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

The previous speaker went into this area and is now interjecting and saying this is not part of the bill. I am simply responding to the arguments she made. If it is not part of the bill when I say it, it must not have been part of the bill when she was speaking.

The Howard government's approach actually worked. We did stop the boats. We were also able to turn boats around when it was safe to do so. Anyone who was at estimates a few weeks ago would have heard the Chief of Navy—who is an expert on it because he was a more junior officer at the relevant times—explain how the boats were turned around and how this was done safely. He also explained how sometimes it was not possible to do that. Of course, the ABC and some other commentators gave huge preference or exposure to the admiral talking about the one that failed and made no reference whatsoever to the admiral's original comments, where he went through in quite some detail how you could turn boats around safely and how you could make the policy Mr Abbott has enunciated work—that is, turning boats around when it can be done safely and offshore processing at Nauru.

The Labor government's border protection policies and migration policies are an absolute shambles. Hence, if this bill will do anything to stop people smugglers, even if in a very minor way, then I am in favour of it. Senator Brandis has indicated why the coalition is supporting this government bill and why we are facilitating its passage through the Senate this afternoon, the last day of sitting, after the Labor Party and the Greens have guillotined 20 pieces of legislation so far this week without so much as one word being spoken on them. We have been voting on bills all week that many people would have little idea about because we were not allowed to speak on them.

In the previous week, 18 of the most complex bills that this parliament has dealt with in the last decade, relating to the carbon tax, were rammed through this parliament with only one or two of the bills in that package being dealt with. Already we have seen what a farce that carbon tax legislation has become. Australia will become, if it is not already, the laughing stock of the world for having a tax of $23 per tonne on carbon dioxide emissions. The rest of the world is standing aside and laughing, rubbing their economic hands together with glee as they think about what business and jobs they can pick up. We have already seen jobs go from Australia to China and India because of that package of bills, which went through because it did not have proper scrutiny by this parliament.

Anything that will help border protection and stop people smugglers, as this bill will do in a way, is something we support, so we will facilitate its passage through the parliament. But before I sit down I want to again make the point to senators and to the people of Australia who might be listing to this debate that the reason why the coalition is so incensed at the Labor Party's inability to protect our borders and stop the boats is that for every person that comes in illegally by boat someone living in a squalid refugee camp somewhere in the world is put back another year. That seems to be okay as far as the Greens go. If you happen to be a wealthy person, and the Greens have shown quite often in the last few weeks that they are for the big end of town, for the wealthy people, the people who can make donations of $1.6 million—