High Court ruling prevents Government from implementing Malaysia people swap

31/08/11

TRANSCRIPT OF SCOTT MORRISON MP

ADELAIDE DOORSTOP

WEDNESDAY 31 AUGUST 2011

SUBJECTS: High Court ruling prevents Government from implementing Malaysia people swap, rolling crisis in Australia’s detention network

E&OE……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………

It has been three years now since this Labor Government rolled back the Coalition’s strong border protection policy that they had inherited in good order and for the last three years, we’ve seen over 12,000 people arrive on more than 235 boats.

Policy failure is never anything that you would welcome but what we have seen today in the High Court is yet another recognition of yet another policy failure by this incompetent Government.

This is a Government whose failed non-solution for East Timor has now been followed up by their Malaysia non-solution. Prior to that, there was their failed asylum freeze. This is a Government that knows that it’s got the policy wrong but is incapable of getting it right, much to the frustration of Australians all around the country.

The Malaysia agreement was cobbled together by a Minister as part of a desperate ‘anything but Nauru’ strategy from this Government. And in cobbling this arrangement together, he has been unable to put the protections in place that are required under the Migration Act. The Court has found that the Migration Act has been very sound in this area and has laid out things very clearly for what the Minister needs to achieve. This Minister has simply failed to deliver on that front.

In Julia Gillard’s year of delivery, this Minister has failed to deliver. So what we have is a Government once again with another chapter of incompetence, another bungle to go together with everything from pink batts and school hall rip-offs, the NBN and border protection failures – a Government that just simply can’t get anything right.

QUESTION:

Are you surprised they lost on all counts?

MORRISON: Well this was an arrangement that was cobbled together by this Government and they failed to think it through and as a result, its construction was always pretty shoddy and I think that’s what the High Court has found today. But I’ve been to Malaysia, I’ve seen the conditions under which asylum seekers would be living and it was clear to me that the protections the Minister boldly claimed existed simply didn’t exist. The Minister should’ve known that, he didn’t think it through, he’s been found out by the High Court and as a result, once again, the Government’s asylum and border protection policy is in complete and utter mess.

QUESTION:

So what would be a workable solution for these asylum seekers?

MORRISON: We have been imploring this Government to simply return to the policies that worked. We have been consistent in our view on this for a decade. The processing centre at Nauru should be reopened, temporary protection visas should be reintroduced, boats should be turned back where the circumstances permit and there are a range of other reforms we’ve highlighted – the appeals mechanism and other processes which we know to be effective. This Government continues to reject those and the High Court’s decision today has had no bearing negatively on any of those policies.

QUESTION:

Do you think the Government should release of the legal advice that they’ve been given?

MORRISON:

Well I think the Government should release the full evidence of its catastrophe in this area. We should know just how and why this Government got this so wrong. I recall at Senate Estimates hearings and in the Parliament and on a daily basis the Government boldly made pronunciations around this issue, which everyone else seemed to understand were patently not true. But this Government has been found out and they should be upfront with why this went so wrong.

QUESTION:

How do you rate Chris Bowen’s handling of this issue?

MORRISON:

Well let’s be clear. This is an arrangement that was entirely conceived in the mind of Minister Bowen and this Prime Minister They have no where to turn and no one to blame other than themselves for their inability to deliver in what Julia Gillard said is her year of delivery. But all she’s delivered here and all Minister Bowen’s delivered here is yet another incompetent farce.

QUESTION:

What about his handling of the entire portfolio, how is he handling the whole portfolio in your eyes?

MORRISON:

Well the High Court’s decision may have stopped asylum seekers being sent to Malaysia wisely but what it won’t stop is the continuing chaos in our detention network, which is now the subject of a Parliamentary Inquiry. I think today’s decision comes against the backdrop of yet another fire in yet another detention centre. There are more than four critical incidents occurring every day. It’s costing taxpayers over $1billion a year so I think the public record on this Minister’s stewardship is not a good one.

QUESTION:

Should he be given another chance to come up with a better system?

MORRISON:

This Minister and this Government has had more chances to get border protection right than I think they frankly deserve and I think the Australian public are rightly frustrated. Let’s not forget here that while there’ll be no one going to Malaysia, there’ll be four thousand people coming to Australia, I understand, at a cost of $216 million to the taxpayer so I understand the Government will be continuing with that part of the arrangement. They may wish to reconsider to ensure that any additional intake that we take out of Malaysia is done within the existing component of our Refugee Humanitarian program to ensure there is no, at least, additional cost to the taxpayers. But this is a Government that always pays first and thinks later.

QUESTION:

So you don’t think that they should be taking those legitimate refugees?

MORRISON:

No that’s not what I said. What I said was the Government, if it wishes to continue to honour that arrangement to bring 4000 refugees from Malaysia, could do as the Coalition has always suggested and to do that within the existing Humanitarian and Refugee program.

QUESTION:

Under the deal, were there any penalty clauses – is Australia obliged to take those 4000 people and are there any other costs that have to be met?

MORRISON:

The costs are $216 million over four years to take the additional 4000. If you take them within our existing intake, well it doesn’t cost the taxpayer an extra cent. So that’s a matter for the Government.

JOURNALIST:

That’s 4000 less from somewhere else though.

MORRISON:

Well if you actually introduce policies that stop boats, you’d be freeing up more than two and half thousand places in the program every year, which was what was happening when we were in Government. When we left Government, there were four people in the detention network who’d arrive by boat. Under this Government, that has gone out to over 6500. That is the cost and the result of failed policy. What we’ve seen today and what the High Court has found today is yet another failed policy. This policy was condemned by the Australian Parliament in both houses, I believe it’s been condemned by the Australian people and today it has been condemned by the High Court which is three strikes for an absolutely incompetent policy the Government failed to think through.

QUESTION:

Should Chris Bowen be replaced over this?

MORRISON:

I’ll leave that to the Prime Minister to judge her Minister’s performance but there’s a track record here from this Minister, and the Minister previously, of three years of catastrophic failure, catastrophic cost and the human cost we’re seeing in our detention network, which is very upsetting, is a product of all those failures.

QUESTION:

What should happen to the people that were going to be sent to Malaysia?

MORRISON:

The Coalition’s policy is to reopen the processing centre at Nauru but the Government has an anything but Nauru strategy which drove them into this incompetent farce we’ve seen with Malaysia. What will happen now, I presume, is basically they’ll be processed at Christmas Island and if they’re successful as refugees, they’ll be given permanent visas in Australia. So it’s back to square one on this Government and square one under this Government is not a good place to be.

QUESTION:

On Darwin, are you concerned about reports we’re hearing that the fire today was a protest against people not able to go to the local mosque because [inaudible]…

MORRISON:

The reasons for protests and fires in our detention network and this I think was made clear in Serco’s submission to the Parliamentary Inquiry goes back to the gridlock that our detention network has been put in because of the Government’s border protection failures. You pile almost 7,000 people into the detention network within two years and they all stay there longer because of the way this Government handles the processing and the appeals process, well it’s a recipe for the disaster that we now see in our detention network which is costing taxpayers over $1 billion a year.

QUESTION:

Should people be given the religious right to attend mosques and religious ceremonies?

MORRISON:

I’ll leave those matters to the Government because the Government needs to manage the unprecedented population they have in the detention network that has been created by their own policy failures. I mean, accommodations are made within our detention network to respect peoples’ religious freedom and practise and that’s employed across the detention network, as it always has been. But I don’t think there’s ever an excuse to burn down public property.