Craig Kelly (Hughes, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

In rising to speak on this motion, I offer my recognition this World Refugee Day of the role refugees and migrants have played in the prosperity of our great nation. On this day I pause to think about the unbearable situation that many refugees go through when they are forced to flee their homes. I pause to think in particular of the life of my friend Malcolm. Mao ky—or Malcolm—came to this country in the early 1980s after surviving the killing fields of Cambodia. As a 10-year-old, he made the dangerous crossing with his family into Thailand and registered with the UNHCR. Malcolm came to Australia and worked hard on learning to speak English—his fourth language—before serving with the New South Wales Police Force for a decade and then later taking up his current role as an electoral officer in my office. Malcolm, like many who have come to Australia through legal channels, has made a great contribution to this country. I am proud to call him my friend.

It comes as a surprise that this motion was moved by the same member for Fremantle who only last week voted in support of the so called Malaysian solution. I understand the member for Fremantle to be a very principled person but Hansard will show and history will record for perpetuity that the member for Fremantle failed to condemn a policy which will see asylum seekers that reach Australia tagged like cattle and shipped off to Malaysia in a five-for-one people swap. If the coalition had even considered such an extreme and inhumane plan as the Malaysian solution there would have been riots in the streets. However, the member for Fremantle cannot cleanse her conscience by supporting the Malaysian solution one day and then moving this motion the next.

This motion calls for the return of bipartisanship in support of a reasoned, principled and facts-based approach to the issue of asylum seekers and refugees. Really? Does the member for Fremantle really think that Labor's Malaysian solution, which she supports, is a reasoned, principled and facts-based approach to the issue of asylum seekers and refugees? The coalition would be more than pleased if this government took a bipartisan approach by supporting the reopening of facilities on Nauru. If the member for Fremantle wants to take a facts-based approach, the fact is: Nauru worked.

Compare that with this government's abysmal policy on asylum seekers, with policy failure after policy failure. In opposition the Labor Party railed against the Howard government's asylum seeker laws and when they came to government they unravelled policies that were working. While this Prime Minister's policies have successfully destroyed the ceiling installation industry, and now she wants to destroy the manufacturing industry with a carbon tax, one of the few industries that is thriving under this government is the people-smuggler business. Look at the mess we are in from this government's policies. We have thousands crammed into overcrowded detention centres across the nation. We have police forced to use tear gas to break up riots. The Villawood detention centre has been set ablaze, causing $9 million worth of damage. Aerosol cans are banned after the construction of home-made bombs. We have had a blow-out in costs of over $1.7 billion from Labor's failed policies on asylum seekers.

And then we had the pre-election con job of the East Timor solution followed by the Prime Minister giving the excuse that she would not consider Nauru because Nauru was not a signatory to the UN convention. But last week the President of Nauru formally signed that convention, and this is despite Malaysia not being a signatory of that convention. The Prime Minister's excuse for not re-opening Nauru because it is not a signatory to the UN convention is in exactly the same league as her promise not to introduce a carbon tax. No wonder the electorate has stopped listening to this Prime Minister.

Now, we have a motion of appalling and shameful hypocrisy calling for bipartisanship. Personally, I would like to see an increase in the refugee quota so that Australia can welcome more refugees, especially the persecuted Christian Copts from Muslim countries in the Middle East. The Coptic Christians in Egypt are currently being murdered and kidnapped, and their churches are being burned and bombed, yet this Labor government remains silent to their plight. We should immediately be offering more places to Coptic Christians under our refugee quota. That would be the best way that we could all celebrate World Refugee Day.

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