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

I move:

That the Senate take note of the answers given by ministers to questions without notice asked today.

Well, it is almost four o'clock. We're actually about an hour past question time and, quite legitimately, we have just heard an hour's worth of debate from various senators about failings of this government to live up to its commitments of transparency, openness, a new approach to government, that we heard in the days following the last election but which have been so seriously absent ever since. Today, in asking very legitimate questions around the government's handling of the asylum seeker issue, we again see a very brittle approach from this Labor government, a claim that they hide behind shields of not wanting to politicise this very serious national security issue and then literally, in the same breath, attack Peter Dutton, the Leader of the Opposition, who hasn't been in government for 18 months. I should remind those opposite of that fact.

The government had carriage of the particular High Court case all through its existence. They argued the case in front of the High Court. They are the ones who are responsible for anticipating and reacting to the judgement of the High Court—two very important words. Governments are not just about responding; they're also about anticipating. There were very clear signals six months before the case was handed down that this was a live risk. The government, on the evidence that we have before us at the moment anyway, did absolutely nothing. Then the decision was handed down, and the government froze in the headlights for a week. It's now almost a month that the opposition has been calling for a preventive detention regime in this country—almost a month—and, quite legitimately, we asked today whether the government was going to apologise to the Australian people for its handling of this matter.

And, no, of course the government can't apologise. They've forgotten all about their new approach to government. They've forgotten all about transparency, openness.

This morning at a press conference, the Attorney-General lost it and described a very legitimate question from a journalist as 'absurd', in a highly aggressive manner. No wonder the A-G lost it. He is dealing with two other ministers who, quite frankly, have made a disastrous, shambolic response in their handling of this issue. The ministers have been called on to resign, quite legitimately, because their handling of this issue has let the Australian people down. In the end, that is the determinant of whether you should stay on as a minister or not. Letting the Australian people down in a matter of national security, of personal safety, such as this is an extraordinary failure of ministerial duty.

We heard in one of the questions that the court decision really meant that a single person needed to be released. But the government overreacted. They didn't know what to do. They massively overreacted and released 148 people into the community, providing them with transportation and accommodation. There was reporting in the West Australian of asylum seekers released in my home state of Western Australia who, in less than 24 hours, had been put up in accommodation, had been driving the streets of Perth in a car procured who knows how and then early the next morning were on flights to Sydney. It's extraordinary. Is it at all surprising that some of those people—at least three that we know about—have reoffended and have done so over matters that are of a very serious nature? These are legitimate questions, and the government's response is to attack the Leader of the Opposition. It just shows how weak they are.