Christopher Pyne (Sturt, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Education, Apprenticeships and Training) Share this | Hansard source

I am pleased to have the opportunity to speak on this very important debate that we are having in the House of Representatives today. I wish to speak in support of the opposition amendments, proposed by the member for Cook, which would ensure that no asylum seeker could be sent for offshore processing in any country other than one of the 148 countries that has signed the United Nations Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees. It is a very important compromise that the opposition is offering to the government.

I have been in this parliament for 19 years. I have sometimes been called a moderate, a member of the small 'l' liberal faction of the Liberal Party, and I have been proud to stick to my principles for those 19 years on some fundamental issues. I have often been asked by people to support views that would make the treatment of asylum seekers more lenient and more supportive, and that would ensure that women and children are got out of detention. In the Howard government, I was one of the members of parliament who, with the member for Pearce and the member for McMillan, and other members in this House, supported the former member for Kooyong in his campaign to ensure that women and children were not kept in detention but released into the community.

One of the reasons I am so fundamentally opposed to the government's Malaysia solution is this: in a nutshell, if the Malaysia solution becomes law, the people smugglers will know that the best people to put on boats to send to Australia will be women and children, because the government—and I assume it is being honest about this—has said that it will not repatriate women and children amongst the 800 going to Malaysia. That can only mean one outcome. The outcome will be that women and children will become the gold standard for people smugglers and for the desperate families that try to make the perilous journey to Australia. The women and children will be the gold standard for people smugglers. Their parents, their fathers will be asked to send women and children, knowing that they will not be repatriated to Malaysia, and knowing that under the family reunion provisions of the laws of Australia those women and children will be able to apply for family reunion to bring the fathers, or the mothers and fathers, to Australia under our laws. I do not want to be responsible for this. I know I speak for our side of the House, and I know I speak for many members of the Labor caucus when I ask: who wants to be responsible for women and children being the gold standard, sent on rickety, unseaworthy boats to Australia so that they can then apply under family reunion provisions in Australia to be reunited with the fathers or the mothers and fathers of those families?

As terrible as the tragedies are that we have experienced today, and last week, in the seas to the north-west of Australia, as horrific and as tragic as those events have been—and they are the reason we are debating this bill this afternoon instead of having question time—it will be even more horrific and it will have to weigh even more on the consciences of members of the Labor Party and the members of the crossbench if, in future, predominantly women and children are on those boats because people smugglers know that women and children are the gold standard to send under the Malaysian solution proposal.

The Malaysians solution is the worst of all possible worlds. It is the worst policy because it makes women and children the most attractive option for people smugglers to send to Australia on boats—potentially to their deaths. I do not want to be responsible, and I certainly will never vote for the Malaysian solution. I will never vote for the worst possible outcome of all worlds. By voting for the amendments moved by the member for Cook, we will ensure that offshore processing occurs and that it only occurs with the protections that are inherent in all those countries that have signed the UN convention on refugees. (Time expired)

See this speech in context