Harry Jenkins (Scullin, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

Whilst of course the standing orders allow for a wide-ranging debate on the appropriations bill, because we can speak about any public affair, one would have thought that a shadow minister might think that the appropriation bill debate speech was the time that he could unveil what he would actually do. He treated us as if he had been invited on one of those 24/7 TV shows, where the emotive word 'chaos' has to be used and that the government has to have 'lost the plot' in a piece of policy area. But what did he say that he would do if he became the immigration minister?

He has been told—and we know, because of the High Court case—of the need for new legislation. We have legislation before the parliament. He tends to rattle on about the Greens and say that they in some way have the government hostage, but the Greens do not support this particular piece of legislation. The coalition would require the piece of legislation, and therefore it is up to them to support it. The shadow minister says that we can return to the Nauru 'solution'. He does not consider that we have moved on a little bit. Five years on, we have moved on from there, and certainly the landscape has changed.

The success rates of those that arrived on our shores and got shoved into the middle of the Pacific Ocean on Nauru was pretty high, and I wonder, in the business of trade of humans in our region, whether it is a deterrent at all. To think that you can wind back the clock and suddenly the fear in people who approach people smugglers because they are being sent to Nauru will still be there, when the success rate of those that either came to Australia or got to other first-world countries through Nauru has been established—what a nonsense.

The shadow minister also stood at the dispatch box and said, 'Oh, we don't need legislation.' There was no mention of the briefings that have been made available to him by the government, by those that know, by those that have looked at the legislation. The shadow minister at the table, the member for Dickson, is getting a bit squeamish. We might hear some policy from him one day. He has been in his portfolio area and has had responsibility for a long time, and he has always joined the mealy-mouthed people who speak on behalf of the opposition.

See this speech in context