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ANGE:

From Schwartz Media, I’m Ange McCormack. This is 7am.

Australian Border Force and WA Police spent the weekend searching for 15 men who had arrived by boat.

Eventually all 15 were arrested and put on a flight to Nauru.

The arrival of this boat comes as the federal government tries to bring in controversial new laws, bat away criticism from the opposition, and generally keep immigration off the political agenda.

Today, national correspondent for The Saturday Paper Mike Seccombe, on the politician in the middle and his surprising 23-year journey from asylum seeker lawyer to immigration minister.

It’s Wednesday, April 10.

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ANGE:

Mike, another boat has landed in Australia. Some media are saying this is the third boat that's arrived in the last six months with asylum seekers. What do we know about it?

MIKE:

Well, not a whole lot I've got to say at the moment. We know that it happened in the very north westernmost tip of Western Australia, a very remote area, and it's believed that there were something like 15 people on board who were apparently Chinese nationals. This is the second boat to reach mainland Australia in recent times, in the past, I don’t know a month or so. The first one we spoke about Ange, it had about 40 people on it, and that followed a boat last year that was intercepted in Australian waters but didn't make it actually to shore. So sort of two and a half boat arrivals, I guess you'd say, since last November. Now the thing about this is this is an infinitesimally small number of arrivals compared with the other ways people come to Australia. Most of them come by regular commercial flights. In 2022/23, there were 18,738 of these onshore asylum applications, so vastly larger numbers are arriving by air and claiming asylum than are arriving by boat. They receive, however, an inordinate amount of media attention.

Audio excerpt — Sky News:

“What a surprise! The boats are pouring in. Well, a boat poured in last night in the Kimberley area…”

MIKE:

Immediately this happened, it was jumped on by all the usual right wing suspects on Sky News and elsewhere.

Audio excerpt — Sky News:

“Well, you weaken policies, and the boats come back. The people smugglers see if there is a trade to be had there…”

MIKE:

Suggesting that this showed that the Albanese government was losing control of the borders.

Audio excerpt — Simon Birmingham:

“This is a big indictment on the Albanese government if that is the case, that boats are making it to the mainland and departing with increasing frequency without detection…”

MIKE:

And of course, the opposition has ramped up the rhetoric to. You know, even Simon Birmingham, one of the more moderate members of the Dutton opposition, was out there saying on Sunday that he was concerned that the Labor government was underfunding Operation Sovereign Borders and weakening it.

Audio excerpt — Simon Birmingham:

“We have a reduction in relation to maritime surveillance, a reduction in relation to aerial surveillance; concerns about the future budget projections for Operation Sovereign Borders, and a government that has dismantled the temporary protection visas pillar of those arrangements.”

MIKE:

But it's operating in exactly the same way as it operated under the previous government. So we have a system that's been under stress, at the very least for quite some time, long pre-dated this government. And yet Andrew Giles, the current immigration minister, is the guy who's copping the heat for it at the moment.

Ange:

And how is this latest arrival going to impact Andrew Giles's standing, I suppose, as immigration minister, do you think?

MIKE:

Well, it's just another stressor, I guess you would say. He's been under attack pretty relentlessly, and the background to that as you, and I guess most listeners would be aware, was a High Court decision in November that required the release of 150 odd non-citizens from indefinite immigration detention. And of course, the usual right wing suspects in the opposition jumped on top of this and said that it was essentially Labor that was letting them go and this was evidence of Giles incompetence. Now, it's certainly true that there was an awful lot of scrambling about by the government in response to the High Court decision. I think what we can say here is that the Labor government clearly does not want immigration and asylum seekers to become a political issue for them, so they're trying to neutralise it by being very matter of fact in their support of Operation Sovereign Borders and the detention of asylum seekers. And Andrew Giles is the figurehead of this new policy now. With him in this position, I wanted to find out a bit more about the man so I went and spoke to various people who'd known him, you know, in the law, because he was originally a lawyer or in Labor politics, to get a better understanding, I guess, of the kind of person he is and what his approach is to the portfolio. And then, of course, I eventually spoke to him as well, having spoken to all these other folks.

Ange:

Right, and talking to all of these people close to Andrew Giles and him himself, what started to emerge about the man who's, you know, in the middle of so much of this current immigration debate?

MIKE:

Well, one person I spoke to was a lawyer named Jennifer Kanis, who is now the principal lawyer at Maurice Blackburn. So she's pretty senior. But way back in 2001, she was an article clerk at Holding Redlich, which was a Labor aligned, I guess you would call it, law firm, where Andrew Giles was a young solicitor, and at that time he was working to represent asylum seekers who were on the MV Tampa.

You know, to refresh everyone's memory on this, this was a pretty extraordinary series of events 23 years ago that kind of shaped everything that has happened since in Australia's immigration system.

Audio excerpt — ABC Lateline:

“When the Tampa first sailed into Australian waters after rescuing more than 400 Muslim asylum seekers, no one could have predicted the dramatic sea change ahead.”

MIKE:

What happened there was there was this 20 metre wooden fishing boat with 438 people aboard it, mostly people displaced by the war in Afghanistan, and it got into trouble in international waters. It was sinking just north of Christmas Island, and a large cargo ship, a Norwegian one called the MV Tampa, was instructed to help by Australia’s maritime emergency services.

Audio excerpt — Capt. Arne Rinnan (Capt. of the Tampa):

“For the time being we are drifting off Christmas Island twelve miles. We are running out of medical supplies.”

MIKE:

But despite the fact that we’d asked the Tampa to assist, the Howard government then refused requests from the captain of the Tampa to enter Australian waters to unload the asylum seekers at Christmas Island. So there was this standoff, and eventually Howard dispatched the SAS to board the ship.

Audio excerpt — ABC News:

“Labour MP Peter Tinley was second in command of the SAS counter-terrorism squad.”

Audio excerpt — Peter Tinley:

“But I can't help but feel that the prime minister John Howard, viewed the SAS as something that would resonate politically, to the message of border security. You can’t amp it up more in the public's mind than saying, we're going to send in the SAS.”

MIKE:

The people who were removed from the Tampa were promptly shunted offshore, and this came to be known as the Pacific Solution.

Audio excerpt — John Howard:

“It's about this nation saying to the world, we are a generous, open hearted people, taking more refugees on a per capita basis than any nation except Canada.”

MIKE:

Whereby people who sought asylum in Australia by boat were never allowed to set foot in Australia. We sent them off somewhere else to Nauru or Manus Island.

Audio excerpt — John Howard:

“But we will decide who comes to this country, and the circumstances in which they come.”

MIKE:

The point here, I guess, is that Kanis has known Giles well, and for a long time. Not only did they work together at the law firm, but they were in the same Labor Party branch in Melbourne. And she developed a high regard for him because she said that even though she was relatively low on the totem pole, he always had time to give counsel and advice. And I got a similar story from all the various folks that I spoke to: he was a straight shooter, he was dogged but never bellicose - generally a sort of policy wonk, I guess you would say.

The other thing is, he seems to be the first immigration minister we've had for a long time who is more interested in fixing the system, I would suggest, than in just politicking about it. So I guess given all this weight of political history and the scope for fear mongering under the current circumstances, with these new arrivals, the High Court's involvement, etc., Giles is under a great deal of pressure.

ANGE:

After the break, how Andrew Giles grapples with implementing policies he once opposed.

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ANGE:

Mike, Andrew Giles is the man who represented asylum seekers in the case that has led to so much of the immigration policy we have today, the Tampa case. How does he grapple with enforcing that system today?

MIKE:

Well, having spoken to all the people who knew him, I did eventually speak to the man himself to find out. And I think one of the key things that he said was, quoting him here, “over the last 23 years that I've been involved in this debate, I've tried to reflect on what has worked and what hasn't worked, both in terms of policy and in terms of engagement.” And he said this in response to my observation that in the Tampa case, he was opposing offshore detention. Well, that has now become Labor policy. Back in 2015, as I also pointed out, he, along with much of the left of the party, went to a national conference, opposing the idea of turn backs of asylum seeker boats. Well, that also is Labor policy. So his position and the party's has evolved a lot over those 23 years. And the other thing that he did was he pointed to the trade offs. You know, that as Labor had hardened its position in some areas, it had increased the refugee intake. He did increase the refugee intake. He had provided a pathway to permanency for thousands of refugees who were already in Australia, who were previously trapped in an endless cycle of short term visas and never sure when they might be shunted off overseas again. So, so the way he put it was that in order to gain what he called the social licence for a more humanitarian approach to intake of people through regular channels, it was necessary to reassure the public at large, you know, that our borders were secure and that we were in charge of what was happening and who was coming here, which actually isn't a million miles, obviously, from what Howard said all those years ago, you know, we will decide who comes to this country and the circumstances in which they come. So, you know, Labor is broadly adopting a similar approach, but perhaps with softer edges.

ANGE:

And Mike, Andrew Giles may have approached this job with the intention to get the balance right in his portfolio… but in reality, how successful has he been in doing that?

MIKE:

Well, Labor has introduced several pieces of legislation now. The most recent one, which came to the floor of Parliament with virtually no warning and angered pretty much everyone, not on the government benches.

Audio excerpt — Michaelia Cash:

“Minister, this week the government tried to rush through new immigration laws with virtually no scrutiny…”

Mike:

All those forces combined to say, no, no, we're not rushing this through for you, we're going to send this off to the Senate for a quick inquiry.

Audio excerpt — Senator Wong:

“Thank you, President. As I said, it does say something, doesn't it, when you have the Dutton opposition lining up with Adam Bandt, Mr Bandt, Senator Cash lining up with Senator Shoebridge in order to fail to ensure that Australians are kept safe.”

Mike:

And already we've seen criticism not only from other parties, but from his own. You know, already we've seen some on his own side raise concerns about the fact that this bill includes mandatory prison sentences for people who resist deportation. The whole idea of mandatory sentencing is a very controversial one. So that's one big point of criticism. The other is very widespread concern about provisions that would effectively blacklist countries that do not accept involuntary returns of their citizens. Some of the ones that have been enumerated by the government so far include Iran, Iraq, South Sudan, Russia, Zimbabwe. But I'm told that there are likely to be many others who either do not accept involuntary returns in blanket, or will not accept them in certain circumstances. So this could get very messy. And of course, this could turn diplomatically ugly, too, if there was some retaliatory action, you know, where if they said, well, if you're not letting our people come to you, we won't let your people come to us. So, you know, you can't go off to Zimbabwe to see the elephants. So there is I think you could say a lot more on this bill to come, and a lot of it will be very difficult and potentially embarrassing for the government.

Ange:

And Mike, I guess it's a fine line between politically canny to allow yourself to be more humanitarian and, you know, being hypocritical, being humanitarian on the one hand, draconian on the other. Where does all of this fall, do you think?

Mike:

Well, I think you're quite right. You know, it does seem that Labor and Giles himself seem to have embraced this idea that you have to be cruel to be kind. It's their belief that a hardline, draconian approach to boat arrivals and asylum seekers is necessary to buy themselves the political space to do better in other areas. You know, like moving away from temporary visas, increasing our official intake of refugees, you know, via the UN and official channels. But asylum seekers numbers are not the only issue at play here. I put it to Giles that the sheer numbers coming through regular channels, you know, regular immigrants, was also shaping up as a big issue, because it was increasingly impacting on housing and cost of living concerns. And, and he agreed. And he said, to quote him, “immigration broadly plays into a reactionary form of populism and concern about the cost of living, particularly housing.” And this was a significant concern to the government. And as a result, they had been seeking to rebalance, as he put it, the immigration system, by winding back the demand driven temporary visa system. And in particular, we're talking about overseas students here and preferring more permanent residency that provides, you know, the necessary skills for the Australian economy in the long term.

A point that Giles made to me quite forcefully was that immigration, boat people in particular, had not been an issue in the past two elections. It had been since, you know, 2001 for a long period of time and then the past two elections, it had gone off the agenda. And the bottom line here is that Labor wants to keep it that way. But overall, they're conscious of the fact that the numbers are very high and that this has become an issue in the public and something has to be done to wind them back.

Ange:

Mike, thanks so much for your time today.

Mike:

Thank you for having me.

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Ange:

Also in the news today...

Anglicare Australia is calling for an increase to welfare after its latest research found Australians on social security payments are struggling to survive the current cost of living crisis.

The report found that in the past two years, housing costs went up by 22%, food and grocery prices rose 17% and electricity costs also went up 17%.

And,

A landmark discrimination case has started in the federal court, after transgender woman, Roxanne Tickle, sued the women-only social media platform ‘Giggle for Girls’, after being blocked from using the app.

Known as Tickle v. Giggle, it is the first time a case alleging gender discrimination has been heard by the federal court, and experts say it may have global implications.

I’m Ange McCormack, this is 7am. We’ll be back again tomorrow.

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