The government’s failed border protection policies; live cattle export trade; Kevin Rudd and Julia Gillard: Tony Abbott Doorstop

16/12/11

TRANSCRIPT OF THE HON. TONY ABBOTT MHR

JOINT DOORSTOP INTERVIEW WITH MR SCOTT MORRISON MHR, SHADOW MINISTER FOR IMMIGRATION AND CITIZENSHIP AND MR MICHAEL KEENAN MHR, SHADOW MINISTER FOR JUSTICE, CUSTOMS AND BORDER PROTECTION,

DARWIN

Subjects: The government’s failed border protection policies; live cattle export trade; Kevin Rudd and Julia Gillard.

E&OE……………………….……………………………………………………………

TONY ABBOTT:

It’s good to be here in Darwin. I’m pleased that Scott Morrison, the Shadow Minister for Immigration and Michael Keenan, the Shadow Minister for Customs and I have had the chance to look at the new Wickham Point Detention Centre. It’s also good to be here with Cobham and the Customs officials to get a briefing on aerial surveillance operations. We only have the Wickham Centre – just opened with currently a capacity of 500 people but a surge capacity soon of 1,500 – we’ve only got these centres because the Government has totally lost control of our borders. It’s a bad situation getting worse. We’ve already had almost 800 illegal boat arrivals in the month of December. Already – and the month is scarcely half over – it’s the highest December monthly arrivals on record and it’s just going to get worse and worse because this is a government which plainly has no plan to stop the boats, no plan whatsoever.

We’ve obviously got a situation where the people smugglers are doing more business than ever and if the Prime Minister was serious about removing the people smugglers’ business model, before she goes on holidays this afternoon, with a stroke of a pen she could restore temporary protection visas and this would immediately mean that the people smugglers don’t have quite the same product to sell. It would immediately mean much less of a pull factor for people currently waiting across the Indonesian archipelago.

So, I say to the Prime Minister: please, in Australia’s national interest, before you go on holiday this afternoon, reintroduce temporary protection visas. It was part of a strong plan which worked before and it can be part of a strong plan that will work again. I suspect that one of the reasons why she is reluctant to do this is because the cabinet is plainly, hopelessly divided and dysfunctional on this as on so many other issues. If you can’t control your cabinet, you can’t control your borders and this is a dysfunctional and divided cabinet.

Just on that point, we’ve got more bad news today from Indonesia about the live cattle export trade. It seems that this is very, very bad news indeed for the cattle producers of the Northern Territory and yet we have a totally incompetent minister, Joe Ludwig, still in the cabinet because he’s not only a faceless man, he’s a hereditary faceless man and he was one of the people who deserved to be sacked from the cabinet. Instead, the Prime Minister sacked or sidelined the people who she feared might have been backing Kevin Rudd. So, really, this is a totally dysfunctional and divided government and the people are suffering because of it. Our borders are not being protected because of it.

Ultimately, as the Prime Minister goes on holidays, it’s almost as if she’s given up – given up on protecting our borders. I think she’s becoming fatalistic in the face of the challenge from Kevin Rudd. I make the point again that I’ve been making now for a few days: this cabinet cannot contain the two of them. This government cannot go on any longer with both Julia Gillard and Kevin Rudd in it. One way or another, one of them has got to go if Australia is to have strong government.

I’m going to ask Scott and Michael to say a few words and then I’ll take some questions.

SCOTT MORRISON:

Thanks, Tony. It’s good to be here with Tony and Michael. What we’re seeing in our detention network is a continuation of the rolling crisis we’ve seen as more and more boats and more and more people have arrived, as Tony has said. We’ve got the same toxic combination of factors brewing once again, at the same time of year, leading up to the riots we saw at Christmas Island and at Villawood in Sydney and of course there have been many riots up here in Darwin. As the boats continue to come, as the people on those boats continue to come, the detention centres will continue to fill up and we will see the same combination of forces brewing once again.

Today we read the reports of weapons including knives and metal bars and things of this nature being found in detention centres and a minister who is completely dismissive about their presence. This is a minister who is running an all carrot and no stick detention network and that’s one of the reasons we’ve seen the chaos and the cost and sadly the tragedy that we’ve seen on so many occasions.

So, as we look forward into the new year, I can only restate what the Leader has said and that is, the Prime Minister can act. She chooses not to. She chooses to roll over and capitulate to the Greens in embracing the onshore release policies that they have been pushing for so long and these onshore release policies present some real risks. We’ve seen here, even recently, here in Darwin, of the case that is now under investigation by the police. The minister should be taking an immediate set of advice from his department and seek to suspend, I believe, the nature of excursions that are taking place where individuals from detention centres are mixing particularly with children in the community. Now, this is something the minister should be moving on very quickly and taking advice on and suspending.

So, as we go through the summer, the most dangerous time of the year, the Government has failed to learn from its mistakes and they’re bound to repeat them again.

TONY ABBOTT:

Michael?

MICHAEL KEENAN:

Well, as Tony and Scott have just outlined, we’re living through an enormous surge in illegal boat arrivals, even by the standards of the Gillard Labor Government. At the same time we have a new Minister for Home Affairs responsible for border security. He presides over agencies who are being allowed to be gutted by his predecessors. They’ve taken from next year over $20 million out of the aerial surveillance that this plane behind us will be doing on our borders. They’ve taken $58 million out of Customs, out of cargo inspection for all cargo that comes into Australia, allowing a greater chance of contraband weapons and other precursors to drugs and other things that we want to see off our streets, allowing them the greater chance to come into our country. This new minister, Jason Clare, is apparently one that has the backing of the New South Wales right and apparently is a rising star within the Labor movement. If he’s going to be an effective minister responsible for border protection, the first thing he must do is reverse the cuts to the agencies that are responsible for policing Labor’s border protection disaster. We cannot have a situation of increasing boat arrivals and agencies that aren’t properly resourced to do their job to protect Australia’s borders and if Jason Clare is going to be more than a cardboard cut-out, if he’s going to be more than a smiling face announcing yet another illegal boat arrival coming to Australia courtesy of the people smugglers, he must act to do something to protect the agencies that he’s supposed to be representing within the Government.

TONY ABBOTT:

Ok, any questions?

QUESTION:

Mr Abbott, what happens to Wickham Point, if it was under a Coalition government?

TONY ABBOTT:

Well, we will stop the boats and under those circumstances you wouldn’t need centres like Wickham Point. As long as the boats keep coming you won’t just have Wickham Point, you’ll have more centres; more centres, more cost, ultimately more riots, more disruption, more spending that Australia increasingly can’t afford. So, in the end you’ve got to stop the boats. That’s the only real objective that the Australian Government can have in a situation like this but unfortunately the current government stops the wrong boats. It’s been very good at stopping cattle boats between Australia and Indonesia. It’s been very bad at stopping people smuggler boats between Australia and Indonesia.

QUESTION:

How are the boats stopped, Mr Abbott?

TONY ABBOTT:

Well, the way it was done before, you can do it again and the Howard Government showed us how. Between 2002 and 2007 there were three boats a year on average. Since this government came in we’ve had almost two boats a week, on average, and the flow is just getting bigger and bigger and bigger. Since the Government announced in late November illegal boat arrivals would be released into the community on bridging visas with work rights, the rate of arrivals has almost doubled. So, what we need are the policies that worked before: Nauru, temporary protection visas and the option of turning boats around where it’s safe to do so and as I say, if the Prime Minister is serious, before she goes on holidays this afternoon, with the stroke of a pen she could reintroduce temporary protection visas. That would at least give her something to say to the Australian people is strong action to protect our borders.

QUESTION:

So that’s what your government’s going to do – reinstate offshore processing in Nauru and temporary protection visas?

TONY ABBOTT:

For a decade the Coalition has been absolutely consistent. The three elements of our policy: Nauru, temporary protection visas and the option of turning boats around where it’s safe to do so. Julia Gillard has had almost every position on these sorts of issues and she has had every position because in the end she has no clue about what to do.

QUESTION:

Are community excursions for detainees a good idea? Would you stop them?

TONY ABBOTT:

I think it’s very important that we don’t do anything that enhances the attractiveness of Australia as a business model for the people smugglers and I think that it’s important that detainees understand that they have done the wrong thing; that coming to Australia illegally by boat is the wrong thing.

QUESTION:

The question was, are community excursions a good idea?

TONY ABBOTT:

Well, I’m saying that we should not be doing anything with detainees which would suggest to them that it’s ok to turn up illegally by boat. It is not ok to turn up illegally by boat and people shouldn’t be treated as if it was.

QUESTION:

Would it be illegally by boat if they’re genuine refugees? Australia signed the UN convention. We’ve got a responsibility, don’t we, to process people?

TONY ABBOTT:

And people should do the right thing and we’ve been taking, for many, many years now, 13,500 refugees and humanitarian entrants. Everyone who comes illegally by boat is someone stuck on the queue in other countries and I think the right thing for people to do is to respect our laws and our laws say you can’t just turn up. If you want to come in, come in by the front door, not by the back door.

QUESTION:

Is that what the UN convention says? I mean, that’s what Australia has signed. If somebody is a genuine refugee, are you saying it’s illegal for them to turn up and seek refugee status?

TONY ABBOTT:

I’m saying that people who want to come to Australia have got to come by the front door, not the back door.

QUESTION:

Through aeroplanes, not boats?

TONY ABBOTT:

I’m saying, and I’m happy to keep saying it for you, ask me the same question I’ll give you the same answer: if you want to come to Australia do it the right way, not the wrong way. Come in through the front door, not the back door.

QUESTION:

Mr Abbott, the cattle industry’s been dealt a blow today. It could potentially be a problem you could inherit. Is there compensation available for pastoralists?

TONY ABBOTT:

I think that the first thing that has to happen is that the Government at the most senior levels has got to have a serious dialogue with Indonesia. Now, when this whole disaster happened, remember what brought it on, it was a panicked overreaction by this government to a television programme and as a result the livelihoods of thousands of Australians, particularly here in Darwin and the Northern Territory, were put at risk. Now, instead of sending Kevin Rudd, who might have actually had the clout to fix this, Joe Ludwig went to Indonesia and he plainly made a bad situation worse. If this was a functional government, as opposed to a dysfunctional government, Julia Gillard would have been prepared to send Kevin Rudd and if Kevin Rudd had got the credit for fixing this, so be it, but her fear of Kevin Rudd was such that she allowed this problem to fester. So, the cattle producers of the Territory are in this jam, in large measure, because Julia Gillard wasn’t prepared to let Kevin Rudd do his job.

QUESTION:

But what I asked was what does an alternative government do?

TONY ABBOTT:

Well, we go to Indonesia and we sort this out. That’s what we do. We don’t send an incompetent, relatively junior member of the cabinet to Indonesia. The only reason Joe Ludwig is in the cabinet is because he is a hereditary faceless man. You send a serious person to do a serious job.

QUESTION:

And what happens to cattle producers in the meantime?

TONY ABBOTT:

Well, cattle producers in the meantime are stuck with a government that can’t fix their problems and one of the many reasons why Australians are over this government, well and truly over this government, is because they know that it doesn’t have credible answers to serious problems.

QUESTION:

Mr Abbott, there are 10 confirmed or suspected cases of TB on Christmas Island. Has this raised concerns for incoming asylum seekers and if so what does your government do about it?

TONY ABBOTT:

My understanding is that the initial medical screening takes place on Christmas Island. If anyone has an infectious disease they aren’t transferred to the mainland. Now, I’m not going to criticise the operation of the system in this particular respect but I do yet again make the fundamental point that the only way to eliminate these problems is to stop the boats and if the Prime Minister was serious about stopping the boats, before she goes on holiday today, with the stroke of a pen she would restore temporary protection visas and the only reason she doesn’t do it is because she’s got a divided and dysfunctional cabinet. If you can’t control your cabinet you can’t control your borders.