Michaelia Cash (WA, Liberal Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Immigration) Share this | Hansard source

I move:

That the Senate take note of the answer given by the Minister for Sport (Senator Lundy) to a question without notice asked by Senator Cash today relating to asylum seekers.

You know a government is embarrassed by its failures when the relevant minister in question time refuses to confirm what are facts that are put to her and in fact the minister actually says in relation to a question that I asked, 'I cannot confirm what Senator Cash is saying.' She then went on to say that she completely rejected the premise of my question. All I can say to that is that the minister is clearly so embarrassed by her government's failures that she wanted to 'take me to task' in relation to the undisputed fact that, under the former Howard government in the 2002-03 financial year, the number of boats that arrived was zero and the number of people who arrived was zero.

Perhaps the minister could explain, when she next answers one of my questions, why she was taking me to task in relation to that fact. This is a government that continually says to the people of Australia, 'We want to stop the boats.' I would have thought that you would actually celebrate the fact that you can, as a government, implement policies that do as this government tells the people of Australia it wants to do. It is a fact, even if Senator Lundy would not confirm it—that five years ago when the Howard government left office there were four people in detention. That is an undisputed fact. It is also a fact, even if Senator Lundy did not want to confirm it, that now more than 2,000 people attempt to enter this country—in fact, they do not attempt; they do enter this country—illegally under the current government's policies. It is also a fact—again, even if Senator Lundy is too embarrassed to confirm it—that there are now more than 12,000 people in detention; and, because there are more than 12,000 people in detention the government has had to adopt a policy of actually releasing the thousands that are still there into the community. For a government that says that it wants to stop the boats—I have to say, based on their record to date, that 30,408 people have arrived on 521 boats—there are two possible scenarios that arise. You actually do not mean what mean what you say—and there is a very good chance that that is actually true given that this government is the government that said to the people of Australia, prior to the 2010 election, 'There will be no carbon tax under a government I lead.'

So maybe they actually do not mean it. Alternatively—this is probably the more likely scenario—the Gillard Labor government are truly incapable of securing Australia's borders. To add insult to injury, more than half of the 30,408 people who have arrived in Australia have arrived under the Gillard Labor government. Former Prime Minister Rudd, former Minister for Foreign Affairs Rudd and nearly now backbencher Mr Kevin Rudd must quite literally choke on his Wheaties in the morning. He must choke because one of the reasons that was given by the Labor caucus at the time for having to politically execute Mr Rudd was, as stated by Ms Gillard, that 'Mr Rudd had fundamentally failed when it came to border protection in Australia', and as a result Mr Rudd had to lose his job and be sent to the backbench.

If Mr Rudd had failed in his responsibility to properly secure Australia's borders, I really do not know the turn of phrase that the Australian public would use when it comes to Ms Gillard. It is a fact that the former Howard government stopped the boats. So those on the other side cannot say that they cannot implement policies that do not stop the boats. I want to read into the Hansard record these figures: 2002-03, zero boats, zero people; 2004-05, zero boats, zero people; 2006-07, four boats, 133 people. Governments can stop the boats. The former Howard government did, but those on the other side just do not have the political backbone— (Time expired)