and meets a boat that is coming to Australia, what is it going to do? It is going to guide the boat into Australia, because that is the Labor policy. In other words, the coastguard is a coast guide. That is its job. All I can say is that the Labor Party in Australia have none of the courage or commonsense of New Labour in the United Kingdom.