Richard Marles (Corio, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Immigration and Border Protection) Share this | Hansard source

No less boats—is an attempt to have the military answer its questions. What the minister has sought to do is set up a situation where it is a general who is arguing the government's policy against the opposition. Let us be clear: the information management strategy which the government is adopting now is a purely political decision.

We are not reflecting on the general and that is precisely the point. The minister would love for a situation where there is the opposition debating a general but the fact of the matter is the minister cannot run away from the fact that the way in which information is being managed is a political decision. The minister has come into this place during question time and on seven separate occasions, an eighth today, refused to answer questions on the basis of operational matters. It says everything about the standing in which this government holds the parliament and the contempt of this government for the Australian people. All we have had is a refusal to answer questions here.

When there are briefings on those Fridays, limited information is given. By the way, we need to remember there is a big difference between a press conference and the parliament. If the minister were to mislead a press conference, it would be a bad article. But if you mislead parliament then you lose your job. That is why it is so important the parliament remains the pre-eminent place by which the government is held to account. That is why it is an appalling state of affairs that we have the minister coming into this place day after day and simply refusing to answer questions on the basis of things being operational matters. This reached farcical levels last night when Lt Gen. Campbell was in fact able to answer a precise question that the minister himself had been asked last week when the general confirmed that there had been no boats purchased from Indonesia, none. When asked that question in this place last week, the minister unequivocally said that was an operational matter that he could not answer, but the general could answer it last night. What that says is this: Lieutenant-General Angus Campbell has shot a bullet right through the concept of operational matters. It is completely dead as an idea and it says everything about the fact that that was a political idea. It was never an idea which went to the question of whether or not there was indeed any operational reasons why this information could not be provided to the Australian people. The real reason why there is secrecy about the way in which this government is pursuing its asylum seeker policy is because, the ridiculous commitments that they made prior to the last election they have not been able to fulfil. No boats have been turned around. Indeed on the first attempt, as far as we are aware, of trying to tow a boat, the boat breaks up and it sinks. That is how this government defines a matter being safe to do so. No boats have been turned around. No boats, as far as we are aware, have been towed back.

We learnt last night that no boats have been bought from Indonesia—none; absolutely none. So that is why we have got secrecy here to hide the fact that the policies which this government took to the last election are not being fulfilled today. But to top it all off, what we have also seen is that the relationship with Indonesia in relation to asylum seekers must be maintained on a cooperative basis. This is our neighbour. This is the country from which these boats are coming. It is plain common sense that we will not be able to make progress in relation to asylum seeker policy unless we have a positive, cooperative relationship with Indonesia. That relationship has been handled with total ineptness in the context of asylum seekers by this government.

We had the coalition before they even became the government announcing the turn-back-the-boats policy—or talking about it—and, in response, they elicited the very unusual circumstance of the Indonesian foreign minister Marty Natalegawa saying:

… such a policy would constitute a unilateral type of measure that we do not support.

We have a situation where in relation to the boat buyback policy, again before the election, we had Mahfudz Siddiq of the parliamentary commission for foreign affairs in Indonesia saying:

This is really a crazy idea, unfriendly, derogatory and it shows lack of understanding in this matter

That is what the Indonesian government was saying in relation to the coalition before the election about the policies that they have sought to but have not implemented since the election. They sought to dictate terms to Indonesia and in the process egg has ended up on their face. Indeed when they had their stand-off with Indonesia between 8 and 9 September, within 24 hours, they had backed down—no resolve at all on the part of this government.

You look at the Liberal Party policy. It says this:

An incoming coalition government will treat the border protection crisis as a national emergency and tackle it with the focus and energy that an emergency demands.

We have seen nothing other than a lack of resolve. We have seen nothing other than a lack of competence. They sought to differentiate on the issue of competence at the election, but there has been none of that here. All we have seen is inexperience mixed with arrogance, and that is a dangerous cocktail and it has left the policy in disarray.

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