Andrew Giles (Scullin, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

In making my remarks on the Migration Legislation Amendment (Regional Processing Cohort) Bill 2016, I want to talk about weakness and about toughness. These are two heavy words that have been lightly thrown by government members, including the Prime Minister and the minister for immigration, in the course of this debate.

I want to say this to government members: there is nothing tough about Minister Dutton and his administration of this portfolio. There is nothing tough about this government's approach to this policy area. It is not weak to reject the cynical politics that are embodied in this bill. It is not weak to accept, as the Labor Party does, the challenges—legal, practical and moral—of responding to a world in which 65 million people are forcibly displaced and in which forced migration is a global problem that demands a global response and leadership from countries like Australia, not resiling and shrinking from our responsibilities in the course of petty, cynical politics. Of course it is not weak to reject the cynical politics that are in this bill. It is not weak to speak up for the voiceless. It is not weak to challenge executive government when its actions deserve to be challenged. It is not weak to stand up for decency and for those in the Australian community who demand it, rightly, of their elected representatives. It is not weak to put our compassion and our concern for vulnerable human beings who have sought our help before politics, especially when the politics here are all of distraction and division.

So I am proud to join with my Labor colleagues in opposing this bad bill and the worse politics which sit with it. It is a race to the bottom, as the member for Kingsford Smith put it—an appeal to the dark angels in the Australian community. And why? The policy rationale underpinning the bill is very difficult to discern. It is impossible to discern because—let's be frank—there is none. This bill does not rest on any secure foundations other than the political expedience of this government and its desperate cynicism. The bill before us is an answer in search of a question, as the government has demonstrated.

Only today, the member for Chisholm—as the member for Kingsford Smith pointed out—demonstrated this very eloquently. Having putting herself up to talk about gaps and loopholes that people smugglers could apparently exploit, she was asked by a journalist, 'What's the gap or loophole that there is at the moment under this government?' She said, 'There are no gaps or loopholes.' She went on to say, 'The outcome under the Turnbull government speaks for itself.' She was asked, 'I'm sorry again. Why is it necessary to have this legislation? You've just said that there are no gaps or loopholes.' She could not answer. She walked away. I do not say this to poke particular fun at the member for Chisholm. It is not her fault. She could not point out gaps and loopholes because, on her terms, on the government's terms, there are none.

In his contribution, the member for Grayndler went to the discrepancy between the government's triumphal posturing about their success in this policy area before the election and their desperate struggle to find a rationale to support the prosecution of this bill in recent days. It is a sorry chronology, starting on Sunday, 30 October—a week and a half ago—where the minister and the Prime Minister have shuffled through a variety of rationales supposedly supporting, supposedly demanding, the introduction of this bill.

We should not blame the member for Chisholm for her failure to be able to articulate a justification for the bill because, when it comes to policy terms—whether it is on the government's own principles or whether it is on any objective basis—there simply is no justification. The one thing that has been demonstrated over the last seven or eight days is that this is all about cynical politics, cynical posturing. The only point of this bill is to further a political agenda of division and distraction—distraction away from the real issues Australians, including my constituents in the Scullin electorate, are concerned about. It is about fomenting division for its own sake to distract us from the fact that this is a government without an agenda, without a story to tell the Australian people and without any sense of purpose, direction or hope.

There is weakness that has been revealed in the course of this debate. There has been weakness revealed—or rather, further demonstrated—on the part of our Prime Minister, the member for Wentworth. He is a person who really has shrunk in this role. In September of last year, when he became Prime Minister, he attempted to distinguish the way in which he would conduct himself from that of his predecessor, the member for Warringah. He spoke at that time of his concern about conditions in the offshore detention network. He went on to say that this area of policy is controversial and it is a challenging one. He talked about the need for a considered approach to making changes. Well that was then and this is now. That was the old Malcolm Turnbull, the one who thought we lived in exciting times, the one who thought there was a point to him being Prime Minister. Over the last year, that has evaporated, and he has shrunk. He has shrunk as a political figure and he has shrunk as a member of this place. The considered approach to policymaking, in this area and in other areas which he promised, has disappeared. Instead, he has shown himself to be a weathervane. What is worse is that the winds that he is blown around by are those of the dark forces in Australian politics. On this issue, he is singing to the tune of Senator Pauline Hanson and the One Nation Party. He is being pushed around by the conservative and reactionary elements within his party room and those conservative elements outside his party room. They have claimed the win in this area, and they are right to do so, because they are setting the agenda.

Today of all days—perhaps just about now—it is a time for all of us to care about representative democracy and care about our role as members of parliament to conduct civil debates that are about enlarging our civil society, enlarging our nation and our Commonwealth and playing a positive role in world affairs. We should think about how we do politics. We should think about the practice of politics. Because we are seeing in the United States a triumph of the most coarse, the basest, approach to politics—the race to the bottom.

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