Greg Hunt (Flinders, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Climate Action, Environment and Heritage) Share this | Hansard source

He has breached all the ethical standards that he brought to this place. He came with high beliefs. But now he comes into this place and makes a statement accusing somebody of the consequences that flow from the policy he advocated at this very dispatch box. He advocated the change to the coalition's policy, and because of that change we have seen almost 20,000 people arrive in Australia and upwards of 500 tragedies. We warned of tragedies such as these, and he derided and denounced our warnings and said that tragedies would never occur. But they occurred, and they are still occurring. They are occurring because the architecture of the policy which he and others wanted to put in place was fatally flawed. There was no intention, no desire and no will for the tragedies to occur—it would be offensive of us to say that—but they were inevitable. Right now they want to move away from their policy, but they do not have the courage or the gumption to adopt solutions which will work and stop the flow; they want to play a game.

Speaking like this is not my normal style and this is not normally my issue, but the words of the member for Isaacs will be remembered 20 years from now as a low point in parliamentary history.

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