Andrew Laming (Bowman, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

This is one of those rare moments when members of the government actually stay around and listen during an MPI. They are obviously willing to listen to any discussion other than the obvious mammoth in the room, that being the events in Indonesia. As many of those government members scurry back to their electorates tonight, I say to them: you may be able to escape the questions this week but you will not be able to escape the questions from your own electorate. The tradies, the subbies and the apprentices in your electorates will be asking you the very simple question: ‘Where do you stand on asylum seekers?’ It is a simple question to which could not get an answer from our Prime Minister. The Prime Minister is all but a neighbour of mine in Brisbane, but the people in Bulimba, Morningside, East Brisbane and Redlands have not got an answer to this. Where was the fair go? Where was the honesty?

This Prime Minister is walking not both sides of the street but both sides of the Timor Sea on this issue, trying to appease Indonesia—and that has been left in smoking rubble—and trying to appease Australians with all of these conflicting messages about being ‘tough but humane’ and ‘compassionate but fair’. But there is absolutely nothing consistent. In the end the only casualties are those poor unfortunate souls sitting in Tanjung Pinang—those poor souls who cannot rely on fair treatment—and the Australian public servants who do a good job, who cannot look these asylum seekers in the eye and say: ‘We will treat you fairly. There is a process around our foreign relations and we will consider your case fairly. You will be heard within an average of 52 weeks in 85 per cent of cases.’ But no.

By any definition, this is a special deal. No matter what arm of the media you come from this is a special deal. In the pubs and clubs and pick-up zones of my electorate, this is a special deal. Talk to the mums in the shopping centres, talk to the fathers commuting home from work: it is a special deal in anyone’s eyes. You are not fooling anyone. We started with a Prime Minister who was all ‘Mr Nambour’ about ‘not throwing fairness out the back door’; we saw the television ads. I went to Mooloolaba State School—

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