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

Only a couple of hours ago we heard some absolutely fantastic news of the finding of that young autistic and non-verbal boy, Will Callaghan, on the thankfully not aptly named Mount Disappointment. I have some understanding of what those parents went through. My son is also autistic and non-verbal. There are times I have lost him, but only for 20 minutes or so. I know the fear that would run through your heart. To hear that that young boy spent 47 hours lost in the wilderness of the Victorian mountains and has been found by the police is a tremendous credit to all those involved in the search and a tremendous credit to our police who coordinated and organised it.

That is so important at this time in our Australian history. We've seen during the coronavirus the police having to enforce draconian laws that simply have no medical logic behind them and no common sense behind them. We saw police arresting lone swimmers in the ocean; a guy on a paddle board out by himself being chased down by a police boat; golfers by themselves, alone on entire golf courses, being rounded up and chased; someone going to put flowers on his wife's grave being harassed by the police. Police having to enforce this petty totalitarianism has damaged the police's reputation in the eyes of many. We need to have a police force that is respected in our society. We need the rule of law respected and the police's authority respected. We see enough of people trying to undermine our police's authority. We saw on ABC TV, only earlier this week, the ABC allowing to go to air unchallenged the accusation that the police have murdered 400 Indigenous Australians over recent years. The ABC allowed that to go to air unchallenged. This is what our police are up for.

So today I am so proud of our police forces and all those volunteers that helped search for that young boy. The things they did, like going out and playing Thomas the Tank Enginethat is exactly the sort of thing I know my son would be attracted to, if you play music like that. The idea that he would take his shoes off is something I can associate with. Also that he has a love of food is exactly the thing that I understand as a father of an autistic and non-verbal child. So that's a wonderful thing that we should celebrate today.

When it comes to the coronavirus and our nation's response, one of the most important decisions that I think was ever made in this parliament was when the Prime Minister made the statement, 'every job is essential'. At that time, there was a lot of pressure on the Prime Minister to close everything down. There were people running around the place saying: 'Lock everything down! Close everything down!' The Prime Minister said, 'No.' He said, 'Every job is essential.' So we kept our construction industry firing. We allowed takeaway food businesses to keep operating. We saved millions of jobs, and billions—perhaps hundreds of billions—of dollars of debt that future generations would have to pay off, all by that one decision of our Prime Minister. He got that decision right.

He also said, 'We are fighting two wars.' We are fighting the war against the virus and we are fighting the economic damage that is being done by that war. Every time the Prime Minister has gone and made a decision he has looked at: what benefits will we get from this step in fighting the virus, and what is the economic cost? What will the cost be? Not just the economic cost; what will that do to the health of people like small-business people who have had their livelihoods and their lives ruined? What will those decisions do to rates of suicide and depression and mental health problems? This idea I have heard some people say, 'We are all in it together,' is complete and utter rubbish. The weight of the government's response, both state and federal, has fallen on the shoulders of a very small number of people, mainly in small business and also in our tourist sector.

That is the decision that we made, but unfortunately that is not what we have seen from some of our state premiers. We have seen a complete dismissal of even a consideration of what the economic costs are both in dollar terms and in terms of, as I said, the mental health, welfare, livelihoods and lives of people. The idea that today, when there has not been a single community infection in New South Wales now for—what is it? Two weeks? There are 7.5 million people in New South Wales, and not one single community infection in two weeks, and yet we still have the border between New South Wales and Queensland closed. This is beyond ridiculous! And if you people on the other side of the chamber don't stand up, you are just as guilty of the harm and the suffering that you are causing to all those people in small business.

See this speech in context