Gai Brodtmann (Canberra, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

As the member has noted, Defence Housing Australia is the dedicated manager of housing for Defence Force personnel and their families. It is also important to note that they provide homes for the members and families of the Customs service office as well as for employees of the Maritime Safety Authority. However, the Department of Defence retains ownership of houses on military bases or in remote locations. Those houses intended for Defence Force personnel and their families are all managed by DHA.

Defence Housing has a very high standard for homes intended for defence families and it has come a long way since the days when my husband was an Army brat and his dad was in the Army in the sixties, seventies and early eighties. In the sixties things were pretty basic, and his family of eight—six kids, a mum and a dad—were often crammed into small houses with just a few rooms. I have seen some of those that still exist. They have now been extended and renovated and are up to scratch. Things are very different today. We have a number of friends in defence. Their housing has been incredibly comfortable and it gradually improves as they work their way up the ranks. They do not have any complaints about it except the usual complaints about bits and pieces here and there. Generally it is comfortable and decent. It is like an average suburban home. The places that do not meet this standard are handed back to Defence and those surplus to requirement are also handed back and are then refurbished or demolished.

The houses in Inverbrackie were found not to be suitable for DHA purposes; that is why they went back into the system. In the first instance, the housing was used for a community group and then, late last year, the Minister for Immigration and Citizenship announced that the housing would be used to accommodate up to 400 low-risk asylum seeker family members. This announcement was in the context of the government expanding its residence determination program to move significant numbers of children and vulnerable family groups out of immigration detention facilities and into community based accommodation. I want to commend the government and the minister for this decision. I understand that by June-July this year the bulk of the 1,000 or so unaccompanied minors and vulnerable families will be moved out of detention. In making the decision on housing, the government made sure there would be no impact on defence families. Not one member of the Defence Force missed out on a home because of this decision—not one. All this information would have been available; it is easy to find out.

So I return to my original point: what is this motion actually about? I ask the member to come clean on what he really wants to do with this motion, because it is not about a lack of housing for defence personnel, it is not about a concern that Defence cannot manage housing or a challenge to the DHA over its management and it is not about any actual attempt take a home from a defence family. This is absolutely about wedge politics. This is absolutely about lowest common denominator politics.

I would love to live in a world where these sorts of measures were not needed; however, we do not live in such a world. Therefore, we must have an approach to this matter that protects our national sovereignty and meets our obligations to the international community. I believe that we as a nation are capable of showing compassion without showing weakness.

This motion is just glib. It does not address any actual problem, nor does it show leadership on this issue. I call upon the opposition to stop playing these games. I urge them to treat asylum seekers with some degree of compassion and not to look to score political points on what is a difficult and complex policy issue. That is why I am speaking against this motion.

See this speech in context