Senator BRANDIS (3:05 PM) —I move:

There is nothing sadder than the sight of a desperate government deeply in denial, and in all the mishaps, the bungling and the incompetence that have characterised the brief tenure of the Rudd government there is no area of policy in which the Rudd government is more deeply in denial than the catastrophic failure of its border protection policy. In no area has there been a more catastrophic failure than the fiasco of the Rudd government’s border protection policy.

Let us go back to where we stood in August 2008 immediately before Senator Evans announced the weakening of the Howard government’s policies that had kept our borders secure for the last six years of that government. Do you know, Mr Deputy President, how many people were detained at the Christmas Island detention centre at that time? There were five. Do you know how many there are now? The Christmas Island detention centre is over capacity. There are more than 2,500, and others have had to be transported to the Australian mainland, because our borders are out of control. And yet, as we saw in his answers to Senator Williams’s question today, Senator Evans continues to deny that there is a cause-and-effect relationship between the weakening of those policies in August 2008 and the tremendous upsurge in the number of unauthorised boat arrivals in the two years since. In the last five years of the Howard government, after tough policies were introduced in 2001, the average number of unauthorised boat arrivals fell from a high number before the coalition government of the day introduced tough policies down to three per year.

Senator Pratt —Inhumane policies!

Senator BRANDIS —Three per year! That was the situation the Rudd government inherited. After the tough policies came a phoney humanitarianism, Senator Pratt, which encourages women and children onto hazardous seas and puts them in the hands of people smugglers. After those policies were repealed in the name of a phoney humanitarianism the number of unauthorised boat arrivals skyrocketed. In the 2½-year life of the Rudd government there have now been 139 boat arrivals—an average in this calendar year of more than three per week. In the last five years of the Howard government there were three per year—a 50-fold increase. Senator Evans—no friend or supporter of Mr Kevin Rudd’s, as we all know—who has to bear the rap for these policies in this chamber, tried to persuade us that there was no cause-and-effect relationship between these two things. For five years the number of boat arrivals had flatlined. The policy was changed and suddenly there was an upward spike.

It is getting worse because of the signals that have been sent to the people smugglers. In the 12 months of calendar year 2009 there were 71 unauthorised boat arrivals. So far—not quite halfway through calendar year 2010—there have been 61 boat arrivals already. It is nothing more than denial for the government to say that there is no relationship between the softening of the policies, as they have done, and the surge in boat arrivals. In fact, the government’s own conduct by postponing the assessment of Sri Lankan and Afghan asylum seekers gives the lie to the argument that pull factors are not relevant. They themselves have sought to adjust their policy belatedly, too late in the piece. It has not worked because, as in so many other things, the Rudd government lacks the policy courage to do tough things. The Howard government was criticised roundly by certain sections of the community because its policies did have a hard edge. They had to have a hard edge, because all effective deterrents do. But those policies worked just as surely as the Rudd government’s policies have failed.