Ms Julie Bishop (Curtin, Liberal Party, Deputy Leader of the Opposition) Share this | Hansard source

I second the motion. It is a fundamental duty of this parliament to ensure accountability—accountability of the government, of the executive and of the ministers. This Prime Minister may not like it, but he cannot avoid it. Yet when serious questions are asked in this House of Representatives to hold the government and in particular to hold this Prime Minister to account about his border protection policies, about deals made with other governments in relation to resettlement of asylum seekers, about offers that his government has made to asylum seekers to settle in Australia within record time, this Prime Minister has a duty to at least give a constructive response if not answer the question. Why is it so difficult for this Prime Minister to stand at the dispatch box, look this country in the eye and tell them what is going on in relation to border protection? Why can he not be straight with the Australian people?

The Prime Minister’s behaviour this week in refusing to answer questions—the ducking and weaving, the avoiding and evading—has been bordering on the pathological. The consistent, repeated denial that he offered a special deal to 78 asylum seekers on board the Oceanic Viking when all of the evidence shows precisely that he did is what we call ‘mythomania’. This is a case study in it. It is a compulsion to, shall we say, embroider the truth. Mythomania means embroider the truth. So we have in our midst a mythomaniac. This reminds me of a Monty Python sketch. You remember the dead parrot sketch where the pet shop owner insists that the very dead parrot is not dead; it is just resting. The very special ‘deal’ is not a special deal; it is just non-extraordinary. This has become comical. If this were not so serious—and it is a serious matter, deserving of serious attention by the Prime Minister—it would be hilarious. In fact, watching him has been hilarious.

This Prime Minister is incapable of answering a straight question—a question on facts, a question asking for a yes or no answer. He gives us these self-indulgent monologues. He reminds us of Fidel Castro, as he stands up there and rants and raves and refuses to answer questions that the Australian people want to know the answers to. All the evidence is against the Prime Minister. All the opinion is against the Prime Minister. There is the case of the letter that he so shamelessly forced a public servant to write to try and justify his outrageous behaviour. There is the fact that a cabinet subcommittee met especially to consider this ‘deal’ that he tries to say is just standard and that everybody in Indonesia gets it. The fact is that he cannot point to one refugee anywhere in the world, let alone in Indonesia, who has been offered a special deal by the Australian government. If there was a standard offer, why wasn’t it made on the first day? Why did we have to wait 31 days or more for the offer to be made? Why didn’t they just get the standard offer—just like everybody else, the Prime Minister says? They could have hopped off the boat, gone ashore and been resettled in four weeks or 12 weeks or whatever fast-track timetable this Prime Minister has offered to the people on board the Oceanic Viking.

There is the department of immigration’s own annual report that says offshore processing for asylum seekers, and that includes those in Indonesia, is running at about 52 weeks—75 per cent have been finalised within 52 weeks. Prime Minister, that is a little different from four to 12 weeks. It is 12 months, not 12 weeks. The Prime Minister’s contempt for the opposition on this is something that we live with. That is the standard he chooses to apply to his position as Prime Minister of the country. But there is the contempt that he shows to the Australian people by refusing to admit that he was involved in this decision to offer the special deal. He said to this parliament that he did not know of it; he did not approve it. That is inconceivable. This is a man who micromanages every issue that crosses his desk. This is a man who is so focused on the polls that he gave 14 interviews in 14 hours. This Prime Minister must be censured for his behaviour. (Time expired)

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