Julian Hill (Bruce, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

In the late 1990s the then Australian government quickly accommodated 10,000 people from Kosovo for 10 weeks to get them out of a war zone. They did this at very short notice: brought them here on military aircraft and chartered flights and put them in Defence barracks. If they could do that then, they can now do it now for Australians. I want to call out the government's failure of leadership in bringing home 32,000 Aussies still stranded overseas. The number just keeps rising. The Prime Minister ducks and weaves, avoiding responsibility—just like with aged care, bushfires, robodebt. 'Nothing to see here! It's not us! It's the states! It's not our fault! They should have come home earlier!'

He loves announcing things with his so-called National Cabinet, doesn't he? That in itself is a marketing exercise. He comes out and says, 'We're lifting the cap.' But the numbers just keep rising. Meanwhile, they keep on going up. It's the same as with aged care, actually. He announces more packages and yet every month there seems to be more senior Australians waiting at home for home care. It's all spin and marketing. It's no delivery. This Prime Minister is a nasty fake.

We need a national plan delivered to bring people home, not more announcements. He said he's going to bring 26,000 people home by Christmas. Yet there are 32,000 people out there now who want to come home. We can use quarantine facilities in the Northern Territory. We can use them in Defence facilities. We can charter flights. If we could do this for people from Kosovo in the 1990s, we can do it for Australians now.