By Michael Gordon
National Editor
May 26, 2005
The Age

Petro Georgiou's decision to propose his own legislation to improve Australia's treatment of asylum seekers was born out of frustration, one of the Liberal MPs backing the move said yesterday.

Georgiou tried everything else, says colleague

By Michael Gordon
National Editor
May 26, 2005
The Age

Petro Georgiou's decision to propose his own legislation to improve Australia's treatment of asylum seekers was born out of frustration, one of the Liberal MPs backing the move said yesterday.

Victorian backbencher Russell Broadbent said Mr Georgiou had exhausted all avenues in the Government to achieve change before resorting to a private member's bill.

"I understood his frustration at being led to believe something was going to happen and it doesn't happen, then being led on again and it doesn't happen," he said.

Mr Broadbent, one of five Government members who have committed themselves to voting for the changes in Parliament, told The Age yesterday that they were a "reasonable response" to the situation that the nation now faced.

"We haven't got hordes of boat people coming into the country," Mr Broadbent said. "We have got an issue with long-term detainees that is making a lot of people uncomfortable in the community."

Mr Broadbent said the Government had a "great story to tell" on a host of issues, "so why are we walking around, as someone put to me, with this ulcer on our leg?"

As several Government MPs strongly defended the mandatory detention of asylum seekers, church, legal and human rights advocates supported the Georgiou proposals to release long-term detainees and women and children from immigration detention and give permanent protection to refugees.

Two MPs, West Australian Wilson Tuckey and Queenslander Warren Entsch, predicted that the moves would result in people smugglers resuming their trade.

But the assertion was rejected by Paris Aristotle, a member of the Government's advisory group on immigration detention.

Mr Aristotle said the proposals would not weaken the rigour or integrity of Australia's border protection policy, but would go a long way towards ending the psychological damage to long-term detainees that was inherent in the existing approach.