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

I congratulate Senator Thorp on her maiden speech. It is always of great significance to get through your maiden speech. You did it beautifully, so well done. That is perhaps the most encouraging thing I am ever going to say to you except this: welcome to the Scrutiny of Bills Committee, to which I know you will make a great contribution. Without being too out of line, your speech was very passionate, very well delivered and on message but in some areas, particularly when talking about the coalition, a bit light on fact.

I say to Senator Thorp: if the Labor Party had a leader who could be trusted and who could stand up to the Greens, then perhaps the state of Tasmania would be a little better off. Clearly, most of the bad, bad policies of the Labor Policy at the present time are due to the influence of the Greens political party and none more so than this fiasco around the border protection policies of the Gillard government. How Ms Gillard manages to face the humiliation that is dealt to her day after day, as she does backflip after backflip on policies, is beyond me.

Let me, for those who might be listening, indicate what this border protection issue is all about. People will recall that John Howard in government did have a problem with illegal arrivals, would-be asylum seekers, to such an extent that it caused one up-and-coming member of the then opposition, Ms Gillard, to famously say, 'Another boat, another policy failure.' Then she presided over a regime where the boats just kept coming and coming. For once, Ms Gillard was right: policy failure, after policy failure, after policy failure.

What disturbs me about this latest backflip is that it could have been done three, four, five years ago. Had Ms Gillard had the courage to admit she was wrong, how many lives would have been saved? How many people would not have been put through that arduous and dangerous journey to come to Australia knowing that if they got here under a Labor government the doors would be open and they would be here for life and receiving all the benefits that Australians receive? But, no, day after day Ms Gillard and every one of her ministers, including Senator Evans, told us how the Pacific solution was evil, that it could not be done, that it should never be looked at. I do not think they used these words but the connotation was there: it was Satan's work to adopt offshore processing on Pacific islands. And yet a couple of days ago, in spite of all that rhetoric, in spite of all that bluff and bluster, Ms Gillard turns around and now adopts John Howard's Pacific solution.

Regrettably, she has only adopted part of it. Whilst the coalition clearly will be supporting the part that she has belatedly agreed to, regrettably, so far as I understand it on last information, she will not be introducing the temporary protection visas and she will not be turning the boats back when it is safe to do so. Without those two elements of this policy, I do not know that it is going to make a big deal of difference. It is certainly a step in the right direction, it is one pace towards a solution which the coalition supports, but it misses the two crucial elements that would take us back to the era of John Howard when, facing the unprecedented arrival of illegal immigrants in those years, he introduced these policies and they stopped. As soon as the Labor Party got rid of those policies, they start again. Now, with one foot towards the right solution, hopefully they will reduce but, without the other two elements, I doubt it. You can turn boats around. Admiral Griggs in Senate estimates gave evidence of how he did it when he was a patrol boat captain, so it can be done. Let us hope that the Gillard government will go the final hog and introduce the other two elements of Howard's solution.