Chris Bowen (McMahon, Australian Labor Party, Minister for Immigration and Citizenship) Share this | Hansard source

Now the member for Stirling comes in to say that they would stop the boats. The sophistry extends widely over there. Nauru is the opposition’s Fantasy Island. It is their answer to everything. You get your wishes granted if you go to Nauru. The member for Cook would like to be Mr Roarke, granting everybody’s wishes. Maybe the member for Stirling could be Tattoo, saying, ‘Here come the boats; here come the planes.’ For them, everything would be okay if they only had Nauru.

In these debates you have a choice about how you handle these issues. On the one hand you can go down the road of shrill press releases, slogans and empty promises about turning the boats back. You can go down that road, or you can go down the road of engaging with the Australian people and saying, ‘We are engaging in a set of complex interactions in our region about a regional problem.’ You can say, ‘We have a regional and international enduring problem which needs a regional and international enduring solution,’ or you can go down the road of the opposition. We think it does need an enduring international and regional solution, and I suspect that deep down the opposition agree. They would not be so keen to wreck it otherwise. They would not be so frustrated that the government are actually making progress in developing a regional framework. Their press releases get more shrill every day as we go down this road. They get more shrill about the matters of regional frameworks.

The member for Cook and the member for Stirling, the great duo over there, put out joint press releases all the time with their simple answers and their facile solutions. What we say is this: countries around the world are managing an increase in asylum seekers and Australia is no different. In 2009 Australia had an increase in asylum seekers of 29 per cent over that calendar year. Other countries have had an increase of over 50 per cent. All countries have experienced these issues. But I think there is something else going on here. I think there is something else going on here because over the last 24 hours the slip-sliding of the shadow minister has reached new levels.

See this speech in context