Tony Abbott (Warringah, Liberal Party, Leader of the Opposition) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Mr Speaker, I think that the Prime Minister should stay to listen to this. I move:

That so much of the standing and sessional orders be suspended as would prevent the member for Warringah moving the following motion forthwith—That the Migration Legislation Amendment (Offshore Processing and Other Measures) Bill 2011 be brought on for debate and voted upon immediately.

Standing orders should be suspended because government has no higher duty than border protection and without this legislation this government has no policy whatsoever to protect our borders and to end the crisis on our borders that this government has brought about.

Yesterday the Prime Minister declared that she was going to make a new start. Freed from all the undermining that she thinks she has been subjected to, she was going to get on with the job. She was going to get on with it and she was going to start. Prime Minister, you might as well start by implementing your border protection policy by bringing this legislation on now. Do not be scared of this parliament, Prime Minister. Do not be scared of your own bill; bring it on now. That is what the Prime Minister should do. Standing orders must be suspended because the Prime Minister said yesterday, when she had just got two-thirds support in her caucus:

On occasions like this people often ask you how you feel. Well I can tell you how I feel today, I feel impatient.

We are impatient, too. We are impatient to see a bit of action from this Prime Minister. We are impatient—and this is why standing orders must be suspended—to see the government finally bring on its own legislation.

What is this Prime Minister frightened of? What is she scared of? She should not be scared—and this is why standing orders should be suspended—that she lacks the numbers in the parliament. Since the end of last year, this government does have—at least it should have under normal circumstances—a majority in this parliament. There should be no reason for the government to be frightened now of bringing on the legislation that it was frightened of bringing on before the change to the speakership last year. So I say to the Prime Minister: 'Don't be scared of bringing on your bill. Bring it on now.' But maybe—and this is why this should be tested in the parliament; this is why standing orders should be suspended—the Prime Minister is not so sure about her numbers in this parliament, because we know that the former foreign minister, the member for Griffith, does not like the Malaysian people swap. He has told us he does not like it. He has told us that it was not his policy; that he was not consulted about it; that it was a walk on the wild side. That is why standing orders should be suspended. Why should the member for Griffith not like the Malaysian people swap? Because it is a dud deal for Australia as well as being a cruel deal for boat people.

Standing orders must be suspended so that we can put to the test whether this government really does have the support in this chamber that the Prime Minister claims. The member for Griffith is now on the back bench. We know that the member for Griffith said yesterday that he was going to be totally loyal to the Prime Minister. Well, let us see just how loyal the former Prime Minister, the former foreign minister, will be to the Prime Minister or, alternatively, to his conscience and his principles. That is why standing orders must be suspended. Is this Prime Minister prepared to test her majority on the floor of the parliament? Is she prepared to test the loyalty of the member for Griffith? She should be. If she is impatient to get things done, if she is impatient to get on with the job, if she wants to make a new start, I am suspending standing orders to give her that chance.

Surely, there could be no more important matter before this parliament than border protection. Standing orders must be suspended to enable the Prime Minister to put in place what she says is her policy. It might not be the member for Griffith's policy. Let us see just what the member for Griffith wants to do. If the Prime Minister is anxious that she might lose a few votes from her own side, that some members on her own side might be true to the principles that they have long upheld, that they might be true to their conscience, she can declare this legislation a matter of confidence. That is what she can do.

Standing orders must be suspended because this Prime Minister has been saying that she has been 'ringingly' re-endorsed. Let us see how ringing that re-endorsement has been. She should put this legislation before the parliament. I am giving her the chance to do so by moving this suspension of standing orders and then we will find out just how much confidence this parliament really does have in this Prime Minister. I do not think she is up to it. I do not think she is sufficiently confident in her support on the crossbenches, on her own back benches, to actually allow this to go forward.

The Prime Minister has said repeatedly in this House—and this is why standing orders should be suspended: to test the good faith of this Prime Minister—that the amendments to the Migration Act are a matter of urgency. I quote the Prime Minister on 22 September:

The nation's interest today requires that we deal expeditiously with the migration amendments.

Well, five months have gone by. What has she been doing? She has just been re-endorsed. She no longer has the albatross of the foreign minister around her neck. What is her excuse? There is no excuse, other than the fact that this is a Prime Minister who is not prepared to test her prime ministership on the floor of this parliament. There is no excuse.

The Prime Minister has said repeatedly that she wants every single member of this place to come into the parliament and record their vote. That would be nice, wouldn't it? But she cannot stop the boats. She just wants to stop the votes. I say that a Prime Minister who cannot stop the boats should at least allow this place to vote—allow us a vote on the legislation that she has said repeatedly is so vital for the government's policy. We all know that in the absence of the Malaysian people swap, this government has no policy whatsoever to deal with the surge of boats. She might explain that when standing orders are suspended. There is no policy because the Prime Minister is too proud to admit that her policy has failed. But there is a policy that we know will work, because it has worked in the past. This is why standing orders should be suspended so that one policy can be pitted against another. We know that there is a policy that works. It involves Nauru, temporary protection visas and turning boats around where it is safe to do so. I stress 'turning boats around where it is safe to do so'.

If there was one thing that underlined this Prime Minister's unfitness for office, this Prime Minister's lack of magnanimity and decency, it was the repeated assertions in this chamber today that this opposition wants to put the lives of our servicemen at risk. What a foul and disgraceful smear and slur utterly unworthy of the Prime Minister of this country. I say lots of things about this Prime Minister but I do not accuse her of bad faith and I do not accuse her of deliberately wanting to put people's lives at risk, and she should not stoop so low as to make a foul accusation like that. We have heard a lot of brave words from this Prime Minister since the caucus meeting yesterday. Unless we see some serious action, those words will be exposed as just bluster by a bad Prime Minister getting worse, by a failing Prime Minister who knows in her heart that she is unworthy of the high office which she temporarily occupies. Standing orders must be suspended. We must have the vote and this Prime Minister should not be frightened of putting her policy to the test in this parliament.

Peter Slipper (Speaker) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Is the motion moved by the Leader of the Opposition seconded?

Scott Morrison (Cook, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Immigration and Citizenship) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Mr Speaker, I second the motion. Standing orders must be suspended because this Prime Minister refuses to bring into this place a debate and a vote on her policy, in this bill, in the same way she refuses to stand before the Australian people and face an election. This is a Prime Minister who has so little confidence in her own policies and in her own minister that she refuses to have a vote on the bill that she boldly said should be voted upon, and that the names for every vote on this bill should be recorded in this place. As the Leader of the Opposition has just said, five months have passed since she said that and there is still no debate or vote in this House.

This is the same bill that the Minister for Immigration and Citizenship, after the Labor conference in Sydney, said that he would reintroduce. It is not on the Notice Paper; it has not been on the paper; and he has not even asked for it to be put on the paper because this minister, through this bill, does not want to test the confidence of this House in his failures as Minister for Immigration and Citizenship.

There are four key reasons why this government does not want this bill to be debated and why we need to suspend standing orders. The first is that the government is in denial. This is a government that is in denial about its own weak border policies. Almost 16,000 people have arrived on 286 boats since this government abolished the proven measures of the Howard government. Since this Prime Minister was appointed, not elected, 8,500 people have turned up on 131 boats. She said she was going to smash the people smugglers' business model. Well, they have made $80 million on her watch with 8,500 people turning up over the term of her Prime Ministership. What have taxpayers had to foot the bill for while people smugglers on her watch have made $80 million? They have had to foot the bill for blowouts of $3.9 billion. This is a Prime Minister who has put more beds into detention centres than she has put in public hospitals—that is her record. That is why she does not want to come into this place with her failed plan and test that confidence in this House.

Another reason we need to suspend standing orders is that this government do not want to blow apart the fact that they are misleading Australians about the choices before them. In the bill, which could be brought to this House and voted on today, there is the opportunity for the government to choose between two paths. They can choose the proven path of the coalition or they can choose the measures of the Greens. We know what they have done. They would like you to believe they have no choice and they have to walk away from offshore processing. It is not true. They had a choice. They can choose the Greens' path or the proven path of the coalition. There has been a lot of talk about the Prime Minister's numbers but we in this place all know one thing—the Greens have this Prime Minister's number. They have it every single day because that is the path she went down when given the choice. That is why standing orders need to be suspended.

The third point is that Labor lacks support from themselves for this own bill. The Leader of the Opposition has already said that a lot of backbenchers over there are nervous, for a whole range of reasons. There are certainly backbenchers nervous about their support for this bill. We already know that there are members who have spoken out against this bill, but it was the former foreign minister, the resigned Minister for Foreign Affairs, who told us plainly that he was not consulted on the Malaysian people swap and that it did not work. He described the Prime Minister's policy frolics on border protection as 'walking on the policy wild side'. The Minister for Immigration and Citizenship was so convinced by the former foreign minister's arguments on this that he decided to vote for him in the caucus. He decided to vote, effectively, against his own Malaysian people swap to try to make the former foreign minister the Prime Minister and see this Malaysian people swap farce put to an end. It is no wonder he will not bring this bill to this House. Why should this House support it when he clearly does not support it either, in the way that he supported the former foreign minister's condemnation of it?

Finally, this government refuses to do this because they are interested in excuses, not answers. It was revealed by the former foreign minister that it was the Prime Minister who said to him about his failed ETS that the best way to handle it was to do nothing, leave it on the table and blame Tony Abbott. That is exactly what she is now doing with this bill. The Prime Minister needs to understand that when it comes to border protection policies, blaming the opposition is not an answer, it is an excuse. The Australian people are sick to death of the excuses of this government. They expect governments to protect their borders. They expect governments to act. The only thing that can bring about a real change in border protection policy in this place is a change of government so that the proven policies of the Howard government can be restored. (Time expired)

Anthony Albanese (Grayndler, Australian Labor Party, Leader of the House) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise to speak on the daily motion by the opposition to suspend standing orders—the 42nd occasion on which it has failed to suspend standing orders in order to indulge opposition members rather than debate the real issues before the nation. Mr Speaker, I will tell you why standing orders should not be suspended. It is because I am looking forward to the debate, which is the next item of business, which they are trying to defer—a debate on the national economy. I want to see what the shadow Treasurer has to say about the national economy because the MPI today is:

The urgent need for the government to restore confidence in their management of the national economy—

an amazing position for them to move at a time when, under Labor and under this Treasurer, we have faster wage growth, lower inflation and record public and private infrastructure spending. For the first time, Australia has a AAA credit rating from all three of the world's leading rating agencies. It is no wonder that they put this item on the agenda as a matter of public importance but then move a motion to run away from it. They are running away from their own record and running away from a debate on the economy. We see that day after day. The Treasurer sits next to me in question time and he gets lonely because he cannot get a question. He chats to Minister Macklin and he chats to me, but he has no opportunity to get questions on the economy from those opposite. That is why we should not suspend standing orders.

I want to debate the economy. I want to debate the strong growth that we have and the fact that the OECD predicts Australia will have the fastest-growing major advanced economy in 2012, which will be the 20th consecutive year of economic expansion, the longest period ever. I want to discuss how our economic growth has led to over 750,000 new jobs and how we have an unemployment rate of just over five per cent, compared with the Howard era average of 6.4 per cent. I want to discuss how we have higher wages under this government and how the weekly pay packet of the average working Australian has grown 7.4 per cent in real terms since late 2007. I want to discuss how Australians are benefiting from lower interest rates by comparison with the Howard government. On average, mortgage repayments are $3,000 a year lower than they were under the Howard government.

I want to discuss how this government and this Treasurer have produced lower taxes. Australians now pay less tax than they did under the Howard government and the third-lowest tax in the developed world. I want to discuss how we have contained inflation. The underlying rate of 2.6 per cent remains squarely in the RBA's target band. I want to discuss the unprecedented pipeline of private sector investment, led by the Minister for Resources and Energy—$455 billion in the resources sector alone. Whilst those opposite have run around and cried like Chicken Little about the minerals resource rent tax and the price on carbon, the private sector itself has responded by putting in that investment—and some of those opposite have responded by buying shares in coal companies and in the resources sector. They say one thing but they do another.

I want to speak. I want to be able to have a debate—that will be ruined if we suspend standing orders—on the record infrastructure spending. I want to talk about the fact that this government has doubled the roads budget, increased the rail budget by more than 10 times and committed more to urban public transport since 2007 than all previous governments combined over 107 years. The MPI that they are trying to knock off here speaks about confidence. Well, investor confidence in Australia and its longer term prospects—that is, the yields on 10-year bonds—has never been higher. We have a stable banking sector, Asia's second-biggest stock market and the world's seventh most active foreign exchange market. All of that has been achieved. No wonder those opposite are trying to knock off their own MPI by moving for this suspension of standing orders today.

But the great Labor goal is not to have economic growth as an end in itself; we believe that economic growth is about building a more socially inclusive and cohesive society, about enhancing opportunity, not entrenching privilege like those opposite do. On each of the fundamental debates that are before this chamber, that is where the two sides stand, whether it is on the minerals resource rent tax, where we say the big miners can and should pay more and the big miners say they can pay more but those opposite are not interested; whether it is on building superannuation to 12 per cent, which those opposite oppose; whether it is on the investment in infrastructure that those opposite oppose; or whether it is on making sure that we transition to a carbon-constrained economy in a way that strengthens the jobs of the future or just put our heads in the sand and move to their system, which has the same target but which is dominated by climate sceptics and has an approach of market scepticism as well, because they believe in a direct government approach to these issues.

But we believe all of this is about helping people, giving them a lift up. That is why under this government we will see the income-tax-free threshold rise to above $18,000.

Peter Slipper (Speaker) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The Leader of the House should return to the substance of the motion before the chair.

Anthony Albanese (Grayndler, Australian Labor Party, Leader of the House) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

These are the issues that I want to discuss in the MPI about confidence in the economy, which is why the suspension should not occur. The suspension should not occur because I want to be able to discuss this government's achievements, such as introducing the new education tax refund to help parents with the cost of schooling, including uniforms, and the fact that we have delivered the biggest one-off increase in pensions in Australia's history—and they are saying over there that on 1 July they will claw that back. What will that do for confidence in the economy, the subject of the MPI which has been put forward by the shadow Treasurer and which those opposite are trying to knock off by suspending standing orders to indulge their fantasies here today? That is why we should not support this position.

We want to discuss what you do with the strong economic growth that we have achieved and that those opposite complain about. About the National Disability Insurance Scheme, those opposite now say—

Jenny Macklin (Jagajaga, Australian Labor Party, Minister for Disability Reform) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

On the never-never!

Anthony Albanese (Grayndler, Australian Labor Party, Leader of the House) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

'That will just be on the never-never.' It is an aspiration; they do not have any policies anymore. Well, I say, as the Minister for Infrastructure and Transport, you cannot drive on an aspiration. What we have seen from the Leader of the Opposition, who has turned the coalition of yesterday into the 'noalition' of today, is an abandonment of any principle, an abandonment of any policy. He now says that what we should have is just aspirations. Not only are they opposing funding for the Pacific Highway in their own electorates on the North Coast of New South Wales; they are getting together with their National Party colleagues in New South Wales to say: 'No; we don't want to do any more on the Pacific Highway; we think it's just up to the federal government.'

Peter Slipper (Speaker) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The Leader of the House will be directly relevant to what we are discussing.

Anthony Albanese (Grayndler, Australian Labor Party, Leader of the House) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I will, Mr Speaker. The reason we should not knock off the MPI by having this suspension of standing orders is that we should be discussing the MPI and the economic issues put forward by the shadow Treasurer. They put it forward but they are not prepared to make their case. It is not surprising, because what we heard from the Leader of the Opposition in his contribution in this debate today is essentially that, when it comes to the issue of asylum seekers, not only is he so negative that he now says no to all of this government's policies; he now says no to his own policies—his own policies that they had when they were in government. When they were in government, they supported Nauru. They supported Nauru, and it was not a signatory to the UN. But now they will not vote for legislation—and this motion is to bring on a bill, to have legislation voted on, which is consistent with their policy but which they show their relentless negativity in opposing. This suspension should be rejected because the day-after-day moving of suspension motions has reduced this process to a farce. (Time expired)

Peter Slipper (Speaker) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The time allotted for this debate has expired. The question before the chair is that the motion moved by the honourable Leader of the Opposition for the suspension of standing and sessional orders be agreed to.

Mr Pyne interjecting—

Ms Julie Bishop interjecting—

I am about to put the question. The Manager of Opposition Business and the Deputy Leader of the Opposition will not interject. The question before the chair is that the motion moved by the Leader of the Opposition for the suspension of standing and sessional orders be agreed to.