Ed Husic (Chifley, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary to the Shadow Treasurer) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise to object to an offensive and disgraceful set of comments uttered by the Treasurer in this place yesterday and to demand an unreserved apology from him.

I, the member for Moreton and the member for Wakefield were members of a joint parliamentary inquiry that investigated the tragedy at Christmas Island in December 2010. I can confidently speak for the three of us that that incident left in us a deep impression and a fierce determination to ensure that we took steps, as a group, within this parliament to ensure that there was not a repetition of what we saw at Christmas Island. The footage of naval personnel trying to drag people out of those waters the faces of the first responders and medical practitioners who sought to assist and the horrific tales that we heard all left their mark and, in many respects, scars, on us.

This is why, in the last parliament, we spoke so strongly on taking strong steps to prevent this from re-occurring. And it is why we probably strained friendships, because we supported policies that were, in some words and some views, very harsh. But many of us could not countenance the memory of those people and the last moments that they had in those waters off our nation.

We argued for an arrangement with the Malaysian government to deny people smugglers the ability to ply their terrible trade. And we saw early success, with intel showing that people were turning up to people smugglers and demanding money back. They also saw drops in the number of arrivals that were seeking this path to get here. But the High Court knocked back that agreement, and I just want to reflect on some comments made by our shadow immigration spokesperson at the National Press Club recently. He said:

With the decision of the High Court this proposition was put squarely in the hands of the Parliament.

It is at this point that the Coalition's approach to dealing with the question of asylum seeker policy unravels as nothing but political opportunism.

In following a strict order of obstructionism, Scott Morrison—

the member for Cook—

denied Labor cooperation at every turn.

He ran a joint ticket with the Greens to bring down the Malaysia Arrangement.

We had the Treasurer stand up in this place—I remember him in 2012—and say:

I will never ever support a people swap where you can send a 13-year-old child unaccompanied to a country without supervision—never. It will be over my dead body.

This, from a senior member of a government that is currently contemplating doing the same thing in an agreement with the Cambodian government. And he can say that!

And what was the aftermath? Six-hundred and eighty-nine people lost their lives at sea as a result of the Malaysia agreement being stopped. And, on top of that, the coalition went on to break another deal they made with the Greens when they blocked the Malaysian agreement—cutting the humanitarian intake the minute they came into office.

So imagine our disgust yesterday when we saw the Treasurer make the following statement in the parliament:

But most of all, as a result of the actions of this government there are no children floating in the ocean between Australia and East Timor as occurred under Labor!

How does he rationalise that with his decision to block the Malaysian agreement and then put politics above the needs of the nation and people? At a personal level, I had a deep regard for the Treasurer but he pretty much shredded that yesterday with those comments in parliament.

We finally got a refugee resettlement agreement with the Papua New Guinea government that has comprehensively crippled the people smugglers' business. And they can keep all their orange boats and think that they have stopped the trade, but they have not. It was the refugee resettlement agreement that did it.

But we will not sit quietly. The Treasurer it can drag his sorry self back into this parliament and apologise. But not to us: he should not apologise to us. He should apologise to the 689 people who lost their lives because we could not get the type of agreement with Malaysia that we eventually got with the Papua New Guinea government. And if he thinks we will forget it will be over—to use his words—'my dead body'.