Kevin Hogan (Page, National Party, Shadow Minister for Trade and Tourism) Share this | Hansard source

I do second the motion and reiterate the importance of this motion and what the Manager of Opposition Business has said about what is really now a debacle. For Hansard and for people listening, I'm going to go through the quote that was said by the ASIO chief, Mr Burgess, and again say what the Prime Minister said when, we believe, he misled this House. The direct quote on 11 August on Insiders was:

If they've been issued a visa, they've gone through the process. Part of that visa process is, where criteria are hit—

I've got that circled; you'll know the importance of that in a moment—

they're referred to my organisation and ASIO does its thing.

The Prime Minister said Mr Burgess said in his interview:

If they've been issued a visa, they've gone through the process … they're referred to my organisation and ASIO does its thing.

You could give him some credit if the bit about where it says where the criteria was hit was at the start or at the end. You could say, 'Well, okay; he didn't misquote.' But he's taken a quote, kept the start of the quote and the end of the quote and left out nine words that completely change the essence of what Mr Burgess said. This is why this is such an important issue and why the Manager of Opposition Business has moved this.

Let's take the Prime Minister, be generous and say that he was unaware of that, that it was an honest mistake. It was very easily resolved, and we would have moved on a long time ago and not be doing this motion now. If he'd come in and said, 'I'll correct the record. This was the record. I said this. This was the full quote,' and read out in parliament what had actually occurred that was different from what he said, we all would have moved on. But again, this Prime Minister can't do that. He can't come in and say, 'Yes, I made'—he could say it was an honest mistake. We'd accept that if that's what he believed it was. But he can't even say that, and that's why this is so important.

Obviously, he should have corrected the record and come to explain that to the chamber as soon as that was called out. We'd also obviously want an explanation on the government's handling of security arrangements for visas for individuals from the Gaza war. In fact, every time we've done something in the chamber—we've moved motions, we're doing this now and there are three or four other things that have happened in this chamber—the Prime Minister has never come in to defend himself on this. He's never come in and said, 'Well, I see what you're saying,' and tried to correct that.'

I'm certainly aware of the seriousness of this, but we believe that only the powerful Committee of Privileges and Members' Interests has the power to truly hold the Prime Minister accountable for this. I think it's unfortunate that I feel this way and feel the need to say this, but this is a bit of a pattern with the Prime Minister. He says Makarrata to one crowd means this, to another crowd he says that. He says one thing to the Muslim community and another thing to the Jewish community. Now we've got him taking a quote from Mr Burgess from ASIO and. Because of where it is in the quote, it looks really deliberate, like he was deliberately misquoting him to change the essence of what he actually said.

Now, you might say, 'Well, why are you making a big deal of this? So what?' but let's look at what the thing behind this is. What's behind this? We all saw the horrific things that happened on October 7. The people that did those horrific acts—not only were they horrific; they actually felt it was okay to film them. They actually filmed themselves doing barbaric acts and thought it was okay to film themselves and celebrate those horrible things. And there are obviously people within Gaza who don't support that and don't like that, and Hamas, the terrorist organisation, hides behind them in tunnels and in schools and hospitals. We don't want those people coming here. The Prime Minister should correct the record. He should say that he misquoted the security checks that were happening.

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