KERRY O'BRIEN:
Following the Prime Minister's concessions to dissident Liberal MPs last Friday to soften the Government's treatment of asylum seekers in detention, some are calling it a back flip. The Immigration Minister, Amanda Vanstone, has today invited 50 long-term detainees to apply for release under a revised bridging visa. They include the longest-serving detainee, Peter Qasim, currently in a psychiatric hospital after seven years in custody. Under the Government's new policy on detainees, although mandatory detention will be retained, families with children will be released into what's called community detention at the minister's discretion, after an initial screening period, while the system assesses their claims to refugee status. In announcing the changes, Mr Howard volunteered the rather surprising admission that the changes were "long overdue", which begs the question why he hasn't acted sooner. The Prime Minister joins me now from Canberra. Well Prime Minister, if by your own admission these changes were long overdue, why didn't you act sooner?
PRIME MINISTER:
Well, Kerry, I think I was being rather ironic when I made that statement, and some media outlets have picked the irony wrongly. I thought the changes we announced on Friday were good changes. They keep the framework of the policy intact, but they do soften it at the edges and that is what is needed now. But they don't alter the fundamentals of it, and I never intended to do that and nobody expected me to and I haven't.
KERRY O'BRIEN:
Mr Howard, there was some irony when you said it was part of a number of mistakes in government. I could see the irony in that, but that was in answer to a question. In the body of your initial statement, explaining all of this, you said, with no hint of irony, these changes were long overdue.
PRIME MINISTER:
Well, I think the desirability of having some softening at the edges, that's been argued for a while, but look, we can argue the toss about whether they should have been today or yesterday or a couple of months ago. The reality is that we have arrived at them and I think they're very good changes and they will produce a far better policy.
KERRY O'BRIEN:
Well, in that same regard you talked on Friday about hindsight. You've had alarm bells going off all over the place over years. You've had psychiatric warnings, quite serious ones, from whole groups of psychiatrists, particularly about children, you've had the Human Rights Commission, you've had other groups saying - and having made the admission that the changes are - not just saying overdue you're saying long overdue, which suggests a long period. Have you stopped to ask yourself how many of these children now face life as seriously damaged human beings, not to mention their parents?
PRIME MINISTER:
Well, Kerry, perhaps their parents should have stopped to ask themselves whether they should have tried to come to this country in an unauthorised way in the first place.
KERRY O'BRIEN:
Perhaps their parents were fleeing something far more frightening.
PRIME MINISTER:
Well, Kerry, we can, we can go - I mean I'm very happy to sit here and go through that debate and go through that discussion but there is a fundamental principle involved here which has not been altered and that is that people who come here in an unauthorised fashion must expect a period of detention, and they must understand that they are coming ahead of people who seek to come here in an authorised way, and there are many people in refugee camps, children included, who, if others had not taken their places in the positions available for refugees coming to Australia, would have been here earlier. So that kind of argument can be advanced in relation to people whose opportunity has been denied.
KERRY O'BRIEN:
Would you agree, Mr Howard, and we've been over this before, but since you've raised it again, would you agree that people who are facing the possibility of death for themselves and their children aren't necessarily going to think in terms of whether they should or shouldn't queue in a refugee centre in Pakistan or somewhere else for an indefinite number of years, where in fact people are dying in those camps?
PRIME MINISTER:
But, Kerry, the reality is that not everybody who has sought to come here in an unauthorised way fits the category of somebody who's genuinely in fear of their life.
KERRY O'BRIEN:
But the bottom line is that most of these people who come here, the vast bulk of them, ultimately are recognised by your Government as genuine refugees.
PRIME MINISTER:
But, Kerry, no country can afford to have an unrestricted approach to the entry of citizens of another country into our country, and I mean, we have been over this before...
KERRY O'BRIEN:
But having said that and acknowledging that...
PRIME MINISTER:
Could you let me finish? Our position has not changed and it won't change and that is that people who seek to come here in an unauthorised way face the prospect of mandatory detention, but we have introduced some changes which ensure that families with children will be looked after in community detention, in other words they won't be in a detention centre, and we have also put in place an arrangement where if somebody has been in detention for two years, then the ombudsman can have a look at it and is entitled to make a recommendation to the minister. The minister is not forced to follow that recommendation, but that will certainly ensure far greater transparency, and far greater accountability of the system and I think that strikes a very good balance between the national need to prevent unauthorised arrival and the human responsibility and need to ensure that there's total transparency.
KERRY O'BRIEN:
But given that you are now acknowledging the long overdue fact that children and their parents should be in a somewhat softer form of detention than the kind of razor-wire detention that they have been subjected to, what sort of conditions will be imposed on these detainee families once they are removed into community detention?
PRIME MINISTER:
Well, Kerry, it will depend on the circumstances of each case. What will have to happen - and we're talking here about a very small number, we're talking at the moment of about 25 to 30 children who are in detention centres. There are a number of children who are in residential housing, which is residential accommodation under 24-hour guard, which is an adjacent to a detention centre, so we're talking about a small number. What will happen is that each family will, as it were, be case managed by the minister and the department, and in some cases, the reporting requirements and the detention conditions will be light; in other cases, it will be heavy. Bear in mind that people who have overstayed a visa in this country are only taken into detention in practice if they have been multiple breakers of conditions imposed on their being allowed to remain in the country while their application for a new visa is being assessed. So not every case is quite as innocent as is often represented in the media.
KERRY O'BRIEN:
Will this policy change apply to Afghani families with children in Nauru who are, after all - who have been in detention longer than others?
PRIME MINISTER:
Well it doesn't affect people in offshore areas.
KERRY O'BRIEN:
So the sympathy you are now displaying for children and their parents in detention in Australia doesn't extend to Afghani refugees in detention in Nauru under our direction?
PRIME MINISTER:
I mean if you mean by that are we planning to bring them to Australia to put them in residential accommodation? No. But the conditions of detention in Nauru are somewhat different from what they are in Australia.
KERRY O'BRIEN:
So that's OK?
PRIME MINISTER:
Kerry, nothing is OK in that sarcastic sense, and you know it's not. But we had a difficult problem to deal with, and we have tried to strike a balance between sensitivity and the national interest and the national interest is certainly served by this country continuing to have a firm mandatory detention policy. And whatever people may say about Nauru, we would never have stopped the flood of boats coming to this country if we had not amongst other things had offshore processing. Offshore processing, along with turning the boats back to the north of Australia, mandatory detention and the excision of islands from the migration zone, all of those things taken together stopped the large number of boats coming to this country and effectively provided that protection for our borders. So I continue to very strongly defend the offshore processing of unauthorised arrivals to Australia.
KERRY O'BRIEN:
And with long-term detainees, Mr Howard, I assume that you included them in the long overdue category, like for instance the unfortunate Mr Qasim who's now in a psychiatric hospital after seven years' detention.
PRIME MINISTER:
There's a long history to his case and I'm not going to comment on the individual characteristics of it, because he may at some stage want to pursue some other avenues of redress or appeal and I don't want to comment in a way that might in some way impinge on that.
KERRY O'BRIEN:
By the same token...
PRIME MINISTER:
I understand from the Minister that he is one of the people who has been invited to ...
KERRY O'BRIEN:
That's correct.
PRIME MINISTER:
To apply for the grant of a removal pending visa and I think in the circumstances that is a very sensible way of doing it.
KERRY O'BRIEN:
I notice that Minister Vanstone said that 50 long-term detainees have just been invited to apply, including Peter Qasim, subject to health and character checks. How long do you need to make those checks? Peter Qasim has been there seven years and his health is a damn sight worse today than when he went in there
PRIME MINISTER:
Yes but Kerry, the assumption always with questions like that is there was never anything questionable about somebody coming here in the first place. I'm not talking about him particularly but generally, and I think you do need to continue to make health and character checks but he is one of the 50 people who's been invited, yes.
KERRY O'BRIEN:
The draft Palmer report was sent to the Minister last Tuesday. When did you get it and did it cause you serious concern?
PRIME MINISTER:
Kerry, I have not seen, myself, a copy of the draft of the Palmer report. I understand that a copy may have been circulated to the head of my department. But bear this in mind: that the way it's being handled is that Mr Palmer is sending copies of it to people who may have been commented upon in a critical fashion before he finalises his report in the interests of natural justice and it will be, I think, early next month before the report is formally delivered to the Government.
KERRY O'BRIEN:
And briefly, Mr Howard - Douglas Wood. You saw what he had to say in the press conference today. What advice would you give him about his possible return to Iraq?
PRIME MINISTER:
Well, that's really a matter for his family. I think everybody would be happier if he didn't go back, but that really is a matter for him. He's one gutsy bloke and I, like everybody else, admire the solidarity of his family. I think in many ways it's been one of the inspiring things that's come out of this, his endurance and the love and solidarity of his family, I think it's quite inspiring.
KERRY O'BRIEN:
John Howard, thanks for talking with us.
PRIME MINISTER:
Pleasure.
[ends]