Alex Hawke (Mitchell, Liberal Party, Minister for International Development and the Pacific) Share this | Hansard source

The opposition continues to be in denial about what has occurred in this very difficult year for Australia and the globe. We in the Morrison government know there has been a global pandemic; we have been dealing with it all year. Look at the structure of Australia. The Deputy Leader of the Opposition discovered here in his speech today that we are indeed a federation. Australia has led the way in how federations have dealt with what is the most challenging set of circumstances that we have faced in a long time. Other societies in the world today haven't coped as well as our society has, and that's because of the cohesion of the national cabinet of the states and territories working together with the Commonwealth, under the Commonwealth's leadership, to provide the certainty that the people in Australia need in handling an evolving and difficult situation.

It's important to know that since the beginning of this, since Australians were advised that they needed to reconsider their need to travel overseas, 432,000 Australians have returned home. Almost half a million Australians have come home, and we welcome them home. We have done everything possible within the evolving situation of the pandemic to ensure that people can get home. That isn't easy when the entire globe has been closed. That isn't easy when all airlines have had to reduce the number of flights, have had cancelled flights, have had increased costs of operation and, of course, have had to deal with rolling restrictions and changes in multijurisdictional situations with nation states around the world. For the opposition to pretend that, somehow, that has been a failure of this government again ignores the fundamental situation—the challenge posed by a pretty unique pandemic, a once-in-100-years circumstance. In fact, since the government made its announcement that we would return those people home by Christmas we have had over 31,900 Australians return on 370 flights, including 11,000 people on 74 government facilitated flights. Ten of these flights have been facilitated since 23 October, returning over 1,600 passengers. And there is more to do. When we think that almost half a million Australians have wanted to come home because of the work that the government has done, the states and territories have done and the people of Australia have done and the sacrifices they have made, we are a safe harbour in a very difficult world at the moment.

Of course, more Australians are going to want to return home, and we are going to have to continue to do the work and continue to work with people to get them home as soon as practicable. But, given we are now nine months into a pandemic and there is a long time to go until a vaccine is rolled out, we have to work with people as they make their choices and we have to work with them in a constrained environment, in which the airline industry is suffering its greatest hit in 100 years, as well. We'll keep doing it. We've worked to ensure the right priorities on returns have been there. Of course it hasn't been possible to get everybody home when they wanted to get home, but vulnerable people had to be dealt with first. It was the logical thing to do. It's what the Deputy Leader of the Opposition said we should be doing. In fact, the government prioritised vulnerable people. Nobody would think otherwise, that we shouldn't try to get people with medical needs, that we shouldn't get women who had pregnancies, that we shouldn't prioritise people who needed to get home first. Those people had to be prioritised. They have been prioritised. When you think about half a million Aussies coming home, that is more by far than our entire migrant intake in a year coming back to Australian shores. That's a lot of people coming home. We understand why more people will seek to come home when we look at the second and third waves in Europe and the US and at the safe harbour that Australia represents. We will welcome them home and we will work with those communities to get them home. We will get as many people home by Christmas as we can get home from now until Christmas, as well. There are many flights that are booked. There are many people who will come. There is much work that the Commonwealth and DFAT will do. As these lists expand we will keep getting more people back into the country, and that's what you would expect.

The Deputy Leader of the Opposition, of course, discovered the Constitution in all of this. I would say to him and to the opposition: it is not opposition for opposition's sake. The argument they have made today again demonstrates they are not serious about the business of dealing with the No. 1 challenge in front of Australians, because they are seeking to undermine the work of agencies like DFAT and the serious work of states and territories and to ignore the facts in relation to what has happened in our states and territories. We make no criticism. States and territories have had to do the things they have had to do. We have made arguments with them. We have had conversations with them about what we believe settings should be, but when you have an outbreak in Victoria and a quarantine failure in a hotel system operated by the state government, of course the second major port in Australia was offline for many, many months. The caps were reduced in other states, which were dealing with smaller outbreaks and which contained those outbreaks. That is supported by Australians. That is supported by us.

Whatever our disagreements about how things should opened and how soon they should be, the fundamental unity and the fundamental cohesion provided by the national cabinet, by the leadership of the Prime Minister, by the leadership of the states and territories in combination with the Commonwealth has meant that we've had an orderly return of people. It hasn't been perfect, that is true, but there are not many governments—in fact, there are no governments—that can point to a perfect record this year. There are not many societies that can point to a perfect record in handling what has been an evolving and difficult challenge. But I can tell you one thing, Deputy Speaker O'Brien: Australians can be proud of themselves and their government, and the cohesion that has been provided by the states and territories and the Commonwealth through the national cabinet in service of our citizens.

I know that the officers of the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade and in every consular office around the world have worked tirelessly from the beginning of this pandemic to do their absolute best to help Australians stranded in very difficult situations. When countries shut their borders, which is their sovereign right, and when countries contained areas, which is their sovereign right, to handle the pandemic, many Australians were stranded. It has been very difficult for everybody concerned; there is no denying it. But our officials worked tirelessly. They did an outstanding job of getting everybody back as soon as they could. They did an outstanding job in providing services. They are doing an outstanding job. The Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade know their business, and they work very, very hard, and they and all government agencies have stepped up this year. In fact, we can say to the whole Public Service this year: you have excelled in serving the Australian people at the Commonwealth and state level, and we thank everybody who has stepped up this year to do that. We say it genuinely and we should be joined in that by the opposition.

In fact, the opposition of course supports everything that we are doing to return Australians home. They are trying to find a point of opposition. There isn't one. They're trying to say something has been done wrong. Nothing has been done wrong, given that this has been an evolving, very difficult situation. On health advice, on scientific advice, on outbreaks within states, on the lowering of caps, we have had to work together as a federation. On balance, Australia has done that better than anywhere else, and we have done that because, whatever our arguments, we have essentially retained unity. We've stayed together.

Our message to the opposition today is: do not threaten that unity. We are not out of the woods yet. Don't question that solidarity that Australians have shown at the state and federal levels, that our Public Service has shown and that the people want us to keep showing on these essential questions. It is not a partisan issue to say we would love to get people here faster. Everybody knows that. Of course we'd love to move people around the world faster and get them to safety faster. Health safety is the top priority of this government, Australians here and Australians abroad, and we work on it every single day.

I finish by saying that the opposition can make cheap points about our candidacy for the OECD, but I go back to this essential point so that every Australian understands this: the Labor Party support the government pursuing this candidacy—not my statement; their statement. They support it. And, if they believe that you can legitimately campaign for a candidacy of this importance and not spend any money, that's in defiance of their own policy when they were in government and they sought a seat on the Security Council. We know that. The Australian people know that. Again, they are looking for division where no division exists. They support the government's attempts to secure this candidacy. It is important, and we hope that we can secure it for this country.

Australians have done an outstanding job this year. We know that there are still people that want to get home. We want to get them home. We will keep working on getting them home. It is a focus of government every day. We'll get as many people home as we can, and we'll keep getting them here—as many of those who want to come as we can.

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