Tim Ayres (NSW, Australian Labor Party, Assistant Minister for Trade) Share this | Hansard source

What we've seen is the usual overblown rhetoric from Senator Shoebridge. We've seen the usual Woollahra sophistry that we see from Senator Shoebridge. What we're about to see is what happens when Senator Shoebridge and Senator Cash, symbolising what's really happening here—what's really happening here is when Mr Dutton's Liberals and Nationals and Mr Bandt's Greens decide that they are going to put partisan interest over the national interest. What we're seeing is the most right-wing extremist Liberal Party in Australia's history and this trot-out bit down here. When they get together in their usual student politics exercise of putting their own partisan interest over the national interest, you're about to see the result. If Senator Shoebridge is right and the government's effort to put the national interest here first unravels today, what the people of Australia will see is that the old days, when the Liberal Party of Australia and the National Party understood that their job was to put the national interest before the partisan interest, are over. Those days are over. This is a show that doesn't understand the national interest. It doesn't understand it.

You see politics, particularly parliamentary politics, is about character, fundamentally. It's about character. What we're about to see here is this show failing the character test absolutely. Mr Dutton, the most extreme leader of the Liberal Party in its history, teaming up with Mr Bandt and Senator Shoebridge, the most Trotskyite edition of the Greens we have ever seen, to absolutely put before the national interest the partisan interest. If only national security were about words and bluster. If only it were about partisan positioning. After the last nine last years of torpid, lazy, complacent partisan government, we would be safer than we've ever been, but the truth is that reforming this migration system matters. Protecting the integrity of the immigration system matters. The Dutton opposition, after Mr Dutton's administration of these questions—