Slade Brockman (WA, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

In the very short time I've got available to me, I will just recap what we've seen from this government—the chaos, the dysfunction, the complete inability to act decisively on these issues, and the need for guidance from the opposition and particularly from the Leader of the Opposition, who is so experienced in these areas. I will go back to the words of the Minister for Home Affairs who said, on 16 November—not very many days ago—about the previous bill that went through this place, that the opposition 'never wrote laws as tough as this'. Then, a few hours later, they accepted all six amendments presented to them by Peter Dutton, the Leader of the Opposition. Once again, the opposition is having to help the government clean up its own mess—a mess caused by its own indecisive, confused response to the matters before the High Court, and its inability to recognise when it was making its arguments that there was a real risk of High Court decisions in this area and a real risk of a legislative response being required.

Instead of acting in the best interests of the Australian people, they chose to bury their heads in the sand and ignore the potential problem. As a result, we've had now weeks of indecisiveness, inaction, confusion, changed positions—'We don't need to legislate,' then suddenly, 'We do need to legislate.' 'The legislation is perfect,' but then, 'We accept six amendments from Peter Dutton.' The confusion, sadly, has put the Australian public at risk. That is a huge indictment of the government and something the Australia people will not forget.