Dave Tollner (Solomon, Country Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

Thank you to members opposite for persevering with me this morning. I know that we have a line-up of people who want to speak and I want to thank members opposite for allowing me this opportunity to stand up. As most people in this place would know, I am a pretty simple country boy at heart. I do not profess to be a moral crusader or to have any sort of monopoly on moral or ethical thought, but I find this debate on the Migration Amendment (Designated Unauthorised Arrivals) Bill 2006 interesting, as I do the way it is panning out. People talk about compassion for people who arrive in this country illegally. People obviously have different views on what is the right moral position to take on these matters. I enormously respect the member for Cook, the member for Pearce, the member for Kooyong and the member for McMillan for having the strength of their convictions. They have obviously put a lot of time and effort into pondering this bill and they have been very public about their views on it. I note, reading the front page of today’s Australian, that they are out there telling people exactly what they think about this legislation. I do not share their views on the legislation, but I do admire their strength of conviction and their character in doing that.

But when I go around my electorate, those in it wonder what all this is about and why there is so much opposition to this sort of stuff. We in Darwin are at the leading edge of illegal boat arrivals in Australia—there is no doubt about it. I remember that some years ago, when I first arrived in the Territory, they were a regular occurrence: people lobbing onto our beaches and looking around for taxis to find their way to the nearest police station so that they could hand themselves over to the authorities and involve themselves in long, drawn out legal processes, which inevitably led to their permanent entry into Australia. That has changed in the last 10 years. We do not have people lobbing onto our beaches like we used to and I think the majority of people in my electorate are happy that is the case. Darwin is of course a multicultural city. People who have turned up from other countries and settled in Darwin have done it the hard way. They have done all of the processing correctly and they have come in the front door, and I tend to think that they are a little bit peeved and miffed that there is a debate going on that would allow some relaxation in respect of people who come to this country in unauthorised and illegal manners.

I look at that issue in respect of my electorate and I see that is the view of my constituents. I wonder what the members on the other side are saying to their constituents and how they are selling this line. Does the member for Lilley tell his constituents in Sandgate and Shorncliffe, as they have beaches there, that boat people could be lobbing onto their beaches and wandering around their streets, looking for the authorities, trying to find somewhere to hand themselves in? What does the member for the wonderful multicultural electorate of Watson tell his constituents who went through all of the processes and came here legitimately and are worthwhile and wonderful members of the Australian community? Does he tell them that he is trying to make it easier for people who want to get here illegally? Does he tell them about the examples that we see in England, where they have got 60,000 unauthorised arrivals? They have no idea whom these 60,000 people are, where they have come from, how they intend to make them fit into the country, whether these people are criminals, whether they have criminal backgrounds, whether they are carrying diseases and whether they have gone through various health checks.

Does the member for Brand tell his constituents that there is a possibility that if we continue to further relax immigration laws we will see people coming down between the coast and Garden Island in his electorate and landing at Point Peron, Becher Point and Golden Bay? Does he tell his multicultural constituents, people who have come here legally, that this is what his goal is, or does he—like other members—hide behind the skirt of the member for Pearce? Do these members just stand there and watch the member for Pearce, the member for Cook, the member for Kooyong and the member for McMillan take all the heat in this debate? Do they stand there and laugh at them? The greatest dog whistler that we have in this parliament is the member for Brand. I am sure that what he says to his backbench and his party is something completely different from what he says to the constituents of Brand. Does he actually tell them that he is going to sit there and hide behind the skirt of the member for Pearce and try to water down our immigration laws? I think not.

The point that I want to make this morning is that I find it quite reprehensible that members opposite sit there and hide behind the courage and conviction of the members for Cook, Pearce, Kooyong and McMillan. It is an appalling situation. I will be waiting to see the division on this legislation, because they will all be sitting there whistling and saying, ‘Come on! Come over to our side!’ yet none of them have the courage of their convictions to go out into their electorates and tell them exactly where the Labor Party is coming from on this issue: that they want to water down our immigration laws, that they have absolutely no compassion whatsoever for the millions and millions of refugees around the world who want to come to this country in a legitimate way and that they are all there to support illegal smugglers and illegal immigrants. We do not hear any of that from the other side, and to me that is the sorry part of this whole debate.

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