Michael Keenan (Stirling, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Justice, Customs and Border Protection) Share this | Hansard source

I see it is clear that the Minister for Immigration and Citizenship could not even use the 15 minutes that had been allocated to him to defend this government’s failed policy, which is relatively extraordinary I would have thought. But this government is already defined by some very clear characteristics. These characteristics are becoming very obvious to the Australian people. The first characteristic is a complete and utter lack of direction. For a newly elected government it is extraordinary that they have absolutely no agenda. They do not seem to have any idea why they want to be in office. We have a Prime Minister who seems completely incapable of outlining why she sought the prime ministership and, quite frankly, why she still seeks to occupy it. We have never had a re-elected government in this country to be so bereft of new ideas, to be so bereft of anything to do once they have been elected.

The second defining characteristic of the Gillard Labor government is a complete lack of courage. This is not a government that runs away at the first whiff of grapeshot; this is a government that does not even have the courage to start the fight in the first place. Remember the things that they outlined as the policies that they would tackle when they got into government. They were going to tackle the greatest moral challenge of our time. They were going to tackle ‘root and branch’ tax reform as outlined to them in the Henry review.

The third thing that characterises this government is gross incompetence: the pink batts program—they failed to be able to give away free pink batts; the school halls rip-off; ill-considered spending programs; and dangerous new taxes that were drawn up on the back of an envelope.

Finally, the fourth thing that characterises this government is that, as well as having a lack of agenda, a lack of courage and extraordinary incompetence, there is a complete failure to take responsibility. We saw it here today with the minister’s response. The whole point of being a minister is that you make decisions and then you are accountable for them to the Australian public. But ministers in this government never accept the blame for the things that have gone wrong. Nothing is ever their fault. Nowhere is this more apparent than in the situation with the illegal boat arrivals. We heard the minister give the standard response from this government about why it is that our borders are now completely out of control. And that is, it is nothing to do with them; it is all the result of international factors that they cannot control.

Clearly that argument has been blown out of the water today. It has already been assaulted by the region as the minister and the Prime Minister wander around selling their half-baked ideas for how they are going to tackle this problem. Everybody in the region, Malaysia and Indonesia, fully understand that and say publicly that the influx of boat arrivals into Australia is completely the result of Australia’s domestic policies. We have had further evidence of that today. Not only does the region understand it; the Australian Public Service understands it. We saw in the FOI documents that were outlined in the Herald Sun that a confidential briefing was provided to this government when they came to office that the closure of the Nauru detention centre was going to result in a big boost for the people-smuggling trade. This document shows clearly that the government knowingly and willingly dismantled the strong border protection regime that they had inherited despite the fact that even their own Public Service was telling them what was going to happen as a result of dismantling that robust policy system.

We saw it from the minister—it is not his fault, it is all international factors. No-one from the government has ever outlined what actually changed in the international system when Kevin 07 was elected. Kevin 07. Remember him? What changed in Sri Lanka? The civil war was ongoing when the Labor Party was elected. What changed in Afghanistan? The conflict was ongoing.

See this speech in context