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

I appreciate Senator Xenophon allowing me to go back to my original spot in the queue! But it was generous of Senator Xenophon to curtail his remarks. I am pleased that my absence at the appropriate time allowed him to make a few points as well. At this stage of the debate, my points will be necessarily brief as well.

I have no objection to a couple of the points that Senator Xenophon made, particularly about having a public debate about the deployment of troops after the event. Of course, in a chamber like the Senate, where rarely does the government control the numbers, such debates can be held at any time should the majority of the Senate agree that a debate should be held. Indeed, today is a good indication of not a full debate on the issue but a debate where many of the issues that would be raised in a full debate were raised. Should the majority in this chamber decide that it needs more than that, then the majority of this chamber can always make that decision.

Most of the speakers who have spoken before me, both from this side and from the Labor Party side, have indicated the stupidity of trying to have a parliamentary debate before any decision has been made to commit troops anywhere, because you can never predict the urgency with which a decision might have to be made. We elect governments to govern for a period of three years and, in a democracy, we give to the leaders of the government the responsibility for making decisions where the national interest is at stake, where national security is at stake. The thought that, before anything was decided, you would have a full-scale parliamentary debate is just ludicrous. I know my colleagues on both this side and the Labor side have explained that in some detail, so I will not even attempt to do so in the couple of minutes available to me.

Can I just congratulate the Prime Minister and indeed the government on the decision to take a greater number of genuine refugees in a one-off, 12,000-person hit, to do our bit. In this I want to emphasise, as I do in many aspects of public international policy, that Australia should play its part but it should not do more than the rest of the world. I raised this issue in relation to climate change. Australia emits less than 1.2 per cent of global carbon emissions. If you shut Australia down absolutely and completely—if there was no light burning anywhere in the country—it would not make one iota of difference to the world environment. Similarly, in the case of refugees, I know 12,000 is a drop in the bucket, but per capita across the world Australia punches well above its weight in the number of refugees we take in and in our assistance to refugees.

I add that many countries grandstand and make grandiose promises, whether it is in relation to carbon emissions or support for the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, but very few ever meet those commitments. Certainly, that is the case with carbon emissions and offering money to support the UNHCR. A lot of countries make promises but very few actually pay up. Australia does. Australia always has done. I congratulate Mr Abbott and the government.