Nationality and Borders Bill (Third sitting)

Stuart C McDonald Excerpts

Committee stage
Thursday 23rd September 2021 Public Bill Committees

[Bambos Charalambous]

Q Do you have any figures on the cost of offshoring?

George Brandis: I do not have those figures in front of me. Under the regional processing agreements that Australia entered into with Nauru and New Guinea, the establishment of those centres, which required capital works and so on, was contributed to by Australia.

[Stuart C. McDonald (Cumbernauld, Kilsyth and Kirkintilloch East) (SNP)]

Q Thank you for giving up your time this morning, Mr Brandis. On the capacity of the offshore centres, am I right to say that it would be in the region of around 3,000 offshore places in total?

George Brandis: There were always more in Nauru than in New Guinea. Whether at the maximum point they reached as many as 3,000, I am not sure, but I would not be surprised if it was roughly that figure.

[Stuart C. McDonald]

Q Is it fair to say that there was a challenge within a few months that these places were essentially taken up pretty quickly and capacity was reached?

George Brandis: What happened, as I indicated in the timeline I outlined at the start of my evidence, is that from the introduction of the policy, beginning in September 2013, there was a period during which the effectiveness of the policy was tested by people smugglers. The numbers of people seeking to enter Australia in an irregular fashion continued and then dwindled to nothing by July 2014. Again, I do not have the figures in front of me, but I think it is generally true to say that in the early days of the policy the numbers were greater, obviously, than in subsequent years when the efficacy of the policy was established.

I wonder, Mr McDonald, whether I may make a broader point about this, because I know that this country is seeking to address a problem that has some resemblances but also important differences. The people who put these individuals, groups and families on boats were criminal gangs. People smuggling and people trafficking is a variety of organised crime. Organised crime is a business and, like every other business, it depends upon cash flow. The most important thing that Australia was able to do was drive the people smugglers out of business by depriving them of a product to sell and destroying their cash flow.

[Stuart C. McDonald]

Q We all want to see that happen, but we have different views about how we can do it and the other implications of various policies. Madeline Gleeson, for example, and others suggest that the offshoring itself achieved very little for the first year or two after it was introduced. Numbers did not decline at all; in fact, they soared for a while. What actually achieved the reduction in the number of boats arriving in Australia was the pushback policy. Would it be fair to say that it was this that delivered success, rather than the offshoring?

George Brandis: I respectfully disagree with you, Sir, and I say that having been both a member of the National Security Committee of Cabinet throughout that time and, in fact, the Attorney General who wrote the legal advice on the basis of which the policy was founded. With respect, it was not the Australian experience, and it would be artificial and wrong, to isolate one of those three elements—disruption and deterrence activities, pushbacks and offshore processing—as being more effective than the others. Rather, it is the case that they were a suite of policies that, operating together, had the effect of driving the people smugglers out of business.

[Stuart C. McDonald]

Q But when was the last time anyone was sent to an offshore processing centre? Is it not years ago?

George Brandis: Let me get that information for you—I cannot give you a date. It is certainly the case that, from the early days, the need for offshore processing significantly dwindled because of the efficacy of the policy.

[Stuart C. McDonald]

Q But is that not more because it costs billions of dollars and subjects people to what many regard to be cruel and inhuman treatment?

George Brandis: Sir, I am not going to engage in rhetoric. The fact is that most Australians took the view, as did the Government and the Opposition, that the inhumanity was in letting thousands of people drown.

[Stuart C. McDonald]

Q Nobody wants to see thousands of people drown. What we are challenging is whether or not the policy of offshoring people in particular conditions had anything to do with that, as opposed to the boat pushbacks. In relation to the pushbacks—

George Brandis: Sorry to interrupt, but if I have not made this clear already, it is absolutely not the case that one element of this policy was the effective element, and another element was not effective. The policy was a policy suite in which all three elements mattered.

[Stuart C. McDonald]

You have given your analysis of that. Obviously others disagree.

[The Chair]

Mr McDonald, this will have to be your last question.

[Stuart C. McDonald]

Q You have mentioned that a certain number of boats could not be turned back, because it would not have been safe to push them back. One of several issues with the pushback policy here is that we are talking about small dinghies, and that lives would be put at risk by attempting to push them back. There is nothing in the Australian policy that would have seen Australian vessels putting lives in danger by attempting to push back small dinghies, for example.

George Brandis: No, but because the distances involved are so different. Embarkations from the southern shores of Indonesia, across the Timor sea, were not in dinghies; they were largely in dilapidated wooden fishing boats.

[Mr Robert Goodwill (Scarborough and Whitby) (Con)]

Q Welcome, Your Excellency. You said that in 2014 your policies had successfully stemmed the flow of illegal migrants. In September 2015 you announced that you would take 12,000 Syrians and Iraqis into Australia. Do you feel that you would have been in a position to do that, and had the capacity to do that, had you not stemmed the flow of illegal migrants into your country?

George Brandis: I remember that decision very well; it was an NSC decision and I remember the debate as if it were yesterday. I am very proud that Australia did that. Sir, let me answer your question in this way. What we have found in Australia—this is both the view of those who have studied the issue and empirically verified by many public opinion surveys—is that there is a very direct correlation between the public’s willingness to accept a big immigration programme, with a big humanitarian and refugee element, and public confidence that the Government are in control of the borders. When the public have that confidence, they back a big immigration programme. When that confidence is eroded, they are less enthusiastic about it.

That sentiment was captured by former Prime Minister Howard in words that became almost a mantra in Australian politics of the day. He said in 2004, “We will always fulfil our humanitarian obligations, but we will decide who comes into this country and the circumstances in which they come.” Australia is a big immigration nation. To give some figures, in the year in which the Syrian refugee programme was at its most ambitious, 2016-17, Australia accepted 21,968 refugees under our various humanitarian programmes. We also accepted, under our other immigration programmes—skilled migration; family reunions—183,608 people. More than 200,000 people came that year, of whom about 10% came under humanitarian and refugee programmes.

The numbers have gone up and down a bit. That was the biggest year because of the Syrian element, which was an additional element to the normal humanitarian and refugee programme. In the most recent year, 2019-20, we accepted 140,366 people—13,171 people under our humanitarian and refugee programme. The numbers over the last several years have fluctuated between more than 13,000 and almost 22,000 per year under our humanitarian and refugee programme. In most of those years that is per capita the most generous humanitarian and refugee programme in the world, second only to Canada.