Pat Conaghan (Cowper, National Party, Shadow Assistant Treasurer) Share this | Hansard source

This Labor government has plenty of slogans, but the one they should adopt is 'divert, deflect and deny' because that is exactly what they have done for the past term and a half, and Australians know that. I can give you three examples of 'divert, deflect and deny'. For 'divert', the horrible Bondi massacre was preceded by over two years of ignoring the warnings by the director-general of ASIO and by the people in the Jewish community that something was coming. Yet, when we saw that horrible massacre, what happened? We saw diversion; we didn't see action.

We saw this government blame gun laws—not radical Islamists but gun laws. I went to a rally in my electorate with over 700 good, honest, decent gun-owning people. They were angry that this government had diverted the attention from them and their failures to change the gun laws against them, to punish them and to divert the spotlight from the Prime Minister and from his failure to do what he had to do over a period of two years. Now, they'll lose their guns and they'll have to comply with other laws. We have the strictest laws in Australia, but, because of the diversion and because of this government's failures, we have to change.

Then, we look at 'deflect'. This week, the coalition has been criticised for asking questions about the ISIS brides—or should I say ISIS sympathisers. These are people who left our country, left our shores and left the best country in the world to work and fight for ISIS. But what does the government do? They don't answer the questions that we ask about repatriating them. The ISIS sympathisers should never come back. They should not be in this country, because they hate us. They hate what we stand for. They hate what we do.

We've heard the vomit, the disgusting words, of some of those ISIS brides about what they should do to teachers, about what they should do to the public and about what they should do to Australia. We do not want you in this country, and the coalition will do absolutely everything to keep you out of here, because you do not deserve this country. You do not deserve to be here, and you do not deserve the benefits of what this beautiful country offers to all those beautiful migrants who come into this country and offer what they have. You will not spew your violence into this country.

Then, we look at 'deny' and the denial of the government's policy in relation to illegal tobacco. We have criminal gangs running our streets—in Melbourne, in Sydney, in Brisbane—because this government won't act. We need a government that enforces our laws and that gives our AFP the funds and the muscle to fight against them. But we don't have that. All we have is denial and deferral and a government that doesn't recognise what is going on in this country, and we should condemn them for it.

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