Jacinta Collins (Victoria, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I am glad that the opposition have chosen to focus on this issue in taking note of answers today, because there are a number of myths that hopefully, if I get the time, I will be able to highlight. But before I do that I want to reflect on the surprise that I think the Senate as a whole should have that the opposition have chosen to take on this issue in the way that they have. Senator Forshaw quite clearly highlighted some of the history here and the point that the opposition do not have clean hands in this matter.

I want to refer to a couple of issues that are relevant to what was raised by some members of the opposition. Firstly, we all need to be reminded, as Senator Forshaw mentioned in the context of the Tampa, that it was the previous government, in the lead-up to a federal election, during the caretaker period, under the caretaker convention, that quite cynically changed our approach to asylum seekers arriving by sea—and put enormous pressure, Senator Adams, on Australian Defence Force personnel. I participated in our first Defence Force Parliamentary Program. I was on the HMAS Adelaide. I know full well how our Defence Force personnel felt about the pressures they were placed under by the Howard government. So the opposition does not have clean hands, and the hypocrisy that has arisen in the debate so far astounds me.

I want to refer to a summary, since Senator Fierravanti-Wells talked about the fact that she was glad that the opposition was now getting headlines on this issue. As if it is about press headlines! Where is the compassion in this debate? How can the opposition stand up here today and say what they have in relation to asylum seekers and feign compassion when they are talking about cataract surgery—feign that compassion is about them arguing that funds should go there rather than to the stimulus package—and then get up here and talk about the asylum seeker debate in the way in which they have? It is not about press headlines.

Yes, Senator Adams, this is an awkward situation, but let us look at why it is awkward. It is awkward because Sri Lanka has just emerged from a decades long civil war which cost tens of thousands of lives, uprooted hundreds of thousands of Sri Lankans and left an economic divide between north and south, east and west. There are currently 250,000 Tamils from the north of Sri Lanka in camps for internally displaced people. You suggest that the ‘strong Howard government approach to border security’ solved these problems. Of course it did not. Of course, the intensity of these types of international issues is going to shift or vary over time. But the myth that the Howard government approach to asylum seekers is what reduced the number of people seeking asylum internationally is just laughable.

Let us look at some of the more intelligent media reflection on this issue. For instance, while flying up to Canberra on Monday I saw the Financial Review and I set aside an article by Geoffrey Barker. The conclusion to that article gives the more intelligent, reflective response, I think, to the current situation—a situation which is indeed, Senator Adams, awkward. No-one denies that it is awkward. In an article headed ‘PM’s policy an easy target’—thus the debate by an opposition looking for easy targets today—he concludes:

Rudd’s approach is not perfect. But it does try conscientiously to balance humanitarian obligations, toughness and political acceptability.

I do not apologise for being part of a government that seeks to balance humanitarian obligations with a tough border security policy. I do not try to argue that it is not awkward and that it is not difficult. There is nothing that is not awkward or difficult about the displacement and the political unrest amongst our neighbours. But we do have obligations internationally to seek to assist these people. That we do so, or seek to do so, in partnership with Indonesia makes an enormous amount of sense. The Rudd government was being accused by Senator Fierravanti-Wells of shutting down on this issue— (Time expired)