Bob Baldwin (Paterson, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Defence Science and Personnel) Share this | Hansard source

Sorry, Madam Deputy Speaker. The Labor Party and members opposite are blind to reality. The reality is that boats continue to come and are increasingly going to arrive in Australia. Why? Because it is easy access—and they have achieved the one thing that they always wanted. By ramping up the numbers of people coming down to Christmas Island and Ashmore, the government is now going to be forced to move people to Darwin. Once they are in Darwin, it will only further exacerbate the problem of more and more and more boats coming to Australia.

Members opposite would say the coalition have concerns because they are heartless people. I say to you, Madam Deputy Speaker, that that is not the truth. The truth is that we are compassionate people, but we believe in supporting those who take their rightful place on a queue to come in—not those who have the financial ability, who have not been living under a threatened environment, who simply want to jump the queue. So what this Prime Minister and members opposite need to do is explain in detail and perhaps put some ads in the papers in Afghanistan and Sri Lanka and in those camps where refugees are housed and say, ‘I am sorry, you can’t come to Australia because we are letting people queue jump; we are encouraging queuejumpers.’ I think that that is an absolute disgrace.

This bill and these measures provide a small change and simply do not go far enough. What this government needs to do is toughen up. It needs to toughen up and make sure that actions are taken to reduce, restrict and stop illegal people coming into this country. I am quite often quoted to by members opposite about our obligations under refugee conventions of the United Nations. I say to you: that applies when people are living under threat. Somebody living in Indonesia for three, five or eight years and earning an income there is not what I would exactly call living in a threat environment. The only person who is in cloud-cuckoo-land, my friend, is you. It is you because you refuse to see the facts. You sit there blindly—

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