Barnaby Joyce (Queensland, National Party) Share this | Hansard source

Anyway, today is the feast day of St Jude Thaddeus, the patron saint of hopeless causes. That is so typical of exactly where the Labor Party’s policy is. The saint of today, St Jude, is the patron saint of hopeless causes. That is exactly where they are. How completely apt is his discussion about a patron saint. How completely lacking in detail is the Labor Party, as usual. They are completely bereft of any research. There are just wonderful statements about the cabal of the illuminati but without a skerrick of detail sitting underneath what they talk to you about. This is just so beautiful! What a great day to be in this chamber when they make such a clanger like that. It is a ripper.

This is a very serious issue, and not for one moment would I cast aspersions on the character of the people who are endeavouring to come out. They are coming out not because of a push issue but because of a massive pull issue. Have a look around you. We are so lucky and blessed to live in a country like this. It is logical for people to want to enhance their economic position in life, but Australia does not have an unlimited capacity. It cannot simply lose control of its borders. If it does, it will just get completely out of control. At the moment we have a blue and yellow fiasco called the Oceanic Viking. We had something similar to that in our time, called the Cormo Express, but fortunately with the Cormo Express we were only dealing with sheep. This time the Labor Party have taken it up a level—they are dealing with people. And it is an icebreaker, so help me, that these people are on and that is wandering around in equatorial Indonesia. Where are they going to take them next: Macquarie Island? Davis? This is because you have lost control of our nation’s borders. Through your complete lack of decisiveness in dealing with this issue, we have now got ourselves into a position where the communication channel is open and the phone calls are being made back. It is quite evident that there is knowledge afoot that Australia has become an easier target.

Senator Feeney just had to listen to the Sri Lankans who managed to get themselves onto AM in the morning. We can also read their statements in the paper as to how they see Australia. They believe the policy has changed, and they are right. They have perfect market knowledge. They know the policy has changed. They know the Labor Party, as of August last year, watered the policy down. We are now dealing with the issues. I have been to Christmas Island a couple of times and I would not cast aspersions against the people, but there is a driving force. It is the driving force that is always there—the desire to migrate to a better place. But it just cannot happen like this. It just cannot happen that people jump on a boat and make their own arrangements. There must be controls over our borders, and we have lost those controls under the Labor government.

The fact of their arrival by ship carries associated issues such as the possibility of rabies coming in. There is most definitely, especially amongst crew members, tuberculosis on board. If we lose control of it, that will work its way into Indigenous communities and have huge health ramifications, especially in Northern Australia. There are also the issues of foot and mouth and screwfly. These all go hand in glove with a loss of control over our borders. This is what the Labor Party has delivered to us—and this is on St Jude’s day; St Jude, the patron saint of hopeless causes: hopeless policy, a complete lack of decisiveness, acumen and research, and a desire to gloss over the reality of the situation with garbage.

I acknowledge that Senator Feeney says there are not many Sri Lankans coming here and that they are mainly going to Europe. There is also the truth that the vast majority of people illegally in Australia are backpackers, predominantly from England. The problem with that argument is that, while those people are also illegal, they have gone through some form of customs protection. What we have here is a complete disregard for a border protection policy. We are opening ourselves up to a whole range of problems, including inciting these people to take huge risks in their lives and inciting them to put themselves in the hands of people who will definitely exploit them. It is a fact that under the former government’s policies, arrivals went to zero. As Senator Brandis has said, actions speak louder than words.