Ian Macdonald (Queensland, Liberal Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Northern and Remote Australia) Share this | Hansard source

I'm jealous, am I? After two decades of listening to railing against private donations, somehow when I raise it I am jealous! I tell you what, Senator: I am embarrassed for you people—and that is a generosity I do not often extend to the Greens. We are talking about $1.6 million, so don't talk to me about who is in the pay of the big end of town. That is quite clear.

These people coming in by boat are not the penniless refugees who have been living in squalid camps around the world for 10 years. They are people who can afford $10,000, $15,000, $20,000 a pop, to pay a people smuggler to bring them in, and that is only what it costs to get from Indonesia to Australia. What they have paid to get from wherever they come from to Indonesia we do not know. Senator Hanson-Young, they are not the poor, the disadvantaged. They are the big end of town, the wealthy end of town, that clearly the Greens support.

What I am concerned about, and I will always make this point, is that Australia has a very proud humanitarian arrangement and we have been at the forefront on a per capita basis of taking genuine refugees for 50 years. We are proud of it, and so we should be, but we have a fixed number. As I have said before, perhaps the number is not right. I am prepared to debate that, as I have with the Refugee Council. We take about 14,000 genuine refugees every year. Maybe it should be 20,000; I do not at this stage enter into that debate. But we do take a fixed number, and for every one of these people that come in, having paid $10,000 or more to get a boat from Indonesia to Christmas Island, someone who has been in an absolutely squalid camp, someone who is a genuine refugee and has been so determined by the UNHCR over many years, has to wait another year for their chance to get to Australia.

That is the sort of policy that the Greens support: forget about those in the squalid refugee camps around the world who are waiting their turn, desperate to get into Australia within the limit of our intake of about 14,000 a year, but let's encourage these people who can pay $10,000 to the people smugglers to come in. You have to put in place an arrangement where those people who would pay the $10,000 see that they are not automatically going to come to Australia, that they are not automatically going to become part of the very generous Australian legal system where they can challenge decisions for years, right through to the High Court if needs be, or that once they get into Australia they will get social security benefits in one form or another from the Australian taxpayer that they would never get overseas. That is why the Gillard government, and the Rudd government before it, supported by the Greens, is simply a beacon, a green light, to the people smugglers who will bring these people here for money.

The issue that disturbs me, and I get very angry about this, is that the Greens and the Labor Party seem to have no interest whatsoever in those genuine refugees living in squalid refugee camps around the world. They are all in favour of the wealthier ones who can pay the $10,000 and who know they will get the support of the Greens political party and the Greens parliamentarians wandering around waving placards at every demonstration they can. It is important for senators and for the people of Australia to understand that, for every refugee who comes illegally into the country and remains here, one genuine refugee from someone else in the world misses out on their chance to come to the very lucky country.

Having said that, I support the reasons that Senator Brandis has given for the coalition's support and, in spite of the Labor government's complete mismanagement and inability to allow debate and the appropriate passage of bills in this chamber over the last few weeks, we on this side will facilitate the debate so that this bill can be voted upon. I note that the Greens say that this should not be dealt with today. If they had not voted with the Labor Party to cancel Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday's sitting next week we could have debated it more fully then. If they think they have a point, why did they not take the next three days to argue it in the Senate to try to convince us that they are right and we are wrong? But no, they want to head off to Durban, so they will do anything. Then they have the hide to get up here and complain about not having enough time to debate this. The hypocrisy of the Greens knows no ends. I support this bill.