Tony Abbott (Warringah, Liberal Party, Leader of the Opposition) Share this | Hansard source

I move:

That so much of standing and sessional orders be suspended as would prevent the Member for Warringah moving immediately—That this House suspend proceedings forthwith so that the Prime Minister can stand before the Parliament and explain why:

(1) the Prime Minister refuses to consider an offshore detention centre in Nauru because, as she said in an interview on 8 July 2010, “I would rule out anywhere that is not a signatory to the Refugee Convention” yet now plans to send asylum seekers to Malaysia who hasn’t signed it either;

(2) the Prime Minister decried the use of Manus Island and the Howard Government’s so called “Pacific Solution” as “costly, unsustainable and wrong as a matter of principle” in 2003 yet is now desperately negotiating with the PNG Government to re-open Manus Island;

(3) the Prime Minister has damaged our national interest by agreeing to a deal with Malaysia that will see us accept five of their refugees for every one of the asylum seekers we send to them – with Australian taxpayers footing the complete bill;

(4) the Government allowed three people, identified by the NT Coroner as responsible for the fire aboard the people smuggling boat, SIEV36 which killed five people and injured 40, to be granted permanent residency in Australia;

(5) it took only three hours for the NSW police to remove protestors from the roof of the Immigration Minister’s office yet no action was taken against protestors on the roof of Villawood for 11 days;

(6) rioters at Christmas Island faced no penalty for burning down buildings and risking the lives of people at the facility;

(7) the Prime Minister promised an East Timor solution before the election knowing very well that it was opposed by the Government of East Timor and was nothing more than a dishonest election smokescreen; and

(8) the Prime Minister doesn’t just come clean and reinstate the Howard Government policies that worked rather than try to maintain this elaborate fiction that Labor has a plan to stop the boats.

This is a tragedy for our country. The Howard government found a problem and created a solution. The current government has taken that solution and turned it into a tragedy for this country, for our region and for the boat people themselves. The Prime Minister might turn her back on me, but she should not turn her back on this problem, which is of her making. She should turn around and face this problem, not try to shuffle it off to Malaysia, which she is trying to do right now.

This is a very serious problem, and it is not helped by sanctimony and self-righteousness of the type that this Prime Minister has shown in question time today. Since she became the Prime Minister, we have seen more people than ever coming illegally by boat. We have seen further suffering and, I regret to say, further deaths and all this Prime Minister can do is come in here and engage in the kind of sanctimony and self-righteousness that we saw from her earlier today. We do not want sanctimony, Prime Minister; we want solutions. That is what we want, and that is what we are not getting from this government.

Let us be clear on how the Howard government stopped the boats. We stopped the boats with Nauru, with Manus, with temporary protection visas and with a willingness to turn boats around where it was safe to do so. I call on the Prime Minister to swallow her pride, to end this stubborn refusal to do what works and to pick up the phone to the President of Nauru and reopen the centre there. Since this Prime Minister has come to office, we have had almost three boats a week—that is, three boatloads of suffering humanity, three boatloads of people exposed to death on the high seas because of the policies of this government.

This is a problem that is going from bad to worse, and it is going from bad to worse because of the incompetence and the untrustworthiness of this government and in particular this Prime Minister. Let us remember back to that day, 24 June, when the Prime Minister made her 'the government has lost its way' speech. I say to the Minister for Foreign Affairs: do you remember that day when the Prime Minister said that the government had lost its way? He is pretending to have a conversation with the Minister for Infrastructure and Transport, but he is marking every single word of mine. This Prime Minister said that the government had lost its way and that one of the things she was going to fix was the boat people problem. How did she fix this? She fixed it by promising before the election an East Timor detention centre that she had not even bothered to pick up the phone to the President of East Timor about. What incompetence, what ineptitude and, in the end, what absolute deceit of the Australian people on the eve of an election.

We now know that the East Timor detention centre has sunk without trace somewhere in the East Timor Sea, as it always was going to. It was yet another example of the incompetence and the untrustworthiness of this weak and indecisive Prime Minister. But it just goes from bad to worse. This Prime Minister has the Midas touch in reverse when it comes to public policy. Late last week she rushed out into the media—or had her briefers rush out into the media—to say, 'We have an answer: it's Manus Island.' That was the answer. This is the same Prime Minister who had said of the Howard government's Manus and Nauru detention centres that they were 'costly, unsustainable and wrong in principle'.

The Prime Minister is carefully studying her notes and pretending to write on a piece of paper. What she is writing is, 'What the hell do I say now? How do I answer this?' How do you answer it, Prime Minister? How could something that was costly, unsustainable and wrong in principle be wrong for the Howard government and right for her? It is simply impossible to justify, other than by concluding that this is a Prime Minister utterly without conviction or consistency.' But it gets worse. The Manus solution was unravelling within 24 hours of its announcement. And so at three o'clock on a Saturday afternoon, the week before the budget, she rushes out into the prime ministerial courtyard to say, 'We've got another plan. Manus isn't working; we've got a new plan. It's great! We are going to send one of ours to Malaysia and they're going to send us five of theirs!' A great deal for Malaysia; a terrible deal for Australia.

The Prime Minister thinks that, because the member for Cook thought a one-for-one swap might not be a bad deal, one for five must be even better. Really and truly: she is some negotiator! It originally started at one for one, then it became one for two and finally she settled on one for five. The longer she talks, the worse it gets—and we pay for every single one of them with borrowed money.

Not only is this against our national interest but it is hypocritical. Remember the reason the Prime Minister gave for not being able to pick up the phone to the President of Nauru? That Nauru has not signed the UN convention. I have news for the Prime Minister: Malaysia has not signed the UN convention either. Doodle something on your notes, Prime Minister! How do you answer that one? That cannot be answered either.

Finally, let me make this point: it simply won't work. It is absolutely crystal clear that Malaysia are not going to accept any 800 people. They are going to decide the 800 that come to their country and the circumstances under which they come, and they are going to leave the ones they don't like here in Australia, waiting to be dealt with by this Prime Minister. The other point I make is that plainly she is not going to send women and children back, which just gives the people smugglers another product to sell. It is weak and indecisive, from a bad government getting worse.

See this speech in context