Michaelia Cash (WA, Liberal Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Immigration) Share this | Hansard source

I move:

That the Senate take note of the answers given by the Minister for Broadband, Communications and the Digital Economy (Senator Conroy) to questions without notice asked by the Leader of the Opposition in the Senate (Senator Abetz) and Senators Cash and Scullion today relating to asylum seekers.

When it comes to border protection failure in this country, the policy failure of those on the other side, those currently in government, knows no bounds. Nor does their continual hypocrisy. In 2010, the former minister for immigration made a big announcement—that they were going to take women and children out of formal detention. Why? Because women and children should not be locked up in formal detention. Jump forward 2½ years and what are we faced with today? We are faced with the alarming statistic that under this government, under the government that bleats to Australians that it is the party that holds the moral high ground in Australia, we are now faced with a situation where 1,600 children are now in formal detention in Australia. This is coming from a party which, in 2010, said, 'We're going to make sure that our policies will see no women and children in formal detention.' One can only say that, without a doubt, that is a gross failure of policy. Compare that, the 1,600 children who are in formal detention, with the fact that when those on the other side assumed office in November 2007 there were but four people in immigration detention—that is right, just four people who had arrived illegally by boat to this country were in immigration detention and none of those were children.

The hypocrisy of the other side continues. In one week Australia will celebrate a first in this country, a first which none of us should be proud of—the political execution by the Labor Party of a sitting Prime Minister, the former Prime Minister Mr Rudd. When Mr Rudd, on 24 June 2010, was politically executed, what was the reason given by the current Prime Minister, Ms Gillard? This is the reason: she stood before the Australian people and proclaimed that, unlike Mr Rudd, she would fix the problem of asylum seeker arrivals that he, Mr Rudd, had created. In fact, so sure was Ms Gillard that with a click of her fingers she could do that, she went on to say this:

… I can understand that Australians are disturbed when they see boats arrive on our shores unannounced. I can understand that Australians are disturbed by that. I can understand that sense of anxiety. This country is a sanctuary, it’s our home so we’ve got a responsibility to manage our borders and manage the question of asylum seekers in the best possible way.

By that stage the Prime Minister was on a roll, and she went on to say this:

… I am full of understanding of the perspective of the Australian people that they want strong management of our borders and I will provide it.

Quite frankly, she was either delusional at the time—maybe because of the amount of Mr Rudd's blood that she had consumed—or she was blatantly misleading the Australian people, or—the third alternative—she was never going to be able to do it because she is politically incompetent. The facts would support all three of those propositions because, under the current Prime Minister—who said, 'I will stop the boats that Mr Rudd could not stop'—these are the facts: since 24 June 2010, under Ms Gillard, 584 boats have arrived carrying 37,667 people. That is under the watch of Ms Gillard, the same person who said, on 24 June 2010, when she politically executed the former Prime Minister, that he had failed to stop the boats.

If Mr Rudd failed to stop the boats, I can only ask: what has Ms Gillard done? When she was the shadow minister for immigration, under the former Howard government, when we had but a trickle of boats arrive under our watch compared to what the current government have had under their watch, her famous pronouncement was:

Another boat … Another policy failure

Based on that reasoning, we are now looking at 584 policy failures carrying 37,667 people, at a cost to the Australian people of what is now in excess of $10 billion. If that is not bad enough, Australia is currently trending at the rate of 100 arrivals per day under Ms Gillard. So much for Mr Rudd's political execution! (Time expired)