SUBJECTS: Asylum seekers, debate over population policy.
GERALDINE DOOGUE:
Joining me now from Sydney Airport, Financial Services Minister, Chris Bowen, and from Sydney today, Shadow Education Minister, Christopher Pyne. Gentlemen, good morning.
CHRIS BOWEN:
Good morning.
CHRISTOPHER PYNE:
Good morning, Geraldine. Good to be with you.
DOOGUE:
Yes, indeed. Minister, to you first. Can you explain the fears and concerns you hear in your electorate? If we can possibly get to your electorates, that'd be good, rather than even the broader responses, but in your electorate about the asylum seekers coming to Australia by boat.
BOWEN:
Well, Geraldine, I represent a seat in western Sydney, and it's well known that this is a big issue in western Sydney. I also represent a seat with a very high multicultural population, and a high number of refugees and people with relatives in refugee camps around the world. In fact, I spend a lot of time in my electorate office talking to people with relatives in camps in Africa and the Middle East, trying to help them get them out of there, and I see the pictures of their state and talk to them about their conditions, and it's appalling.
So people in my electorate, I think, do understand the value of refugees. They understand the value that they can bring to the community. They understand our obligations and the trauma that people who've been classified as refugees go through. But they also very acutely understand the need for an orderly process for dealing with people who are at camps around the world, and they understand that if you don't have that process then that's a bad thing for those people who are in very bad situations around the world. So it's a nuanced and complex issue, and my electorate, I think, understands that.
DOOGUE:
And they actually say to you, do they, that when the boats arrive this prompts all of these thoughts, or you know, sparks it up? Is it like a scab that gets picked or is there just an underlying anxiety around people coming here?
BOWEN:
Well, look, I don't think it's an underlying anxiety around people coming here. It's an underlying anxiety around the way people arrive here, and to make sure we have that orderly process. But of course when you have a boat arrival or a high number of boats arrive, that heightens that concern, no question about that. But what you do need to do is have a methodical and balanced approach to it, which is what I think Julia Gillard did yesterday and what is so important. And you need to have the full story told, the number of refugees that come to Australia as a proportion of the total migrant intake, for example, is an important point to make.
DOOGUE:
Alright.
BOWEN:
They're the sorts of points we need to be making, those points that I think my electorate broadly understands.
DOOGUE:
And Christopher Pyne, in your Adelaide electorate what do people say to you?
PYNE:
Well, people are very concerned, Geraldine, that there is an uncontrolled arrival of boat people across our north-western coastline, and they know that the Howard Government stopped the boats in 2001, and then the boats resumed when the Rudd-Gillard Government changed the laws and softened border protection. And they know that, not just because the Opposition tells them, but because the spike in the graphs is so transparently obvious. Since the Rudd-Gillard Government changed the laws, there have been 143 boat arrivals.
DOOGUE:
But do they say this to you? Do they know there have been 143 boats? Do they say this to you?
PYNE:
Yes, they certainly do. They say that they know there's been a spike in the boat arrivals, in the number of people. They know the difference between before the spike and after the spike was the change to the laws by the Rudd-Gillard Government, and they say, 'Well, whether you like the hardline policies or not, there's nothing compassionate about putting the sugar back on the table as Labor did and encouraging the people smugglers to ply their evil trade.' That's what happened under Labor; the sugar was put back on the table and people started coming here again, and that put them at risk and in danger of being drowned on the high seas, which happened, and there's nothing compassionate about that.
DOOGUE:
And refugees themselves, what do they say to you about them as a general group?
PYNE:
Well, obviously they have a different view because they have often in their own circumstances come here as unauthorised arrivals and then been allowed to stay, and refugees would have a different view. The general Australian public, on the other hand, and in my electorate, their view is, 'We don't necessarily want tough border protection that keeps asylum seekers out, but we understand the necessity of protecting our borders. We understand the need to have an orderly refugee process. We take more refugees in Australia per capita than any other current country, and as a consequence, we certainly have credentials as a compassionate nation. We have to protect our borders.' They know that therefore we need a tough, strong border protection policy. The Howard Government achieved it and they know that the Coalition, if re-elected, will return to that. Labor has come at some kind of midnight conversion and quite frankly, they haven't got a policy anyway. Jose Ramos-Horta and the East Timorese Opposition and Government are already casting doubt over the policy today in the newspapers.
DOOGUE:
Julia Gillard says she wants a frank and fearless discussion on asylum seekers. Now, I'm going to ask you both, as an Australian first and as a politician second, if that's possible, do you personally, Chris Bowen, fear asylum seekers coming to Australia by boat?
BOWEN:
Well, I don't think most Australians would put it that way, Geraldine. I think they would say that we need an orderly process. And I think, frankly, Julia Gillard yesterday, in a very erudite and eloquent fashion, laid out the complexities of this argument and appealed to the better [inaudible] of our nature, but also made it clear that we need an orderly process. Now, oppose that to the sort of glib one liners and cheap and nasty politics that we get from Tony Abbott, with cheap and nasty policies like 'we'll turn the boats back'.
DOOGUE:
But you don't sit there fearing this. There's two separate things about an orderly process and fears. It's the fears that can sort of change votes, isn't it?
BOWEN:
Look, I don't think people necessarily fear refugees, certainly not in my area. But they do think there's a need for proper processes and for Australia to be taking its refugees primarily from those camps around the world.
DOOGUE:
And it's not a broader thing that, you know, Paul Kelly's written this morning in The Australian that it's actually urban congestion, particularly in a place like Sydney, that is fostering a sense that Australia's too full anyway.
BOWEN:
I think there's some of that. In fairness, I think there's some of that. I think some people say, 'Well, you know, I'm sitting on a freeway' and they conflate the two arguments. I think, frankly, the Liberal Party has tried to capitalise on that, has tried to conflate the two arguments themselves, which of course is silly. As Julia Gillard said yesterday, it would take 20 years for the number of refugees arriving in Australia to fill the MCG. I mean, the two arguments are separate arguments. But I can understand in the community where those concerns do get conflated, I can understand that. But I don't think it's necessarily always fear. Different people will have different motivating factors for their policy on this.
DOOGUE:
Okay. Christopher Pyne, as an Australian, you know, do you fear personally asylum seekers coming here by boat?
PYNE:
No, Geraldine, I don't fear them. Every time a boat arrival comes here in an unauthorised way carrying a few dozen or 100 or so unauthorised boat arrivals, I feel that that means that there are people in refugee camps in Kenya or the Sudan or Thailand or elsewhere who will have to wait longer to come into Australia, and they are going through the correct process. So I always think that's more people who are waiting in Africa or Asia who are going to have to wait longer.
DOOGUE:
This used to be Philip Ruddock's line too.
PYNE:
And that's what I feel. In terms of population, there is a deep concern in the community that Labor is allowing the migration intake to run out of control. We now have over 300,000 new migrants a year net in Australia and that is the highest it's ever been, even since the post-war boom, and people are very concerned that there isn't a policy in place to put in place the infrastructure for most people. In my state, in Adelaide, of course, that particularly revolves around water.
DOOGUE:
Yes.
BOWEN:
Christopher, if you want to have a mature and balanced debate, you can stop dissembling like you just did. You know that the figure you just quoted includes temporary migrants. You know that Tony Abbott's policy of turning the boats back won't work, unless you are going to say if a boat is in distress and people are drowning, 'We'll continue to turn it back.' So either you have a policy which won't work or you have a policy which is indescribably inhumane. And if you continue to dissemble in the way you just did about Australia's migration level, then you will not be contributing to a mature and balanced debate on these issues.
PYNE:
Well, the only policy that actually works, of course, is the policy of bringing together temporary protection visas with offshore processing, and Labor has not supported temporary protection visas. While people are able to access permanent residence in Australia by coming here in an unauthorised way, they will do so because from where they're coming is much worse than where they are going. If they get to Australia and get permanent residence, that is the sugar on the table which Labor is leaving there. All the fine words yesterday and all the rhetoric and talk, and the late night phone calls to Jose Ramos-Horta and John Key, won't count for diddly-squat unless temporary protection visas are returned.
BOWEN:
We don't support temporary protection visas and we won't. A) because they don't work –
PYNE:
Then you can continue to encourage people to come here illegally.
BOWEN:
I let you have a go. After you introduced temporary protection visas, 8,000 unauthorised arrivals came to this country and you also put people on the never-never. You left people in a situation where they had no certainty about their future. You left them on a merry-go-round of temporary visas and it was inhumane, and we won't be going back to that policy. If you wish to, as a small 'l' liberal, that's your right. We won't be doing it.
DOOGUE:
I'll give a last word to Shadow Education Minister, Christopher Pyne. How are you going to make sure this doesn't descend into an unedifying debate? It always just teeters on the edge of that, you know, going back to those dreadful discussions around SIEV X and so on and so forth. Surely we don't want to go back to that.
PYNE:
Well, we certainly don't, and the problem with the Labor Party's policy for the last three years has been that it has encouraged people smugglers to sell a product. The product is permanent residence in Australia. The product is our fantastic standard of living, and people will take the risk of coming across the sea and they are dying. We know that 170 people have drowned in the high sea because they've been trying to get to Australia since Labor was elected. They're the ones we know of. The Sri Lankan Government says there are a great deal many boats that have left Sri Lanka that are unaccounted for, that can't be proven either way. So we know the Labor Party's policy is a long way short of compassionate. The only way to stop the boats is to change the Government and to reintroduce temporary protection visas and offshore processing.
DOOGUE:
Okay.
PYNE:
The combination of those things will mean that the boats will stop just as they did in 2001 under the previous Government.
DOOGUE:
Alright. Thank you very much indeed, Mr Pyne.
PYNE:
Pleasure. Thanks, Geraldine.
DOOGUE:
Shadow Education Minister Christopher Pyne and Financial Services Minister, Chris Bowen.