Ian Macdonald (Queensland, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

What a nasty, vicious and completely untruthful address that was by the previous speaker. It was a diatribe against the minister who has done more to save lives and to get our immigration system in order than any minister in recent history. Senator Hanson-Young cannot stand that. She cannot stand the fact that she has been proved wrong and that Mr Morrison saves lives and brings some order into the immigration system that brings in those who have been waiting in refugee camps for years.

I am a bit confused by this debate. I have heard Senator Singh and Senator Hanson-Young. I am not quite sure what they are complaining about. Senator Hanson-Young, untruthfully, said that the Australian government had done nothing. It is a matter of fact that already $18 million has been provided in direct assistance, and at the estimates committee hearing we were told that Australia punches well above its weight when it comes to humanitarian aid. If it is the money that Senator Hanson-Young and Senator Singh are talking about, and if they want Australia to provide more money, then they should say where it is to come from. I say to Senator Hanson-Young: how would it be if we were able to give $33 million a day to fight Ebola? She would probably say, 'Ooh, that'd be good!' If Senator Hanson-Young had not supported the previous government, which ran up a debt that will approach $600 billion and costs Australia $33 million a day in interest—if Senator Hanson-Young had not been part of that—we could be using that $33 million every day to go to aid around the world. It could go to the Ebola crisis. But do we hear that from Senator Hanson-Young? Of course not.

Senator Hanson-Young's diatribe was just—well, it was not full of untruths; there was not an accurate thing in what she said! I think it is quite interesting that when Senator Hanson-Young misrepresents something and the information she has provided to the Senate is completely wrong, all she does is sit there and giggle. It simply proves that Senator Hanson-Young does not give one iota of concern to the plight of people who are in these situations around the world. If she did, she would support Mr Morrison's attempt to bring people into this country who are waiting their turn in the squalid camps around the world. But there we are. Senator Hanson-Young, if you want to give $33 million a day to fight Ebola, you could have done that if you had not supported the previous government in running up a debt that now costs us $33 million a day in interest.

I ask Senator Hanson-Young or Senator Singh, as I asked Senator Di Natale in estimates: what is stopping any of them from volunteering their services today to go to these places in western Africa? As we were told at estimates, there is not one thing stopping Senator Di Natale using his expertise as a medical practitioner to slip over there and help—not one thing. I might say that Senator John Herron, formerly of this chamber, actually did just that when he went to South Africa, to Rwanda and Burundi, to use his medical skills to help there. There is nothing that the Australian government is doing that would stop any person in Australia from going and doing that. Senator Hanson-Young tells us that there are dozens or hundreds of people waiting to go. If they want to go, good luck to them; they go with my best wishes and my great admiration. We should be encouraging those people. But the Australian government has an obligation, a duty of care, to anyone it might send, and the duty of care is to make sure that those people, those Australians, are safe when they are there and that they come back into the country, as well, safely.

We have heard of some politician—up in Cairns, I understand—getting on their soap box and berating the Australian government for letting anybody back into the country who happens to have ever been over there. Nobody takes any notice of that particular politician anyhow, but he was reflecting a view of many people that we have to be very careful that the disease does not come into Australia.

All of the evidence we have heard at estimates committee hearings, all of the things we have read in the paper and all of the announcements by the Prime Minister, the health minister, the foreign affairs minister and the immigration minister point to the fact that we want to be very careful, for Australian citizens, that we do not have the Ebola crisis here. I also raised the point at estimates—and it is something I have raised often—that there are other countries who have a closer association with Africa than Australia does. Australia has now, fortunately, directed its humanitarian aid to the Pacific and to South-East Asia, which I think is appropriate. And we are keeping money in reserve to address any possible outbreak of Ebola in the areas close to Australia for which we have a special responsibility.

Senator Hanson-Young made a lot out of the UK and the US and Sierra Leone asking Australia to help. Well, as was pointed out in estimates, as Senator Hanson-Young would have heard had she bothered to go along and listen, those were form letters that went out to everyone; it was not a particular request to Australia as Senator Hanson-Young and the Greens would have you believe.

So Australia is punching well above its weight in this. If there are Australians who want to go, they are quite free to go, and when they come back they will go through the normal processes. But the Australian government will not direct people there until it can satisfy its duty of care to people who expect it to look after them.