Sue Lines (WA, Deputy-President) Share this | Hansard source

I too rise to make a contribution to the debate on the COVID-19 Disaster Payment (Funding Arrangements) Bill 2021. The only reason this bill is necessary is that the Morrison government has failed, on many fronts, to bring this pandemic under control, whether it's the vaccine rollout; hotel quarantine; cutting off JobKeeper, particularly to early childhood educators in an ongoing pandemic; the Australians, including children, stuck overseas; the international students not being able to come back to this country; migrant workers; or the Australians with fiances and fiancees on prospective marriage subclass 300 visas. On every single level, the Morrison government has failed in this pandemic. More than that, it steadfastly refuses to speed up the vaccine rollout, and it is completely denying that we need proper quarantine facilities. It had two jobs: rolling out the vaccine and establishing good, safe quarantine. It has failed miserably on both fronts. I think, at the moment, we're up to almost one breakout a week from hotels, which are not quarantine facilities. They are not designed for that purpose. There's a human element to every single step the government fails to take, whether it's children being stuck in India—that's not the only country they're stuck in, but that is disgraceful. Why the government simply can't act to bring those children home is beyond my comprehension. It is not a hard problem to solve and it should certainly be expedited.

I want to illustrate the damage that can be done when political parties seek to politicise this pandemic, and it's certainly not something that Labor is seeking to do. Earlier in the week the Australian Greens put forward a motion calling for holders of PMV300 visas to be exempt from the inbound travel ban. That was a good motion. Labor supported it. But those of us in this place know that motions have very little effect. They don't have an actionable outcome. What we know on this side is that, in true Greens fashion, the Australian Greens wanted to use this motion as a wedge—particularly, I suspect, against the Labor Party. So there was the usual email campaign, presumably targeted at Labor senators. The Greens had obviously indicated to their supporters that we wouldn't support this motion and that we needed prompting from voters. And, of course, it was an opportunity for Greens to gather email addresses for future propaganda purposes.

What the Greens failed to realise or completely ignored was that with this motion comes the pain being experienced by Australians with loved ones stuck overseas. Yes, sheet the blame home to the Morrison government, but realise what damage your motions do to individuals who think that because I've supported a motion somehow that forces the Morrison government to act. We know in this place it doesn't. I'm really angry about this.

Yesterday I had an email from one of those people, a woman who thanked me for supporting the email. It wasn't part of the Greens campaign; she was just grateful that I had supported that email. She said she'd searched everywhere on the internet and in the parliamentary papers to see when the action was going to take place, when her fiance who is stuck overseas as a result of the Morrison government—but rescued, apparently, by a Greens motion—was going to be allowed into this country.

I went back to her and said that I was extremely upset the Greens would be so short-sighted as to cause her further pain, to raise her hope that somehow the Greens motion in the Senate would result in her fiance being able to come down to this country. I said, 'I'm really sorry you were misled by the Australian Greens.' There's no doubt she was. She came back to me and said, 'I'm really sorry I misunderstood.' I said, 'You did not misunderstand; you were misled by the Australian Greens.'

All the Greens have done for that woman is cause her further disappointment and pain. They gave her false hope running off the back of this COVID pandemic. The Morrison government is at fault, too, because they failed to act. But, clearly, to politicise this situation in the way the Greens did, to give false hope to people with goodness knows what consequences, is a disgrace.