Doug Cameron (NSW, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I am pleased to rise in this debate and take up the points that Senator Fierravanti-Wells has raised. One point she raises is that the government has lost control. What hypocrisy from an opposition whose deputy leader describes that opposition as ‘a rabble’—something I have been describing the opposition as for some time. I am glad the deputy opposition leader now agrees with my view of the opposition as a rabble.

This issue is a complex and important one. The issue of asylum seekers fleeing from Sri Lanka, Afghanistan, Iraq and Pakistan will be an ongoing problem for this community, this nation and the United Nations. I just want to bring this debate back to exactly what we are talking about. We are talking about refugees. We are not talking about illegal immigrants; we are talking about refugees. Look at article 14 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights—and I note that earlier Senator Cash was talking about how she analysed this. Well, Senator Cash is a lawyer; I am not sure if she has looked at article 14 recently. It says:

Everyone has the right to seek and to enjoy in other countries asylum from persecution.

People who are persecuted are entitled to seek asylum.

The 1951 UN Convention relating to the Status of Refugees, and the 1967 Protocol relating to the Status of Refugees, provide a definition of the term ‘refugee’. The definition is that a refugee is someone who:

… owing to well-founded fear of being persecuted for reasons of race, religion, nationality, membership of a particular social group or political opinion, is outside the country of his nationality and is unable, or … unwilling to avail himself of the protection of that country …

This is about people who are in trouble. This is about people who are fleeing wars, who are fleeing persecution in their own country. And what do we have from the opposition? We have the lowest common denominator—the fear factor. When you do not have a policy, when you do not have any ideas, when you have no way of dealing with the issue, start a fear campaign! And that is typical of the opposition: a fear campaign against the weakest, most vulnerable people in the world—refugees. You should be ashamed of where you have taken this debate, because this debate should be about ensuring some fairness, some dignity and some protection for people who are fleeing war zones, are looking for protection and want to ensure that they can be safe from persecution in the country that they are fleeing from.

But it is so easy when you are a rabble to actually adopt the rabble approach, and the approach of the rabble is not to think the issues through; the approach of the rabble, which is the coalition in this place, is to go after the weak and exposed. It is to make sure that you hide your incapacity to develop a policy on the treatment of refugees coming to this country, to make sure that you hide your incapacity to formulate a policy of fairness and equity and of treating refugees with dignity. The Secretary-General of the UN, Ban Ki-moon, has spoken about intolerance. Let me tell you that the coalition’s intolerance has been on show for the public to see. Your intolerance is reprehensible. Your intolerance is borne of no capacity to develop policy. Your intolerance is an absolute disgrace to this country. (Time expired)