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

I am just going to finalise and say this: the day that this government gets serious and stamps its authority on the illegal trade of people into this nation and does everything that it can to promote the proper process whereby genuine refugees are not pushed to the back of a queue for those who have taken a financial opportunity to come to this country, is the day that the government can stand here and lecture me on the issues in relation to settling refugees in this country. But while ever the government takes the stance that it takes now, while ever it takes the soft option—and that is what it is, the soft option—what we will see is a continual arrival of illegal boat people.

It will not be long before Villawood becomes the first port of call for people coming in illegally. They will pick them up off the boat and whack them straight down to Villawood or other migrant settlement areas, and that will again exacerbate the problem. We need to see tough measures and we need to see that those measures are enforced. We cannot ever again let people on an Australian vessel in a foreign country dictate to our Prime Minister the terms on which they will get off that vessel. Sovereignty is important and it is absolute. We must make sure that we protect Australia’s interests as well as the interests of those who are truly disadvantaged, not those who are opportunistic.

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