Anne Ruston (SA, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

I stand to take note of answers to questions in question time today, but I am really quite astounded after having listened to the contribution of Senator Brown opposite, who I too thought was going to be taking note of answers to questions in question time today. In fact, all I have heard was Senator Brown taking the opportunity to spend five minutes to reflect adversely on the Attorney-General. She made no real attempt, apart from the last 35 seconds, to say anything apart from being blatantly rude to the Attorney-General. I chose not to take a point of order, because I thought I would much rather have the opportunity to stand and say that I thought it was the most disgraceful exhibition of a personal attack on a minister of the Crown that I have seen in this place recently.

Today was quite an extraordinary question time in the sense that we had the most extraordinary, eclectic group of questions. It is very difficult to get any train of thought about how to take note, when you consider the breadth of the issues that were raised. I am not quite sure what they were trying to get at. I will address the answers to the questions that we have given today and not dwell any further on the personal attacks. As an example, we are talking about the Australia Council funding. A decision by a government to prioritise how it spends its money is exactly that: a decision by government to prioritise. We all know that we do not have boundless or limitless funding that we can spend on anything. A decision by a minister; a decision by the government; a decision by cabinet—whatever the appropriate decision may be—to decide how they are going to allocate funding within a limited budget is not a matter that necessarily deserves the kind of vitriol and bile spewing that we saw this afternoon on the Attorney-General's decision to prioritise arts funding in a particular way.

In another question, Senator Wong asked Senator Brandis about to the citizenship issue. It is quite extraordinary that we should be sitting here and debating whether at all we actually want people to come back to this country who have dual citizenship and who have taken it upon themselves to go and fight with a terrorist organisation in an overseas jurisdiction. As a mother, I can assure you I do not want this type of person back in this country influencing my children, or even attempting to influence other people in this country in a way that may have a detrimental impact on the safety and security of this nation. Today, in response to a question from Kieran Gilbert, we heard the shadow Attorney-General make a comment in relation to whether we wanted these particular people back in the country. I will quote what Mr Mark Dreyfus said this morning:

Well, you get them back here. Right? So I think the government needs to explain a great deal more but most importantly the government needs to come forward with a clear, concrete proposal.

I can assure you that the government has a very clear and concrete proposal: we do not want these terrorists coming back to this country to influence or to terrorise the people of this country. As Senator Canavan said in his contribution, this government takes the security of the people of Australia as seriously as it takes anything. In regard to the comments made this morning by Mr Dreyfus, I am sure he will come out and have some sort of explanation at some later point. He certainly needs to. To suggest that we want these people back in this country after what they have done is an extraordinary comment.

We then had Senator Bilyk once again ask Senator Brandis about asylum seekers—and this was after the ridiculous questions yesterday about credible witnesses being captains of boats that smuggled people. A credible witness is somebody who actually makes their living out of international criminal activity? I am not sure who is making up the question time questions for the Labor Party, but it was almost like being given a dorothy dixer and the opportunity to explain that under our watch we have stopped the boats. We have stopped people drowning at sea. We have stopped people getting pushed down the lists. We have got most of the children out of detention. We have not seen a thousand people drown at sea. It seems really quite extraordinary that that would be a question that they thought was a good idea to put up for question time today.

Then Senator Sterle decided that he would give another question to Senator Brandis, and then Senator Urquhart gave a question to Senator Brandis. Obviously, Senator Brandis—despite the fact that the other side seem to take great delight in throwing mud at you and making disrespectful accusations—they still think that you are nice enough that they want to ask you all the questions. (Time expired)