Michael McCormack (Riverina, National Party, Shadow Minister for International Development and the Pacific) Share this | Hansard source

If Ninette Simons were able to watch this—and I don't know how her eyesight is after that terrible attack on her on 16 April—she'd be very upset. She'd be very disappointed, because what she would see is probably politics at its worst. She would see those on that side blaming us, saying, 'It was their fault.' Australians deserve better. They just deserve better, and they're not getting it at the moment, and Labor is in government. You can't explain it to a 73-year-old Perth grandmother who has cracked lips, who has a bruised forehead and whose face is purple from the bludgeoning that she took on that terrible night when three men arrived at her doorstep pretending to be police officers. They were pretending to be people who the community should be able to trust. That attack should not have been perpetrated. It's just beyond belief that, indeed, it was. People like Mrs Simons deserve better. Labor is in government, and Labor should be doing better. We all should be doing better. We all should bring about policies that protect people like this 73-year-old grandmother, who says that she doesn't feel safe in her own home. When you are in your own home and someone comes to the door and shows a badge and says they are a police officer, in Australia, in 2024, you should be able to believe them. Yet, she's been let down. She's been let down by all of us. She has. And it is simply not good enough.

In November 2023, the High Court overturned a 20-year-old precedent which had underpinned the migration policy of governments on both sides. It's just simply not good enough that the High Court—I know we have to separate court and parliament, but it's simply not good enough because we make the rules that they follow, and we should have been onto this earlier. As a parliament, we should have been making sure that detainees who have violent pasts should not have been allowed out into the community.

I can remember this parliament at its best when we had a case of pins in strawberries. Some maniac was going around putting sharp objects into strawberries. We came together in a bipartisan way and introduced emergency legislation to stop that. Then, we had the situation—I've been here a while—where we had the Russians wanting to build an embassy within the parliamentary triangle, which was far too close to this building. Again, we were at our best when we came together in a bipartisan way to put in legislation which stopped that process and made sure that we put Australians and Australian interests—national security—at the forefront.

We've got to be better than this. We've simply got to be better than this. We hear that we've got another illegal boat arrival. The other side say: 'Well, it's Howard's fault. We put in place measures.' I've got to say that under the Howard government the boats stopped. They started again in the Gillard-Rudd years. When you've got people being washed ashore on Christmas Island—drowned victims of failed policies—we've got to be better than that. As a parliament, we should have been better. We should have pre-empted what the High Court was going to do and come together and put in policies that would have prevented what we're seeing now, and that is detainees out, causing mayhem in our communities. It's simply not good enough.

The first job of government is to keep Australians safe. Labor is in power. Labor is in office. Labor is in government, and it's on Labor's watch to do better. If there are good policies, we'll support them. If it means keeping Australians safe, we'll support it. Do better!

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