Mr HARDGRAVE (Minister for Citizenship and Multicultural Affairs and Minister Assisting the Prime Minister) (11:11 AM) —Again, the member for Perth has dug deeply into his own foxhole. The Labor Party amendments in the Senate will do absolutely nothing to stop people-smuggling—they will reignite people-smuggling. The member for Sturt made a very unparliamentary contribution while the member for Perth was speaking—and it is unlike the member for Sturt to interject! But he did offer an interjection, which I will record. He said that the Labor Party did all they could through the Senate process to delay consideration of this bill. The Labor Party threw many different amendments at this, which the government had to deal with.

If some of the amendments of the member for Perth and the Labor Party had actually been passed by this place today we would have seen Qantas forfeiting 747-400s to the government, because the Labor Party, in their complete misunderstanding of how this all works, talked about something to do with `vessels' bringing unlawfuls being confiscated. Most people who arrive and end up in some form of problem with their visa have come on aircraft, not on boats. And so we could have seen a situation where Qantas might have been forfeiting 747s. We could have had a whole gaggle of them out at Canberra airport if the Labor Party's falsely thought-through amendments had actually seen the light of day.

The Labor Party's policy is to bring people onshore for processing. That will give the signal to the people smugglers that success can be guaranteed—that people will get to Australia. It will put the people smugglers back into business. They want to give temporary protection visa holders a guarantee of permanent residency after two years of temporary residency. But all it does is simply drive Australia away from its real obligation, which is to meet the needs of those who are languishing in United Nations High Commission for Refugees camps in other parts of the world waiting for a chance to resettle somewhere else, like here in Australia. I went to the Kakuma refugee camp in northern Kenya 12 months ago, and I saw for myself 92½ thousand people languishing in that place, many of them hoping for resettlement in Australia. This year, there will be 9,000 people coming out of the African region to Australia through our settlement programs. It costs us money to do that, but we do that because we have an obligation that we fulfil as a nation.

The Labor Party's policy talks about increased penalties for people smugglers, but it is actually part of guiding them to Australia. Under this government, there is no product for people smugglers to sell. The goal of getting to Australia is not there, is not deliverable, and so in a marketing sense people smugglers have no way of delivering on the promises they make to the people they try to seek funds from. The Australian Labor Party is all about having a bob each way—trying to find a way of getting a message across that it is somehow or other worried about children, when there are about a dozen children currently in any form of detention.

This government has worked very hard at alternative detention models, which the member for Perth, during his time in the previous government, never raised once in the public policy debate. Never once did he exercise his concern about children when he had an opportunity to. And so now I think it is all about the smokescreen. It is all about policy on the run. It is all about digging themselves in deeper. It shows a sense of weakness—a sense of weakness that the Australian people worked out a few years ago existed in the Australian Labor Party.

There were hundreds of children behind the razor wire, as some of those opposite talk about, in the early 1990s. Now, there are a little over a dozen. We are very much looking at the welfare of children. We are also looking to send strong signals that the business of people-smuggling must stop. It is a foul trade. It is a trade that, as a result of the strong measures of this government, has dried up as a means of income for those who were plying it.

We will not stand idly by and watch the Australian Labor Party water down our effort. We will not have the hands of time turned back to the bad days which existed because of Labor's weakness on this policy issue. No matter what the member for Perth has to say on this issue today, no matter how he tries to dissemble and to reassemble their track record on that side, and tries to find some strength on this issue, at the end of the day we know that this government's tough approach has worked and will continue to work. (Time expired)