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

As I was about to say, hopefully at some stage, because this is about the contest of ideas, we will see shadow ministers actually explain to the Australian people what it is that the coalition are willing to do about the National Disability Insurance Scheme, that they will acknowledge that the efforts in this budget have brought forward the timetable set down by the Productivity Commission and that they will not describe these efforts in this budget as being not of consequence. The federal government has taken on a vexed issue that faces the Federation and that is difficult to solve because it requires the cooperation of state and territory governments. It should be debated in a sensible manner, not in a manner that is simply point-scoring, like the attitude on asylum seeker policy of the previous contributor to this debate. A mother and her two children are taken to the immigration office in Melbourne. They do not know why they are going. They leave the husband, the new stepfather to the children, in the waiting room. They present and then they come back out of the room to tell the husband-stepfather that they are going immediately on a plane to Villawood because the wife has had an adverse ASIO assessment. When the member for Cook is given an opportunity to respond to such a situation, what does he say? 'It's a consequence of people arriving by boat.' There is a bit of a problem on that. For the last three years, or at least the last two years, there has not been a boat out of Sri Lanka because there were other things that happened in asylum seeker policy. Besides the legislation that they should vote upon and support in this place, there is the cooperation with source countries, and one of the successes has been in Sri Lanka strangling the trade in illegal movement of people.

Then again, I should not have been so surprised. The attitude to Indonesia in this regional tackling of asylum seekers is for them to be told, 'Well, we'll tie a rope on the boats and we'll drag 'em back.' There are no visits to Indonesia to discuss this, before they go out using megaphone diplomacy, no recognition that it was the Howard government that commenced a proper dialogue about a regional approach to illegal movement in people—an approach that recognised that you had source countries, countries of transit and target countries. This is just as if, because Australia is a target country, our participation in the development of policy should only be about target countries. I am sorry: that is just not good enough.

This place should be used for, I will admit, robust debate of ideas and policy. But, when I get people that will go upstairs to the gallery, knock on the doors and say: 'Here I am again. I'll be able to make the comment about the chaos and the lost control, but never put a positive idea.' Well, they can continue to do that up in the galleries. I just invite them to use the opportunities that parliament presents to actually be sensible about things, to have the full debates, to decide that they will contribute to the contest of ideas. That is what is important about this House, and that is the way we all should treat it. (Time expired)

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