Josh Burns (Macnamara, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I rise to ask questions of the Minister for Home Affairs and the Minister for Immigration, Citizenship, Migrant Services and Multicultural Affairs. Unfortunately the minister for immigration couldn't greet us with his presence today, but I will ask the questions anyway. These questions centre around the fact that this government is willing to spend huge amounts of money at the cost to Australian taxpayers for very little benefit.

The most obvious and the most ridiculous saga that we as a country have just gone through is taking an innocent family off the mainland to Christmas Island unnecessarily at a huge expense to the taxpayer. We should know how much it cost Australian taxpayers to unnecessarily drag an innocent family in the middle of the night to Christmas Island. The bill that was run up to detain this family on Christmas Island was in the millions, done completely unnecessarily, and now they're being released back into the community in Perth. What a waste of money in between. This government and the coalition like to boast about how they are the economic managers. What a colossal waste of money taking an innocent family to Christmas Island in the middle of the night has been.

We all remember the story as to why Christmas Island was reset up. We had the medevac legislation, which was orchestrated after the government lost that vote in the House of Representatives in the previous parliament. The medevac legislation was set up, and it was working well. As we saw with this family, there was a need for the medevac legislation, because, under this government's care, people weren't getting the medical attention that they needed. A four-year-old girl developed a blood infection because of untreated pneumonia. If that is not a stark reminder of why we needed the medevac bill in the first place then I don't know what is.

The medevac legislation was set up, and this government were so intent on playing politics and wasting millions of dollars that they reset up the Christmas Island detention centre. They told us that if we weren't to repeal the medevac legislation—if the medevac bill were going to stay where it was—then our borders were going to be inundated. That was the nonsense that we heard from this government. It culminated in one of the most embarrassing press conferences from the Prime Minister, when he stood by himself, inspecting cages on Christmas Island at the cost of who knows what to the taxpayers. They had absolutely no use for it. At that stage there was not one person being detained on Christmas Island, and yet this government thought that the appropriate course of action was to pull an innocent family out of detention and make them sit on Christmas Island, most of the time by themselves—until other people were detained at Christmas Island. So our question is: how much did you spend wasting money to detain an innocent family all the while allowing a little girl to develop a blood infection for untreated pneumonia? What a colossal waste of money.

We in this country have spent a fortune on our regime that was a response to the medevac legislation. I also ask the government in this last little bit: how much could we have saved on detaining people in that total amount had we said yes to the New Zealand offer—the deal that was struck between Julia Gillard and John Key in 2013 to take 150 people per year? How much would we have saved in not having to detain 150 people each year if we would have accepted New Zealand's offer?

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