Mrs MIRABELLA (11:03 AM) —I rise to support the Customs Amendment (Serious Drugs Detection) Bill 2011 and I do so with a great degree of frustration—frustration which I am sure is being felt right across this nation from the eastern to the western seaboards. It seems oddly ironic that I am standing here today in support of a bill that seeks to strengthen border protection during a week in which Australia’s borders have gone into complete meltdown. As my colleague the member for Stirling has alluded to, last week saw the arrival of the largest illegal vessel since February last year, carrying 145 people, but that is just the beginning. We know chaos broke out at the Christmas Island detention centre, violent riots have erupted, Molotov cocktails were launched, government taxpayer funded buildings were burnt and many detainees were injured. I know it is a very sensitive topic for the government because they are incapable of dealing with this crisis—a crisis of their own making. Border protection is an area, whether it is to do with drugs or whether it is to do with people, that is of particular concern to the Australian public, and those seeking to speak out on behalf of the concerns of the Australian people should not be gagged or shouted down.

Similar scenes have been witnessed at detention centres on the mainland. We have seen, and I think we will see more, similar scenes to this being repeated and now we have a number of escaped detainees on the loose. Make no mistake, Australia’s border protection regime is in meltdown and it is this Labor government’s fault. We are told that asylum applications have increased across the board and we are just taking our fair share. That is wrong and it is a fraud, because from the last figures available, worldwide asylum applications to industrialised countries fell by 13 per cent and ours rose by 78 per cent. Since the relaxing of Australia’s border protection rules in August 2008 we have seen the arrival of more than 10,600 unauthorised people. The flow of arrivals has not slowed under the stewardship of Ms Gillard; in fact, it has accelerated and under her watch there have been some 74 boats and over 4,000 unauthorised arrivals.

What perplexes most people is that there was no imperative to change the strong border protection rules of the previous government. In fact, I seem to recall the then-aspiring Prime Minister, Mr Rudd, talking about how conservative he was about border protection, pretending that he was a pale imitation, a younger imitation, of a John Howard just in order to get elected. There was no imperative to change. Without a strong border protection policy what will happen is that these numbers of unauthorised entrants, this violence and the destruction of taxpayer funded property will continue to increase. The Labor Party has no plan and no agenda to fix their weak stand on border protection, fuelled by the abhorrent people smuggling industry.

In seems ironic that today the Labor government is introducing legislation to strengthen our borders when all they have done to date is to tear down the strong regulations and laws that were previously in place. This bill will amend the Customs Act to enable Customs officers to undertake an internal non-medical scan of a person who is suspected to be concealing internally a suspicious substance. It will allow, with the consent of the detainee, an initial non-medical scan of a person to be carried out by a Customs officer using this new technology that produces a computer image of a person’s internal cavities with a skeletal structure which may serve to allay an officer’s suspicion that a passenger is internally concealing a suspicious substance. Currently under the Customs Act an internal search, including an internal scan, can be carried out only by a medical practitioner at a place specified in the regulations, which specify a hospital, surgery or other practising rooms of a medical practitioner for this purpose.

It makes very practical sense for the coalition to support the changes proposed in this bill in order to streamline the process for Customs and enable funds to be saved where possible because, goodness knows, this government does need to save funds. If we look at some of the statistics, we see that in the last financial year 205 people were taken to hospital for examination under suspicion of having drugs concealed internally and, upon medical examination, less than a quarter were found to be carrying drugs. As well as streamlining services, these amendments are aimed at working to take some pressure off medical examiners.

Yes, the coalition does support these practical amendments. We will always support practical amendments that strengthen our borders. We are the parties that the Australian people know will always stand firm to strengthen our borders; it is the Labor Party that weakens our border protection. As I said earlier, it is strangely ironic that Labor is proposing these measures to strengthen border protection, when to date they have displayed a pattern of utter failure and an inability to face up to their responsibility as a national government and protect our borders against the practice of people smuggling and illegal immigration.

We saw in the 2009-10 budget that Labor cut the budget of Customs for cargo screening by over $58 million. This cut reduced the number of potential sea cargo inspections by 25 per cent and reduced the potential of air cargo inspections by 75 per cent. When you look at the disgraceful waste of hundreds of millions, of billions of dollars, in their Mickey Mouse programs like the free fluff in roofs program and when you see the sacrifices that need to be made by decent government programs—

Ms Brodtmann —Yes, the BER.

Mr Perrett —She is always at the openings.

Mrs MIRABELLA —They are shouting down.

The DEPUTY SPEAKER (Ms S Bird)—I indicate to the members that there is a form to interrupt, and that is not it. The member has the call.

Mrs MIRABELLA —I can understand the sensitivity. How can you defend the indefensible?

The DEPUTY SPEAKER —The member for Indi will not encourage the interjections.

Mrs MIRABELLA —Madam Deputy Speaker, with all due respect, these issues of budgetary cuts to Customs and Border Protection are an integral part of this debate and, if it hurts to remind members of the government that their ministers have been utterly and shamefully incompetent—some of them the most incompetent in the history of the Australian parliament—they need to listen and do their job to hold their ministers and their Prime Minister accountable.

In the recent Customs annual report it was revealed that only 4.3 per cent of sea cargo is X-rayed and only 0.6 per cent of sea cargo is physically examined. No doubt most Australians would be horrified to know that more than 95 per cent of all sea cargo consignments are not X-rayed. It is no surprise that so many illicit drugs find their way into the main streets or the back streets of every metropolitan centre, every country town and every valley in this nation. Under Labor, when only 13.3 per cent of air cargo consignments are X-rayed and only 0.6 per cent of air cargo is physically examined, I am sure the flow of drugs will become easier.

Labor’s cuts to the Customs cargo and vessel inspection systems are an absolute gift, a free pass, to criminal gangs and drug smugglers. The coalition reaffirm our commitment to strong border protection. We did so during the 2010 election, not because we were trying to imitate another political party to get elected, not because it was some cynical ploy to deflect from other policy issues, but because we actually believe in it. We have believed in it. I recall when I was first elected, in the 2001 election, John Howard famously made comments to reaffirm our commitment to protecting Australia’s borders and taking our responsibility as a national government very seriously to determine the nature of the inflow of people to this country. We committed to that. We also committed to restoring Labor’s cuts to cargo screening at ports and airports, and we committed an additional $35 million to increase Customs resources for cargo screening.

This $93.1 million funding increase would have enabled Customs to inspect an estimated additional 52,500 sea cargo consignments and at least 7.5 million additional air cargo consignments. If the Labor Party were fair dinkum about Customs and Border Protection, they would at the very least commit to the reinstatement of this funding. In light of the past week’s tragic and unfortunate circumstances, you would think that any sensible government would step back, have the courage to admit their failures and return to the coalition’s policies, which actually worked and helped protect our borders.

They are not afraid to do it when they are in election mode. They are not afraid to pretend to be economic conservatives and, now they are in government, social conservatives, and try to mimic the coalition, so why not do it when it counts? Why not do it when policy needs to be made and implemented in the interests of Australia and Australians? It is quite clear that unfortunately the current the Minister for Immigration and Citizenship is rather hampered. He is not calling the shots. We see him deeply frustrated and, I hope, deeply concerned that his directions and his area of responsibility are seriously being dictated to by that alliance partner that the Labor Party have—and I am sure they will live to regret having it—the Greens. I ask members on the other side to think very carefully about this. The damage done to this nation cannot be reversed. They cannot reverse the damage that they have done through all their other policies—the billions of dollars wasted in putting expensive tin sheds on school grounds, the billions of dollars of damage through the free fluff in roofs program, to the sovereign risk that has been created by their carbon tax.

We saw yesterday Graeme Kraehe from BlueScope Steel giving the government facts that they do not want to hear; they tried to shout the poor man down, the man who said that the carbon tax emperor has no clothes. They have created all these problems that will add to the debt and interest payments that we have. They are creating all these problems leading to sovereign risk. If they go ahead with their carbon tax, they will send jobs offshore to countries that are not as efficient as us, that do not have the same environmental laws as us and that will actually increase emissions while making the same things that we made.

Let us put all of that to one side. Can they get one thing right? The one fundamental responsibility that Australians expect is: protect our borders. Is it that hard? Can you not be big enough to admit publicly what you talk about behind closed doors in the caucus room—that you have failed, that you have been absolutely irresponsible in junking policies that worked, only to see over 10,000 illegal immigrants arrive and damage and chaos ensue. Australians know that you have failed and they want you to do something about it. They want you to stop listening to the Greens; they want you to start protecting our borders. That is the very least this government can do. I know there is a preoccupation in a minority government to protect one job, the Prime Minister’s job, at the expense of everything else, but surely your conscience must be telling you that you have a responsibility to govern for all Australians.

The DEPUTY SPEAKER —Order! I remind the member to address the remarks through the chair, not to the chair.

Mrs MIRABELLA —In light of the broader issues raised by this customs amendment bill, which the coalition is supporting, I ask government members to think deeply and to realise that eventually their failures are clear for all to see. (Time expired)

The DEPUTY SPEAKER —I remind all members not to refer to ‘you’. They should refer their comments through the chair, not at the chair.