Second Reading

Mr GARRETT (Kingsford Smith) (10.01 a.m.)—If we reflect on the events of a number of years past up to this present point in time in relation to immigration issues in this country, and if we consider the plethora of inquiries—and there are two important ones that I will refer to a little later in my speech—media coverage of what has happened in relation to the immigration department and a headline such as ‘Something rotten in Immigration’, which I have in front of me at the moment, picked at random, as it were—a report by Mike Steketee, the national affairs editor of the Australian, on the Palmer report—I think it is fair to say that we have witnessed a particularly difficult and at times disturbing era in the administration of a federal bureaucracy and the appropriate policy settings, governance and leadership that have been put in place by successive ministers of the Howard government.

There is no doubt that immigration, really, has been the leitmotiv of the Howard era. When the history is written in a detached sense, in some years to come, I do not think—and I say this with some regret—that there is any doubt whatsoever that historians will judge the era very harshly. They will judge the department harshly and they will reflect on the leadership of the department. But, most importantly—and I do not seek to reflect on the current leadership of the department today—they will reflect on the leadership that was offered by the government on this issue, particularly by the Prime Minister; the former Minister for Immigration and Multicultural and Indigenous Affairs, the now Attorney-General, Mr Ruddock; and the existing minister, Senator Vanstone.

It is fair to say that the public has an expectation that government departments would not only observe all the appropriate bureaucratic policy and legislative and other protocols that are within their remit but, at the same time, ensure that the duty of care they owe, particularly in departments like Immigration, to the people over whom they ultimately have some responsibility is exercised prudently and compassionately. In the cases that I will refer to today, it is very clear that that has not happened.

What is most disturbing about the saga of events that has transpired over the past several years is not that the department has not come to an understanding and an admission that it could do things better—it has, and that is acknowledged by members on this side of the House and by others—it is that the department’s political masters, the Prime Minister and now Senator Vanstone, have refused in any way whatsoever to take accountability for what has happened. It is fair to say, particularly in relation to the Palmer report, the Comrie report and the series of events that surrounded both Ms Rau and Ms Solon Alvarez, that the idea of ministerial responsibility literally went out the window altogether.

I do note that the member for Kooyong will speak following me. I want to put on the record my appreciation of the efforts of the member for Kooyong, the member for Pearce and others in the government, who have worked assiduously to ensure that the duty of care that I have just referred to, which ought to be exercised as a matter of course by a government department with these responsibilities, has in some ways been enhanced and improved. But from the record of what the Prime Minister and Minister Vanstone have said, it is very clear that the government as a whole, and the whole-of-government position, has simply been to carry on as though very little has happened—and no-one, still, has been judged responsible.

There will be many speeches, and there probably have been many made that I am not aware of, that go to the heart of this issue. I suspect that there will be many more made, both in this parliament and in the community, until responsibility is acknowledged by those who truly are responsible—the ministers in question.

Minister Ruddock made an art form of encouraging people to think poorly either of those who sought to come here as refugees or of those who were in the immigration system. He turned it into an art form, which I think reflects politics at its worst. The legion of claims that he has made, as both minister for immigration and Attorney-General, that are either false, misleading or incorrect, are many. As immigration minister it was not above the minister—

The DEPUTY SPEAKER (Hon. IR Causley)—Order! The member for Kingsford Smith should withdraw the word ‘false’. I do not think that can be accepted.

Mr GARRETT—I withdraw that expression, Mr Deputy Speaker, as you suggest. I certainly will retain the expression ‘misleading’ for the moment. I refer to the claim that the minister made when he was the minister for immigration that Australia took its fair share of refugees into the country and compared us to equivalent Western countries where the rate, as memory serves me, was about 26 per cent and Australia’s rate was about 13 per cent. That claim was actually wrong, Mr Deputy Speaker.

Politicians and political leaders may have remained indifferent to the levels of concern about the integrity of the processes that were under way, both in respect of immigration and also in its oversight. But the public were not indifferent. One of the things that has been most noticeable to me has been the increasing number of ordinary Australians—and I think of Rural Australians for Refugees—who decided that they had to speak up on this issue, that they had to work with politicians on both sides of the House who had some concerns about this issue and additionally that they would work in the community to ensure that some representation of a public kind in respect of what was going on could take place. I endorse the member for Watson’s remarks in debate on the second reading amendment. There is no doubt that both the Palmer report recommendations and the Comrie inquiry’s report showed very clearly that the state of the department was catastrophic—those were words that were used.

I refer to the Palmer report’s main findings in respect of Ms Rau and I will identify a couple of these main findings in my remarks. Main finding No. 4 says:

There is no automatic process of review sufficient to provide confidence to the Government, to the Secretary of DIMIA or to the public that the power to detain a person on reasonable suspicion of being an unlawful non-citizen under s. 189(1) of the Commonwealth’s Migration Act 1958 is being exercised lawfully, justifiably and with integrity.

That is an astonishing finding by Mr Palmer. Finding No. 5 says:

The case complexity and workload associated with enforcing and managing immigration detention policy have placed much pressure on DIMIA staff.
… … …

The speed of change to the immigration detention environment since 2000 has led to policy, procedures and enabling structures being developed on the run.

One has to ask the question: what was the minister doing at this point in time when policy changes were putting such pressure and stress on officers within the department? Finding No. 8, which has been extensively remarked on in the press, says:

There is a serious cultural problem within DIMIA’s immigration compliance and detention areas: urgent reform is necessary.

Finding No. 9 says:

DIMIA officers are authorised to exercise exceptional, even extraordinary, powers. That they should be permitted and expected to do so without adequate training, without proper management and oversight, with poor information systems, and with no genuine quality assurance and constraints on the exercise of these powers is of concern. The fact that this situation has been allowed to continue unchecked and unreviewed for several years is difficult to understand.

And so it goes on; the story is well understood. The department and the ministers in question have made their responses. I do not doubt that there is a genuine desire within the department, and from officers within the department, to heed this report and subsequent reports, but when we look at the way in which the responses of ministers and other departments have played out in public—and we are still left with a feeling of the public’s expectation of genuine bona fide sincerity—there has certainly been no contrition. Genuine bona fide sincerity in addressing these issues has not yet been made clear to the Australian public, and it certainly has not been felt on this side of the House.

Let me refer to the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade, which I think has been particularly remiss in understanding the necessary cultural and process changes that ought to take place in relation to the Comrie report. As you will know, Mr Deputy Speaker Causley, the Comrie report’s findings about Vivian Alvarez Solon were also damning. The history is a tragic one, made more so by the fact it was clear that the omissions and failures and incapacities of the department increased the misery of this woman and in fact contributed to the situation that she found herself in. She was found injured in a park in Lismore on 30 March 2001. She was first interviewed by DIMIA officers on 3 May. The DIMIA officers did not seek access to hospital records that contained personal information that would have helped to have identified her, and they did not actively pursue a male friend of hers in Lismore who had information that would have helped to identify her. I am picking out some of the aspects of the report—because I know they have been well reported—but it does paint the picture of what actually happened.

DIMIA officers conducted a formal interview with Ms Solon on 13 July. She said she was an Australian citizen at that time, that she wanted to remain in Australia and that she wanted to apply for a visa. Comrie remarks:

Inadequate action was taken by DIMIA to pursue these crucial remarks.

He points out:

The inquiries made in an attempt to identify Vivian were ad hoc and symptomatic of a situation in which DIMIA officers had been inadequately trained for their role as compliance officers, particularly in relation to the interrogation of IT systems and databases.

Certainly there was a great deal of reportage at the time and subsequent response by the department about the necessity for the department to have far more rigorous, accountable and transparent processes but particularly to enhance the IT capacity within the department. The report goes on to say:

The management of Vivian’s case was very poor, lacking rigour and accountability.

The report’s main finding No. 10 states:

The DIMIA officers involved in Vivian’s case had a flawed understanding of the application and implications of s. 189 of the Migration Act 1958.

I think it is very fair to ask in the parliament how it is that immigration officers can have a flawed understanding of the application and implications of their governing act. How is it that officers who have this level of responsibility do not know what is in the law and that the life of this woman, in particular, was jeopardised as a consequence of their ignorance of that? A litany of mistakes, a history of errors goes on in her case. For example, finding No. 15 states:

Although DIMIA officers were presented with a difficult decision about where to detain Vivian before removing her—and, as we know, she ended up in the Philippines—her detention for one week in a single motel room was inappropriate. Her privacy, dignity and welfare were compromised by the fact that she was guarded in this room at all times by two contracted security guards and had no access to the medical facilities available to people held in immigration detention centres.

What were people thinking? Did they believe that this woman was a risk to national security? What possible reason was there, I pose the question, as to why she should have been treated in this way?

Finally, once the Philippine embassy had expressed concerns about Vivian’s fitness to travel—and when I say ‘finally’, there is a significant history there that I do not have the time to go through at this point—and would not issue a travel document allowing for her removal to the Philippines, there was the use of a locum medical practitioner to certify Vivian as fit to travel, but Mr Comrie finds that this was inappropriate in the circumstances. So the findings go on and on. Frankly, if it were not for the efforts of Robert Young, Ms Solon Alvarez’s former husband, who knows what ultimately would have happened? Finding No. 34 states:

DIMIA’s overall management of Vivian’s case can only be described as catastrophic.

However, that finding goes on to say:

... it is important to record that some DIMIA officers performed their duties diligently and professionally ...

And I do not doubt that at all. What I do doubt is that the message has got through to the government and, frankly, to some bureaucrats as well. I referred earlier to DFAT. In the Comrie report we read that, despite being aware on 9 September 2003 that Vivian had been wrongfully deported in 2001, they—that is DFAT officers—treated the matter as an inquiry for information about a third party and did not create a case file. It really beggars belief. They simply supplied the information to the Missing Persons Bureau and did nothing else. What reason was offered for that? The rules only require a follow-up and creation of a case file if a query comes from a family member. This speaks to me of bureaucracy going terribly wrong.

The communications on Ms Solon Alvarez were by email. The department then said that, if they had been by cable, they would have been noticed. If I did not notice my email communications because I preferred to receive letters and was instructed that I should read only communications that came to me by letter and ignore all the emails of the many millions that fly around the world every second of the day, communications used by every person in this room, I would be doing my job very poorly. They did their job very poorly. The DFAT line was the classic defence of ‘doing it by the book’—the consular handbook, in that case. No wonder Mr Comrie remarked:

It might well be that bureaucratic requirements were met in this case, but the Inquiry is of the view that important obligations to an Australian citizen were not met.

There were other examples. Despite department assurances that systems will be tightened in the future, you are left with the feeling that the neglect that goes to the heart of how this woman was treated is consistent with the government’s political posture and political policy as enunciated at the beginning of election campaigns, when the statement was made by the Prime Minister: ‘We decide who comes into the country.’ That is very clearly the impression that you get.

In my remarks, I want to say very clearly that we on this side acknowledge the good and hard work that is done by public servants within government departments of the Federation. I personally recognise that people give of themselves in public service. I know that many would be feeling a great sense of regret that the issues that I have travailed very lightly today have reflected so poorly on their department.

While the former head of the department, Mr Farmer, becoming the Ambassador to Indonesia may or may not have been a choice that he made, it was certainly a decision that the Prime Minister made. It was a decision of great eloquence, because it spoke to the heart of how this government sees these particular issues and the way in which it is prepared to either reward or condemn on the basis of not what is happening in terms of substantive policy but what it thinks it can get away with politically.

There has been something rotten in Immigration—of that there is no doubt. We do, though, support this bill, and we recognise that the government is implementing some measures which we think will improve the administration of immigration policy. For there to be more flexibility and fairness and for it to happen in a more timely manner is to be acknowledged. Labor has a more progressive policy, and it has been enumerated by a number of members here, and so I commend that policy. (Time expired)