Laurie Ferguson (Werriwa, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

The shadow minister at the time. What we have here is a situation where a message has got to be given to Bob Brown, to the Greens in general, to the member for Cook, to the opposition leader—to all those who are now colluding in this attempt to undermine the government's solution to this matter: the Australian people want the government to assert control in this policy area. As I said earlier, they want to make sure that when people do come to this country, the UNHCR has had a say in that process offshore.

We have a situation where, as another speaker indicated, there is the question of this being a failure. The context of Malaysia was the approaching court action. If we look at the numbers coming after the Malaysian announcement for the same time period compared to Nauru—the possible panacea, the nirvana of solutions for those opposite—they are far fewer in the same time period than after Nauru. Yet, as I say, throughout the whole period people smugglers had the reality that this was being challenged in court. They had no confidence that this was actually going to succeed.

It is on the opposition's head. We know that some opposite feel that the integrity of the migration system is more important than the short-term political interest of the opposition leader. We know that there are some people that know that there is a need for an abiding, long-term solution. Voting with the Greens, basically going along with Senator Hanson-Brown's rather short-term, narrow market policy, is not the way to go.

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