Glenn Sterle (WA, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I will withdraw. But I will not withdraw from my refrain to say how embarrassed I am when I go and hear the minority, the rabble—the horrible, ugly minority—that just want to throw every disgusting barb at people who seek asylum in this fantastic country. To hear comments like, 'They'll slit your throats,' and, 'We should use them as target practice for our Navy while they are floating around on the boats,' hurts me—and I do not think that I am alone here—and I am absolutely disgusted to think that fellow Australians have this view. And it is probably not that much of a minority—I hope it is a minority; but we hear this nonsense coming from the other side of the chamber about what a threat and fear asylum seekers are to our borders. I read this rubbish here about our having failed in 'humane policies to deny people smugglers the product they sell', so we had better get a few facts out here quite clearly.

I did not have to, but I opened the Australian newspaper on the weekend, and there is the Leader of the Opposition, Mr Abbott, on a wonderful opportunity for the Liberal Party to get some media on the weekend and visit Nauru, to get a photo of him sticking his head through a window and saying that the Nauru detention centre is ready to open up—let's get going. I have been told—and I will be very happy to come into this chamber and apologise profusely if I give the chamber the wrong information or mislead the chamber—that what he stuck his head into was the Nauru primary school. Yes, it used to be the detention centre—and it is now the primary school. So it would be very interesting to know from those opposite who like to condemn everyone who was not born here in Australia—who should not be allowed into our country—why Mr Abbott was sticking his head through a school window. Was he saying that the Nauru school should be shut and those children should be sent elsewhere? What was he actually saying? I think the fourth estate have got a role to play here by reporting and telling the truth. I think they have been very poor in certain circumstances with that.

Nauru was not a humane way of taking the product that the people smugglers sell. What actually happened was that 70 per cent—and I will be challenged on that; I am happy to take that argument up—of those who went to Nauru, including children, who were locked behind barbed wire for three, four or five years, came to Australia. It is a well-known fact that that lot over that side of the chamber and on the other side of this great building failed to tell the complete truth that we all know darn well: that Nauru is not a signatory to the UNHCR. We all know that. So Mr Abbott can run around, and he can take every photo opportunity and stick his head into every school window on Nauru that he wants to—but tell the truth.