Ruth Webber (WA, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

As Senator Sterle says, we need to qualify for the Tasmanians whether Tasmania is going to be part of this ridiculous parade of folly. What have we had under this current government’s watch? We have had Tampa, we have had ‘children overboard’ and we have had the SIEVX. We have had Cornelia Rau and Vivian Alvarez, and the scandal of six inmates with severe mental illnesses compulsorily detained in Baxter even though the government promised that that would no longer happen. It is an absolute outrage. Now the government complains when they have been hoisted with their own petard. They have given us their latest instalment of migration changes which pander or kowtow to the Indonesians over the West Papuans.

That is the essential dilemma that the government have. They have told us that they are tough on border security. They have told us that they are going to be tough on illegal arrivals—even though you must admit that it was not until talkback radio raised the issue that the government did anything. But they promised that they would be tough. They told us that they would decide who would come here and the circumstance under which they would come. We now see from evidence before Senate committees and from the Palmer report that they have not shared the full story with the parliament or the Australian public. We have lurched from one stuff-up to another, with bungles and overzealous applications of policies bringing us to this current fiasco—policies that allow a department to deport our own citizens.

Then the Indonesian government complained about 42 asylum seekers. So what do we have to do? We have to change our migration laws so Australia is no longer part of the Australian migration zone; so Australia does not have a migration zone—except perhaps if Tasmania is in it. This is a pathetic excuse for a system. The fact is that the government gagged debate in the other place last week. They are still struggling to cobble together a deal so that they can introduce the legislation in this place, because they cannot even convince their own members and senators to support this ludicrous, ideologically driven and crazy proposition.

It is now time for this government to front up for once and do the decent thing. They need to concede that after 10 long years the system is broken and they need to fix it. And fixing it does not mean excising Australia from its own migration zone; it means coming up with an immigration system that has decency and fairness at its core and then implementing it in a non-partisan, non-ideologically driven way. At the moment, all we have time and time again are examples of this government coming in here unable to explain exactly what is going on.

After this proposed legislation goes through—if it goes through; if you can ever get the numbers in the party room by making people compromise on their principles or by coming up with a decent set of proposals—there will be no more legislative excuses. You will have to front up to the fact that you cannot administer it and that you are not up to the job. This portfolio has always come in for its fair share of criticism over the years, but nothing like what we are seeing now. This is complete incompetence. It is a complete shambles when you have an administrative system that detains those with mental illness and deports Australian citizens, and then you want to excise Australia from its own migration zone. (Time expired)