Craig Emerson (Rankin, Australian Labor Party, Minister for Trade and Competitiveness) Share this | Hansard source

Here is yet another set of contradictions, where we have the Manager of Opposition Business saying that children will not be sent and then we have the member for North Sydney saying that children will be sent. What this reveals is that the coalition does not have a consistent position on this matter. Some members of the coalition say children will not be sent to Malaysia; other members of the coalition say that children will be sent to Malaysia. It just shows that the coalition will do anything in its power to stop the passage of legislation which has the best possible chance to break the people-smugglers' model.

I understand that members of the coalition come into this place and they seem to be genuinely concerned, genuinely distressed about the situation, and we share that distress. But then of course they say that the correct remedy is that boats should be towed back to Indonesia. This compassion is on display from the coalition, and then when it is revealed that they actually support towing boats back to Indonesia I ask across the table to the shadow immigration minister: what happens to those children then under the coalition's bill, because the coalition's bill does not allow processing in countries of nonsignatories to the refugee convention? Indonesia is a nonsignatory to the refugee convention. We have the coalition saying that their policy is to tow boats back into Indonesian waters to a nonsignatory country and that that is somehow acceptable, and the whole basis of their alleged objection to our legislation is that Malaysia is a nonsignatory.

So I have asked the member for Cook across the chamber: what happens to the people who are towed back to Indonesia and who processes them? He just will not answer, because this is the fundamental flaw in their legislation and in their entire position. They have a so-called principled position that it is absolutely imperative that asylum seekers be processed in a country which is a signatory to the refugee convention. Yet what they are demanding is that boats be towed back to the waters of the country of a nonsignatory country. What do they expect to happen to these people—that they perish on the way back? They have said that they would only do it in circumstances where it is safe to do so, that they would take them back to Indonesia, a nonsignatory country.

Mrs Griggs interjecting—

Now we have got a member saying, 'That's right,' that it is right that they be taken back to Indonesia. It violates your own legislation. That is how much thought some people have put into this. You cannot take people back into Indonesia under your legislation because it would violate the coalition's own legislation, and I ask whether this is an indication of the lack of sincerity of the coalition in the legislation that they put forward. They believe that it is okay to take people back under their legislation to a nonsignatory country, when in fact it completely violates their own legislation.

That is the situation. We have got people of goodwill, I think, displaying compassion, but at the same time when they go back to their electorates—whether it is in the Northern Territory or whether it is the member for Macarthur—they describe the asylum seekers as 'illegals'. So here there is compassion; back in the electorate they are illegals. On so many matters they say one thing in the parliament because they want to be seen to be reasonable and compassionate, and back in the electorate there are the arrows coming down from the north-west into Australia of all of these 'illegals', with the opposition leader describing it as an 'invasion'. Here in the parliament he would not dare describe it as an invasion, yet he goes to other places to describe it as an invasion, and he goes to other places to describe asylum seekers as illegals. It is not illegal to seek asylum. They seek to denigrate asylum seekers outside the parliament, yet come into the parliament, where there is a press gallery, and then say that they are very sympathetic and concerned. There are people on the coalition side who are very sympathetic and concerned—but just drop the hypocrisy.

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