Don Randall (Canning, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

If you have something decent to contribute, wait your turn. Otherwise, show some manners.

At the end of the day, while people said we could never fix this and turn back the boats, it has been done. For almost six months there has not been a boat. There has been no help from the media. All the Canberra press gallery, the left wing version of the Canberra press gallery and —dare I say it?—one of the biggest culprits, the ABC have been part of this process of undermining us in fixing this. I understand Laura Tingle in the weekend's media was reported as having said the coalition would have to backtrack on our hard migration changes because they would never work. We did not backtrack. We have put them in place and, as a result, we have stopped the boats. It has been almost six months since there has been any illegal arrivals by boat.

Then we had George Roberts from the ABC. George Roberts is up in Indonesia and he is trying to make a name for himself as a junior ABC journalist. He was the one who went out there and vilified our naval service personnel, saying that they forced people on boats to put their hands on the hot exhausts of the boats and burn their hands. Not only did he not backtrack, he continued to repeat this. Not only did he continue to repeat this but he was backed up by the ABC executives at the most senior editorial level. Against all the lack of assistance from the press gallery here in Canberra, we have stopped the boats.

The whole issue is that these amendments are going to do something about making sure that the department has the ability through both the department itself and the Migration Review Tribunal to stop people using the system to stay here. There is going to be a common-sense approach to the processing of visas for people who are clogging the system. The continual nuisance applications designed to facilitate their further stay in Australia are going to be dealt with through these amendments.

I do not know well the previous speaker, the member for Kingsford Smith, but he seemed to be quite genuine in what he was saying. He was in the Senate, by the way, when these laws were passed. I understand the Labor Party is not opposing these amendments, so it will be interested to see the member for Moreton criticise them, even though they are not going to vote against them. At the end of the day the legislation will work towards ensuring that we can finally stop the rorts that have been happening through this change of systems.

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