Chris Bowen (Prospect, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

An intelligence briefing from Mark Textor saying, ‘The Labor Party has matched us. We have to go one further’. As the honourable member for Watson has said, this is a terrible way to run the citizenship of this nation. For this government to play politics and say, ‘We must increase it to three. It is a matter of national importance and three is the right figure.’ After consideration—and there was some consideration in the Labor Party in our caucus about how we would respond—the caucus agreed that the government’s proposals were worthy of support. Then all of a sudden it was just changed to four. It is not on for the parliamentary secretary to come in here and use exactly the same words to support going from three years to four as his predecessor used for going from two years to three and say, ‘They are the arguments’ but give no reason, no explanation as to why four is better than three.

For the first time today we heard the sole reason. The sole reason for this change is to give people more of a chance to experience Australian life. For the first time, we heard that there are no national security implications, no other considerations to go in, but the government have decided that four years is the magical number, better than three—and they expect the Labor Party just to say, ‘Oh, well, okay, that’s all right then. You were wrong when you said three was the right figure.’

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