Annette Hurley (SA, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

The opposition are certainly full of sound and fury today. I think they must have spent the last few weeks listening to the more extreme radio shock jocks and reading emails from the more extreme right-wing groups. They seem very buoyed up, comparing finding a solution to the refugee issue in our region with poker games where people are swapped like betting chips; yet, in the same breath, they criticise the Australian government for their reaction to it.

The thing that the opposition clearly does not understand is this concept of a regional framework. I understand that the Howard government rhetoric was framed in these terms. It is not just about Australia and the refugees who make it to our shores; it is about the number of refugees coming to our region. It is not solely our problem; refugees are also coming to our neighbours in the area. They come to Malaysia, they come to Indonesia and they come to other countries in the region.It is a proposal that rather than deal separately and inefficiently with this issue we look at it as a region and try to develop a framework that will begin to address the problem; deal with refugees with dignity and humanity—not compare them to poker chips; look at decent solutions in conjunction with the UNHCR and the office of the International Organisation for Migration; and find a way to talk about the overall problem and how we can sort it out among ourselves and assist genuine refugees who are fleeing from countries—and there are a number of such countries around the world—where there is severe repression and threats to people's lives. We are dealing with increased numbers of refugees around the world.

As part of that solution, we have agreed to take an extra number of refugees. Clearly, there are some in the community that are going to dislike that. But what is the alternative? We leave refugees to pile up in Malaysia or Indonesia under very poor conditions? What is the serious proposal of other parties in this discussion? It is to go back to a solution that they found useful a decade ago. It is no longer useful. It is important now to look at the current situation and look at a way to address the situation that gives due respect to other countries in the region that are also experiencing an increase in the number of refugees and gives due respect to those refugees. It is, in the end, a practical solution to the problem. This is what the Gillard government has attempted to do. This arrangement will provide a method by which the refugee cases will be processed according to the UNHCR, which, as has been pointed out by the opposition, Malaysia has never been a party to. It now will be. Surely that is an advance which should get some recognition from the opposition. But no, they go onto these fantastic flights of fantasy about other countries joining in. This ignorance stems from a refusal to listen or to give good analysis to a situation.

No government would expect an opposition party not to critique its policy, but a nation would expect an opposition to be able to seriously address the issues and come up with a reasonable, sensible alternative proposal if necessary. It is clear, from today anyway, that the opposition has got nowhere near that state of affairs.