Warren Snowdon (Lingiari, Australian Labor Party, Minister for Defence Science and Personnel) Share this | Hansard source

I participate in this debate this afternoon having been in the parliament for a long time and having been through the children overboard and Tampa debates.

As my comrade the member for Hotham said this afternoon, you need to put this in historical context. The Labor Party did not agree to the broad sweep of proposals which were put forward by the Howard government initially. We certainly did not agree with the excisions of all the islands off the Australian coast. Christmas Island—for those who do not know—is part of my electorate. I had grave reservations about supporting, as we finally did, the legislation put through by the Howard government. Now I have the thought of how the people of Christmas Island need to deal with another issue relating to asylum seekers: people who have lost their lives, and suffered dreadfully as a result of making that dreadful boat journey.

I was in Christmas Island last year at a commemorative service for those who lost their lives in December 2010. There is no question about the horror of that incident. How could we not be concerned at the sight of young children dying in their parent's arms in the sea? Yet we have this debate today, a discussion about how we might move closer together, when the only people who are attempting to move at all are the government.

Earlier this week you would have seen the Leader of the Opposition go on national television saying that his observations were that this was not about bipartisanship but about what policy should be. He had made up his mind at the beginning of the week; he was not moving anywhere. So what have the opposition done? They are proposing, in effect, an amendment which will mean only one thing: we either the cop the opposition's position or there is no position. If we do not support the opposition's position here this afternoon, they have told us here in the chamber that they will oppose any bill which is passed through this place into the Senate. They have not made any genuine attempt to discuss in any realistic way any proposals to change their position.

The private member's bill we have here this afternoon provides us all with a capacity to move. We have shown our willingness to move. We have indicated our intention to move, but the people on the opposition benches have decided that they just cannot. I say to those people of principle who are on the opposition benches: think very carefully about what you are doing. Even if we had a discussion which said, 'Let's come part of the way,' the government has moved a substantial way, recognising the opposition proposal for Nauru and looking again at temporary protection visas but saying that most definitely we will not participate in turning boats back. This afternoon we have had the unctuous behaviour of some talking about the UNHCR and the protection of individuals and then turning around and saying, 'We will not support what might happen in Malaysia because it is not a signatory to the convention, but we will turn boats around to Indonesia even though they are not a signatory either.' The hypocrisy involved in that statement is obvious for all to see.

I turn to the issue of those people who are doing this work for us, those brave men and women from the Australian Navy and the border protection teams who are working on these vessels. Last week the HMAS Larrakia and the HMAS Wollongong pulled 90 souls out of the water, some after long periods of immersion. Can you imagine the horrible sights that would have confronted these young naval personnel as they pulled these people onto their boats? That in itself should be sufficient to say to us that we need to do something real; that in itself should say to all of us that we have to be genuine in trying to move across the divide. Yet there seems to be no intent by the opposition to move a centimetre. I say to members of the opposition: you have an opportunity to show us that you are genuine, that you are fair dinkum and that you will move by supporting the proposal before the House. (Time expired)

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