Debate has reignited over refugees after 39 people arrived by boat in Western Australia's north. The men have since been flown to Nauru, where they will be held in detention.
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00:00 I think there's two fundamental things that Australians should understand about this.
00:06 Firstly, the policies of the two major parties on this are for all practical purposes identical.
00:13 They have operation sovereign borders for boat turnarounds, albeit two boats did get
00:18 through and we have questions about that.
00:20 That's fair enough.
00:22 The second part of it is all people who arrive by boat are taken to an offshore processing
00:27 centre, at the moment Nauru, for processing.
00:30 And finally, both political parties have a position that those people will never be resettled
00:36 in Australia.
00:37 In other words, the fundamental elements of our border protection arrangements for people
00:43 who arrive by boat are identical between the two political parties.
00:47 The second thing I would say about this is that we are talking about a few dozen people,
00:52 a tiny, tiny, tiny number compared to almost 110,000 asylum seekers in Australia, the vast
01:01 bulk of whom arrived by aeroplane when Mr Dutton was Home Affairs Minister.
01:09 What I don't understand is Mr Dutton seems to be saying that if an asylum seeker arrives
01:14 by boat, that is a huge risk to Australia's border protection, but if they arrive by an
01:20 aeroplane, nothing to worry about.
01:23 Now you said more questions about those boat arrivals.
01:26 Is that a failure of Operation Sovereign Borders?
01:30 Well that's a question for the head of Operation Sovereign Borders.
01:34 Is it a question of resourcing, as Mr Dutton says?
01:36 I don't know the answer to that question and I suspect Mr Dutton does not know either.
01:41 The second part of this is we must remember that these boats are usually coming through
01:47 large numbers of fishing boats who are in the same area and often it's difficult to
01:52 spot which is the asylum seeker boat and which is the fishing boat.
01:56 Now it may have been a case of that, that it was missed because of that reason.
02:00 That's an analysis that Operation Sovereign Borders has to do, but I do agree with the
02:05 head of Operation Sovereign Borders.
02:07 That is, for anyone to suggest there's actually a difference in policy here is both misleading
02:13 Australians but also providing an opportunity for people smugglers to exploit the misinformation.
02:21 Have the so-called push factors changed or intensified and are asylum seeker numbers
02:27 in transit countries on the rise?
02:31 Certainly asylum seeker numbers all around the world are in very high numbers right now
02:36 with all sorts of conflict in many parts of the world.
02:39 That is certainly an issue.
02:41 In terms of push factors out of Indonesia, we don't know whether the recent election
02:46 in Indonesia has been used by the people smugglers to advantage.
02:50 That could have been a factor.
02:51 We don't know that.
02:53 But fundamentally, I think the message will very quickly get back to the communities from
02:58 which these asylum seekers came.
03:00 That is, if you take a boat to Australia, you'll end up being processed on Nauru and
03:05 you'll never actually get to Australia.
03:08 Speaking of Nauru, we've got the Asylum Seeker Resource Centre saying that there's been a
03:12 lack of transparency there.
03:13 They're trying to contact the men.
03:16 Are you concerned about that?
03:19 I think there should be some reasonable level of transparency around that.
03:23 I think to be fair to the government on this, they've only just transferred the asylum seekers
03:27 to Nauru.
03:29 Some reasonable time should be allowed before they can be accessed by the Asylum Seeker
03:33 Resource Centre.
03:35 The people will have to be settled in Nauru.
03:38 Their health checks, identity checks, all of those checks will have to take place.
03:41 That will take a little bit of time.
03:43 Now, as you say, there is quite a focus on boat arrivals as opposed to plane arrivals.
03:48 But are more boat arrivals likely?
03:51 I would be very surprised if we had the, quote, "armada of boats" Mr Dutton has been talking
03:56 about.
03:57 To be frank, Mr Dutton has talked about an armada of boats repeatedly over the last decade
04:03 and no such armada has arrived.
04:06 What he hasn't explained is why he's going to be right this time, given that he's been
04:09 wrong so many times in the past.
04:11 [BLANK_AUDIO]