Sam Dastyari (NSW, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I am. It's the Labor Party. We're all friends. In our business, they're referred to as 'mates'.

We're all a little bit frightened about the 1980s. I note that people here, certainly those on the other side, are quite scared by the 1980s. Let's be clear: this government has a chant that fills the hallways—that is, 'The reds are coming.' One should be afraid because the reds are coming. Unlike a lot of other people, I have to be honest, I am actually a fan of the 1980s. I think a lot of Australians are. Who could forget the offerings of ABC afternoon TV with James Valentine? But the obsession of the Turnbull government with eastern Europe's economic policies up to 1989 extends to so many policy areas. Start with energy.

The coalition government, with their love of MTV, Madonna and James Valentine on the ABC show, also love towering smokestacks and coal-fired power plants. This government is so obsessed with burning coal that, no matter how much we on this side extend the offer to compromise and shift policy, they will not be changed. This fascination with coal flies in the face of reports received from the Australian Energy Market Operator, AEMO, this week. These AEMO reports bear four years of utter failure on the part of Mr Tony Abbott and Prime Minister Turnbull on energy policy. Over the course of the last four years since the election of the Abbott government, wholesale power prices have doubled—doubled—leading to skyrocketing power prices for Australian households and for Australian business. The AEMO reports are one more rejection, hopefully the final rejection, of Prime Minister Turnbull's fantasy that the solution to the country's deep energy crisis is to build new coal-fired power stations, with a taxpayer subsidy if need be. We call on the government to get out of 1989, to get past the politics of energy policy—most of the politics, of course, being in the coalition party room itself. It's time to start to implement the key recommendation of the Finkel report: a clean energy target.

When it comes to immigration, the irony here is that you have a government that keeps trying to call out those opposite to them, those in the Labor Party, on having pre-1980s socialist views, when the fascination of the Turnbull government is with the power of the secret police in eastern Europe in the 1980s—yes, I'm referring to the Stasi, who were beyond reproach and who operated without review. On today's Notice Paperwas agovernment bill that would be better suited to the 1980s and the Stasi headquarters than to modern multicultural Australia. It purports to provide the minister for immigration with the ability to withdraw citizenship without a merits review. Avoiding a merits review on personal decisions made in 'the public interest' brings this government in line with the double-speak of the great democratic republics of eastern Europe in the 1980s. The bill would grant the minister the power to revoke citizenship without review, relying on the minister's suspicion of belief to be sufficient. This is further power to a minister who, in a previous portfolio, as revealed in the past day, was voted the worst health minister ever. In its explanatory memorandum, the government has argued:

As an elected Member of Parliament, the Minister represents the Australian community and has a particular insight into Australian community standards and values and what is in Australia’s public interest.

In the enlightened times we live in, in 2017, we can surely all agree that discretionary powers which have a direct and immediate effect on personal rights and interests should, in principle, be subject to merits review—a decision made in the public interest which the minister alone decides is simply not good enough. A minister who would criticise lawyers representing asylum seekers and who at times holds in contempt the rule of law would be well suited to eastern Europe in 1989, not to Australia in 2017. The government attack the Labor Party, their political opponents, for the preconceived idea that Mr Bill Shorten is some kind of crazy socialist. Firstly, they need to decide which set of socialists they think we are. Are we the eastern European variety?

Are we the Latin American variety?