Michael Ronaldson (Victoria, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

Thank you! In 2001, the member for Brand, Kim Beazley, made his views known ad nauseam in relation to this. On 16 October the member for Brand, the Leader of the Opposition, as he still is now, stated:

Australia can only stop the flood of boats by fixing our relationship with Indonesia. A real solution must be found in Jakarta.

Talking about border protection earlier that day on 6PR, he stated:

... in the end the only solution to the problem that we now confront resides around the relationship that we have with Indonesia and the attitudes that develop in this region to illegal people movement.

Exactly. So what are the Labor Party seeking to do now? They are using the international relationship that Mr Beazley said was so important for some political point scoring. It is gross hypocrisy. I am sure that Senator McGauran will mention the word ‘leadership’, which Mr Beazley mentioned as well. What a gross abrogation of his responsibilities as a leader to behave the way he is at the moment in relation to this matter.

What the Australian people are looking for from the Australian Labor Party, which they have not seen for 10 years, is some leadership in relation to any issue, and none can be more important than our relationship with Indonesia. It needs to be dealt with in a delicate way and leadership needs to be shown. For the Australian Labor Party to allege in the public domain that this matter is about Indonesia is absolutely and totally wrong, and they know it is wrong. As my colleague said, it is un-Australian. It is un-Australian to be using that relationship to score cheap political points.

The Labor Party’s views in relation to the issue of offshore processing, although they had to be dragged kicking and screaming to give them, are well known to every person in this chamber, to every person in the other place and to every member of the Australian community. They will see them, quite rightly, as being absolutely duplicitous in relation to this matter. I cannot believe that Senator Ludwig, in what was a very poor response to a very serious question, can still pursue the line that this is in some way kowtowing to Indonesia. This is about maintaining the integrity of a policy that the Australian Labor Party have themselves signed up to, with the greatest reluctance, because they were forced to do so by the Australian community, who can see the fallacy of what they were doing. (Time expired)