Mr Tony Burke (Watson, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Immigration) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Tomorrow, of all days, is World Refugee Day. The theme for World Refugee Day this year is hope. In the Senate shortly will be presented some 12,000 signatures on petitions, which I have here with me. They have been collected in the local parishes of Christian churches over the last weekend and the weekend before. More are still flowing in and added to that is 32,000 signatures that came from the ‘GetUp!’ petition. There is a very simple message that tens of thousands of Australians are sending to this parliament. They want the immigration laws of Australia to be determined by members of this parliament and not under pressure from anywhere else. There is one concession that matters—and I recognise that many people on the other side of the chamber are involved in negotiating for concessions at the moment. Everybody who has signed these petitions wants one concession and one concession alone and that is for the bill to be stopped. Just as the Senate inquiry unanimously recommended, there is one way you can deliver on the decency that every member of this parliament believed in only 12 months ago and that is the vote which Labor will be exercising to vote no at every stage.