Michael Ronaldson (Victoria, Liberal Party, Shadow Special Minister of State and Scrutiny of Government Waste) Share this | Hansard source

And puts lives at risk, as my colleague said. What is humanitarian about that? What is humanitarian about forcing people in refugee camps throughout the world to go to the back of the queue because of a crass political policy that devastated a successful border protection policy?

This government has got as big an obligation as the Howard government and governments before that had to make sure that we have a legitimate and achievable border protection policy that can be implemented in this country’s interests. The fact that this government has refused to acknowledge the outcome of this policy is bizarrely, as I said, cloaked in some humanitarian approach to this. What this so-called humanitarian approach has done is put people’s lives at risk. It is now acknowledged, I believe by all parties, that this has cost lives. There are people dying on the back of a crass political response to a serious issue, and the Prime Minister is sitting back and doing nothing—doing no heavy lifting—because he is afraid of another backflip. Prime Minister, let us see you backflip on this—to the cheers of the opposition and the bulk of the Australian community and the people who are sitting in refugee camps waiting their turn to come here on a legitimate basis.

We are, on any measure, an incredibly generous country in relation to providing relief for those who seek to come to our shores—a remarkably generous country. What the Prime Minister has done and what the immigration minister has done is to impose another layer of so-called border protection which has put at risk lives and which has put at risk this country’s sovereignty. This is not, I can tell you, a policy that this government should be proud of. There are many that this government should not be proud of, but this is right at the top of the list. We urge the Prime Minister to accept his responsibility as this nation’s leader to put in place a border protection policy that serves this country’s interests and stops putting at risk the lives of innocent people. When the Prime Minister does that, he will get the plaudits; until then, I can assure you that he will get the brickbats.