Vince Connelly (Stirling, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

I will begin by saying I'm not entirely convinced that there hasn't been some form of typographical error here. When I read the matter before the House today, I was incredulous that a democratically elected member sitting here in this place would, by inference, accuse the government of having a disregard for the rule of law, sovereignty and a healthy democracy. So I'll proceed on the generous assumption that the member for Clark is in charge of all his faculties, did not make a mistake and has made a baseless assertion which I'll now proceed to refute.

Let me take each part in turn. Firstly, on the rule of law, this government, in just one example, has restored the Australian Building and Construction Commission. This is designed to tackle CFMMEU thuggery. We've banned secret and corrupting payments between businesses and unions and created a Registered Organisations Commission that will make unions more transparent. We've introduced legislation to give courts more power to deregister law-breaking unions and officials. And we've introduced legislation to ensure that money that is paid for workers' entitlements is actually used for workers' benefits and not to line the pockets of unions.

Let's touch on sovereignty, another incredibly important and fundamental commitment of this government. Let's talk about boosting the defence industry as a commitment and practical step to enhancing our sovereignty. The previous Labor government, by contrast, ran down our Defence Force and failed to commission a single ship from an Australian shipyard for our Navy. We on the side of the House, by contrast, are building 57 new naval vessels. This will boost Australia's Defence Force as well as create thousands of new skilled jobs.

We also enhanced our sovereignty by investing in skills. This government's $585 million package Delivering Skills for Today and Tomorrow will create up to 80,000 new apprenticeships in areas of skill shortages. It sees this government investing $3 billion into the vocational education and training sector in 2018-19.

Let's continue talking about sovereignty. When John Howard left government in 2007, there were only four illegal arrivals in detention and none of those were children. Labor proceeded to unwind the Liberal-National government's strong policies. The results speak for themselves; they were disastrous. Over 50,000 people arrived in 800 boats, 1,200 people that we know of died at sea, 8,000 children were detained and 17 detention centres were opened at a cost of $17 billion. We've taken back control of our borders. That's how we support sovereignty in this nation. The Liberal-National government has ended Labor's border chaos and restored our border protection policies. We have stopped those deaths at sea, closed 19 detention centres and removed all children from detention.

We are also contributing to our national sovereignty and to the rule of law by cancelling the visas of criminals. In fact, between December 2014 and December 2019, the coalition has cancelled over 5,000 visas and has strengthened character provisions. These provide that a citizen's visa must be cancelled if they are sentenced to 12 months or more imprisonment or have been convicted of a sexual crime against a child.

Let me move on and talk about a healthy democracy. It is a sign of a healthy democracy—not without a little irony, however—that the Independent member for Clark has the freedom to come into this place and submit a matter of public importance and trigger debate in this chamber for a full hour. Perhaps the member for Clark doesn't like that element of democracy. Perhaps it's the case that a fair exchange of ideas, including those colleagues on this side putting the strong position of the government on law and order and on sovereignty, is against his best wishes, but we are here to do that. I stand here, as one of the many ex military or police that are serving on this side having defended democracy, now having the right to stand here and defend the government's strong record.

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