ASHLEIGH GILLON:
Welcome back to the program. Joining me this morning on our panel of politicians is Labor's David Bradbury and Liberal's Bruce Billson, gentlemen good morning. David Bradbury let's start with you. The Opposition Leader Tony Abbott has this morning put out a list of the top 25 Gillard failures. It goes through the Malaysian Solution, the East Timor Solution, the Manus Island Solution, the detention centres with riots and cost blowouts, it goes on to the carbon tax and education revolution. It lists 25 issues here which the Opposition says your Government is struggling on. Why should voters have any faith in your Government after issues like the one we saw yesterday with your plan for the country being struck down by the High Court?
DAVID BRADBURY:
Well yesterday's decision is a matter of great disappointment for the Government, that has been expressed by many Ministers and other representatives of the Government. But in terms of the Government's record, I note that Tony Abbott didn't mention the success the Government had in steering the economy through the Global Financial Crisis. In fact, the Stimulus Package which has managed to ensure that we maintain unemployment at record low levels through a period of financial and economic instability is something that we don't even talk about anymore. I know that Tony Abbott doesn't want to talk about that because he was asleep in the Parliament and didn't even vote on the package that came before it...
GILLON:
Let's focus on the decision yesterday, we could rehash...
BRADBURY:
No, no but Ashleigh you didn't want to focus on the decision yesterday, you wanted to focus in on a list that Tony Abbott has prepared. What I'm telling you is that Tony Abbott did not have on that list the greatest achievement of this Government, and it is one of the greatest achievements of any Government in the world at the moment. That is, we managed to steer our economy through global financial instability, maintaining record low levels of unemployment and at the same time, ensuring that our debt levels are at record low levels as well.
GILLON:
My point is though, this is a huge political blow for a Government that is clearly struggling. How do you think the news of this decision would go down in Western Sydney, for example, where there has been a lot of fear about the influx of asylum seekers?
BRADBURY:
Well I think a lot of Australians would be very concerned about the decision that was handed down yesterday. We've just heard from Margaret Kelly about her concerns about the decision that the court has taken.
GILLON:
Do you think that the High Court got it wrong?
BRADBURY:
I'm not about to start passing judgement on the judgements handed down by the highest court in the land, but I'll make a couple of observations. One is that it's all good and well for courts to make decisions of the sort that was made yesterday, but in the end it won't be members of the High Court that take the phone call that Chris Bowen had to take after a boat crashed into the rocks at Christmas Island. These are the political realities, the day to day realities that Members of Parliament such as the Minister for Immigration face. He sought to put together a proposal that I happen to think would have been a very effective proposal if it was ever allowed to be put in place. The decision that was made yesterday – and we've heard a view from Margaret Kelly as to whether or not that was the appropriate decision for the court to make – I think the bottom line is whether we like it or not, whether it was the right decision or not, the unfortunate reality, but the reality, is the decision that was handed down yesterday sends a very bad message throughout the region and unfortunately will be a decision that will be welcomed by people smugglers throughout our region. That's what we have to now deal with, and we're intent on trying to deal with that in a methodical and clear headed fashion.
GILLON:
Let's bring Bruce Billson in. Bruce, to what extent to do think these sorts of legal decisions made in Australia spread throughout the region, how quickly do you think that'll happen and are you expecting a huge spike in boat arrivals?
BRUCE BILLSON:
Well we've seen reports of boats on the way. There were boats on the way prior to the announcement of this decision. There have been boats on the way ever since the Labor Government walked away from the solutions which were the policies put in place by the previous Howard Government. When the Howard Government lost office to the Labor Government there were four people, Ashleigh, four people in immigration detention as a consequence of arriving illegally by boat, four. Now what the Government sought to do at every step of the way is ignore a system and a policy approach which has worked, that has been consistently advocated by the Coalition, that's understood within the region while it shopped around for any other solution other than the one that's proven to work. The Government said that its Malaysian Solution would break the business model of the people smugglers. What it's done is break open the business model of this Government where they don't think things through. They're trying to deal in short term political games. You remember David was on a patrol boat up in the north of Darwin in the election campaign to send a message to the people of his Western Sydney electorate that people smuggling is a concern and the Government will be tough on it. Well, they're not tough on it; they're all over the place. They should simply pick up the policies we've been advocating.
GILLON:
Bruce, what's wrong with processing asylum seekers here in Australia? Of course, the Greens have been arguing for that for a long time. It's such a costly exercise to do off-shore processing, why not just do it in Australia?
BILLSON:
Well Ashleigh the facts have been proven to be quite different from what you've described. The Nauru Solution combined with Temporary Protection Visas and the suite of Howard Government policies was very cost effective, it worked, and it also ensured that the big heart of Australia could bring refugees to our country in an orderly way where we could properly assess the threats and concerns and risk of persecution that refugee seekers were facing and bring people to Australia in an orderly way. What's happened here though is in abandoning those policies, the Labor Government has said that another arrangement will arrive. If you can pay people smugglers, if you can get to Australia, if you can invest tens of thousands of dollars that people stuck in refugee camps who can't leave those camps for fear of their life, they can't possibly imagine that kind of freedom. To get on a boat and come to this region, they're stuck there and we should be focussing on those in an orderly immigration process and re-install the policies that actually worked under the Howard Government. But, the Government won't do it. It's staring in the face of the solution and it just wants to look everywhere else.
GILLON:
David Bradbury is the Government now going to consider abandoning off-shore processing as a policy?
BRADBURY:
These matters are the subject of ongoing discussion within the Government. I'm not in any position to make announcements ahead of Government making and taking those decisions in the appropriate way. Can I make a couple of points about what Bruce has just said, the first one is that at no stage did Bruce or his colleagues ever vote against the Government's proposals when we made the various changes to the migration laws. The second point that I'd make is that if you believe the interpretation of the judgement that people like Margaret Kelly have, then what occurred yesterday in yesterday's judgement is that a torpedo has been sunk into the heart of the notion of off-shore processing. Now if that is the case, and I think that it is highly likely, that on the basis of yesterday's judgement, had that legal action had been brought at any time within the last decade, that the Pacific Solution as it then stood would have been scuttled in the same way. This raises real questions for us as a Government and as a community to confront the challenges of how we tackle people smuggling and the flows of people throughout our region into the future.
GILLON:
Very quickly, Bruce Billson?
BILLSON:
Ashleigh, that's just hysterical hyperbole. The provisions that were before the High Court have been in place for a decade. They were introduced by the Howard Government...
BRADBURY:
And they've never been challenged before.
BILLSON:
They sought to ensure the obligations and responsibilities we as a nation have for those people seeking protection. If that protection process is in part implemented off-shore, that doesn't negate the need to provide for those protections. It's a simple, sound concept and the Government should've known about it.
GILLON:
Okay we could keep debating this all day I'm sure. David Bradbury and Bruce Billson thanks for your time.