Mr Tony Burke (Watson, Australian Labor Party, Minister for Employment and Workplace Relations) Share this | Hansard source

If there was ever a motion that said that the Leader of the Opposition is not fit for office, it's what he's put in writing right now. Let me just go to a couple of clauses. As Leader of the Opposition, he gets security briefings. In his previous portfolio as Minister for Defence, he received security briefings. In his portfolio before that, in home affairs, he received security briefings. So how on earth does someone with that sort of background move the following things in this parliament?

In this resolution, he wants a public declaration letting visa applicants know if they're the subject of a security assessment. Just here in the privacy of the House of Representatives, he wants us to publicly let it be known if someone is being subjected to a security assessment right now. Instead of letting the agencies do it in their normal way, let's just, just between us, let it be known on the floor of the House of Representatives, where no-one else will hear. Name one time when anyone wanting to be Prime Minister has said something as idiotic as that. If you want to say you care about national security, the first thing you don't do, if you're conducting a security assessment on someone, is let them know. You don't ring them up and say: 'Hey, this is what we think we've got on you. This is what we think we're checking on you. Would you mind if we had a public conversation about it?'

The Leader of the Opposition knows this is madness, or at least he used to know that. But right now, when he sees the chance to get angry, when he sees the chance to have a fight, all the national security principles go completely out the window. The national security of Australia doesn't matter when it gets in the way of his political interest. Why else would he put something like that in a resolution?

But it doesn't stop there. The next paragraph after that is even more bizarre. He wants a public answer to this: what are the criteria for ASIO to carry out a security assessment? So he wants everything that he may have been told in private briefings over a large proportion of his career to now become a public discussion on the floor of the House of Representatives. You do know that there are public galleries?—no aspersions on any of the people up there; I'm glad you're here. You do know that this is broadcast? I don't know who watches the broadcast. I don't know why people watch the broadcast from time to time, and I certainly don't know why anyone watches the broadcast when something as irresponsible as this is being put before the parliament. To have a public discussion on a national security issue about what criteria ASIO use and who is currently subjected to an assessment would have to be the most irresponsible thing you could do.

But it's not the first time this person has been irresponsible, because this lack of responsibility has paved his whole career. You only have to look at the time delay. It wasn't much more than the six-second delay on radio between Mike Burgess as the director-general of ASIO telling people to cool the temperature and this guy running along with a bucket of kerosene saying, 'Where can I throw it on the fire?' And he's got form on trying to divide the Australian community. Look at who he said he won't fight for. Look at who he said we should all be suspicious of. At the moment we've got a debate where he's wanting to go after Palestinians, but before that it was Africans, Lebanese people and Muslims. Granted he hasn't tried to declare war on every migrant community; he did stand up for white South African farmers. We remember that.

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