Zed Seselja (ACT, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

She says she is not embarrassed—she is absolutely shameless. She is so shameless that when the policies she supported led to thousands of people getting on boats and more than 1,100 people drowning, what did she say? She was so ashamed that she said, 'Well tragedies happen. Accidents happen.' Unfortunately tragedies do happen, but sometimes they happen as a result of a failure of policy. In this case that is exactly what happened. Policies have consequences. Poor border protection policies have consequences—they draw people onto leaky boats and many of them do not get here. That is one of the consequences of bad policy, and that is a policy she continues to advocate. I think this attitude should be called out for what it is—it is a disgrace. It is morally bankrupt to not care about the consequences of your policy decisions.

What is perhaps just as extraordinary is that the Labor Party continues to back this up. We expect the extremism from the Greens. We might be somewhat shocked by it, we might think it is disgraceful, but we do expect it. The alternative government of this nation should be better than that. The alternative Labor Party government should be better than the Greens but unfortunately they are not. Unfortunately they are no different. They continue to back the Greens view of the world, and the Greens-Labor view of the world is that we should have no effective policy, effectively an open borders policy. You have tried that and it did not work. It had tragic consequences. I think the Greens and the Labor Party should be condemned and their moralising and lecturing should be seen exactly for what it is.