Alex Hawke (Mitchell, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

I say to the member for Scullin: welcome to this chamber. I am willing to take you up on your suggestion. Indeed, the media policy should follow the public policy. It is a very good suggestion. If you wanted an example of a government change denier, I think the member for Scullin just gave us a snapshot of the denial that is going on in the Labor Party today. Usually a government will get up and say something like, 'We had a great three years,' 'We had a great last term,' 'We had a great last six years,' or 'Prime Minister Gillard and Prime Minister Rudd were great prime ministers; what great policies they did.' But, in summary, the argument of the member for Scullin, the member for Corio and the member for Greenway is: 'We had a great two weeks. In fact, in that final hour of our government we were nailing it. If you just gave us a few minutes more, we could have stopped every boat in human history—one more minute, 60 more seconds, 10 more seconds, and we might have got to it'! In this chamber we all know the reality is very different. Member for Scullin, you are a little naive, by your own admission. It was 300 weeks.

When we first came to government, we had to deal with the legacy that we inherited, just like every other government that comes to office, just like the Labor government when they came to office in 2007 had to deal with the legacy that they inherited: a working border protection system, four people in detention, no boat arrivals, a problem that had been solved, a problem that had been fixed. At that time we saw Prime Minister Rudd wanting to walk both sides of the compassion and toughness street. There are two approaches you can take to border protection: you can be tough and firm or you can be compassionate. The Greens embody compassion, and they have an integrity to their position. They say: 'Open the borders. Let them in.' The Liberal Party has always said: 'We want to be tough and firm on this, to be fair, because of the terrible tragedy in terms of lives that comes with this problem.' Prime Minister Rudd said: 'We're going to try and do both. We're going to tread both sides of the compassion and toughness street.' By trying to do that, he unravelled the tough policies that the Howard government had put in place, creating the problem.

The member for Corio spoke about a contemporary problem and a contemporary solution. I say to the member for Corio: the contemporary problem was the Labor government and the contemporary solution was the last election. Everyone has seen what has been going on here. We are happy to have this debate in the House every day, because things had to change. The last six years were an example of policy failure, the most graphic policy failure—amongst a series of policy failures—by any government in this country's history. It came at a great cost, because we had so many boats that were not turned back, with loss of life—1,100 deaths at sea, we think; budget blow-outs of $11 billion; 800 boats arriving; and people smugglers in business. This is sophisticated organised crime, and the last government failed to understand that. While Prime Minister Rudd used to get up and talk tough on people smugglers and say they are a great evil that have to be dealt with, his government's policies deliberately unwound a working system and enabled people smugglers to get back into business, causing the very problem that they sought to solve.

Now those opposite get up in this place and say we are doing something different and attack the fundamentals of what we are doing, which is different. Yes, it is different. It is the policies we took to the election. It is the policies we put in front of the Australian people. It is different. It is tough. It needs to be given time to work. It is already starting to work, but the opposition's only interest here is to undermine the newly working policies of a new government. They are government change deniers. They come into this chamber in denial that the government has changed, in denial that it was actually the Labor Party, the previous government, that was the problem. The Australian people have elected a group of people to provide the solutions, and we are providing those solutions. These MPIs and this line of questioning every day are designed to do nothing more than to undermine the approach of the government. Given the serious nature of this matter, that is a very unethical thing to do.

I say once more to the member for Corio: do not come in here anymore and tell us about the glorious last two weeks of the Rudd government. You might have got your glorious leader back into office in the final few weeks, but it was not that glorious. You had six years. You created the problem, and this government will create the solution.

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