Scott Morrison (Cook, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Housing and Local Government) Share this | Hansard source

I rise as the seconder of the amendment to the motion for the second reading on theAustralian Citizenship Amendment (Citizenship Test Review and Other Measures) Bill 2009 and I rise to say to the House that I love my sport as a proud representative of the Sydney Sutherland shire—the shire which also loves their sport. I love my sport, but I love my country more. One of the things that sportspeople understand is that there are rules. When you play by the rules, that is when you are a success in sport. When you respect the rules, when you respect the umpire, then you will have success in sport. More than that, you will have respect as a sportsperson. We have got many great referees around our local community and we need to respect them. We also need to respect the referee of our laws when it comes to citizenship in this country.

What we have before us is further evidence of Labor’s policy of softening our laws when it comes to immigration and border protection. We have seen this exhibited time and again. The shadow minister, the member for Murray, is at the table. I think it is now 32 new arrivals in the last 12 months. More than 1,500 people have come here. The Labor Party’s policy of softening these laws is risking lives and it is risking our borders. The government, if it wants to get serious about this policy, needs to do more in this area than simply rebadging the department—going out there and getting new embroidery on the coats worn by dogs at our airports—and actually deal with serious issues of border protection and changes to our immigration laws and not send the message, as it is and as those offshore know, that this government has a policy of softening our laws.

We need rules and these rules need to mean something. They need to mean something to those people wanting to come to this country so that they know that the rules will apply, they will apply to everyone, there will be a process and there will be fairness. At the end of the day, this is very much about fairness. If you are sitting in a camp somewhere in ravaged Africa or somewhere around the globe waiting for your opportunity to come here, then people need to know that the rules are going to apply to them as much as anyone else who seeks to come here. We need to speak up for those who do sit in camps around the world and want to know that their time and efforts to come here are going to be treated equally with any of those who may arrive illegally in another fashion.

We on this side of the House support a citizenship test. We do not snigger at it. When our government brought this matter to this House and made it law those opposite sniggered—they made fun of it. They talked about Bradman and other matters, and they ridiculed it, but Australians out there know that these matters are actually important to Australians. They know that these are important things. The government may want to snigger, just like they snigger in this place every time about our having had the audacity to say to schools around this country that they should have a flagpole and they should put the flag on it. Every time that comes up in this House those opposite—all around their backbenches and a few on their front bench too—say, ‘Why don’t you have a flagpole? Why are you putting flagpoles in?’ My question is: what is the problem? I am proud to say that our government said, as the retiring member for Bradfield did in government, that we should fly the flag in our schools. The government snigger at that, as they snigger at our citizenship test and now as they seek to dismantle it.

We have rules. They should be upheld. That is called integrity. Having rules and ensuring they are applied is called integrity. We also have proposed in the amendment that there be discretion and that discretion should afford the flexibility that the scheme needs—not a weakening of our laws but flexibility and discretion that sits within a robust framework. There should be no delegation of this discretion provided to the Minister for Immigration and Citizenship. There should be transparency of the decisions that are made. To those opposite, that is called accountability. Integrity and accountability are at stake with what the government is putting up here.

Our laws should also address serious economic issues. As I say, I love my sport, but I also love my economy. I love the fact that people in my electorate can have jobs. I make sure that our immigration laws are about the economy, not just about winning gold medals, which seems to be the obsession of the Minister for Immigration and Citizenship. We must address the serious economic issues, and our amendment highlights this.

At the end of the day, we must ensure that our policies in this country are addressed by the serious national interest, not the populism which we see day after day from this government—cheap populism which is all about trying to promote the government’s interests, to puff them up in the eyes of the electorate. Whether it is the school signs, which are the first to arrive and the last to leave when these projects are done, or it is this puffed-up proposal to get some cheap populism off the back of saying they are trying to win gold medals, this government is exposed for what it is—lacking integrity and lacking accountability.

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