Cory Bernardi (SA, Liberal Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary Assisting the Leader of the Opposition) Share this | Hansard source

And Kevin. I wonder if they complain about the sandwiches they get or that hair dryers are not available, like our own Prime Minister, who set such a bad example. This government has lost control. It does not know what it is doing anymore and it is putting together a range of interim measures to try and arrest the decline in its public standing.

The problem is that they can arrest the decline in their public standing, they can try and do some window-dressing on their soft border protection policies and they can try and patch up or cover up the failures and put them in the basket of the minister for failed policies, Senator Wong. They can try and do all that. The problem is the Australian people no longer believe their rhetoric. They can no longer believe a word that comes out of the mouth of our own Prime Minister, and what a sad day that is for this country. What a sad day it is when the Australian people, who placed so much faith in Mr Rudd, can no longer rely on anything he says because, as I mentioned earlier, the government said for two years their soft border protection policies were not responsible for the influx of illegal arrivals by boat. They said that repeatedly—minister after minister, lacklustre backbencher after lacklustre backbencher. They have dutifully come in here and trotted out the lines given to them by command central and they have told the Australian people, ‘It’s not our fault.’ This bill indicates it is their fault.

The coalition has some form in protecting Australia’s borders. In the last six years of the coalition government, after the Pacific solution was implemented, only three boats arrived per year—three boats per year versus three boats per week. I think our record compares rather favourably with the very poor record of this government. Since the Labor government softened Australia’s border protection policies in August 2008, 122 boats—this is as at 11 May, so it could be 127 or something by now—with 5,624 people have arrived here illegally. In the 2009-10 financial year alone, over 4,500 people arrived in 98 boats, and this financial year is not even over yet. There are going to be many more luxury VIP chartered jets and many more resort hotel accommodations provided to the many more people that will risk life and limb to come to Australia, thanks to Kevin Rudd’s policies. But there is still an opportunity for Mr Rudd and his government to try their hardest to solve the problem. There is still an opportunity.

But Mr Rudd has not only failed the Australian people by softening our border protection policies; he is failing the Australian people financially. In this most recent budget—a budget that covers up the failings of this government, that covers up the fact that at the rate of $1 billion every three years it is going to take 450 years for them to pay off their $150-something billion debt—they have $202 million for more places in detention.

Does that indicate that there is a problem? Common sense would say that it does. There is going to be another $97 million for more Christmas Island infrastructure. It seems like only yesterday they were shipping in the bunk beds to double up in every room. Now they need another $97 million for infrastructure to cope with the influx of illegals. There is going to be $16 million for the lease of an extra ship to patrol our northern waters. It is a good idea but it should not be necessary. It should not be necessary, because we should be having a tight border protection policy that stops people wanting to come here, or they should come here through the appropriate, reasonable and legal channels. They should not be jumping the queue. They should not be coming here knowing that Kevin Rudd is going to put them up in resort-style accommodation and fly them in VIP jets around the country. This is not what the Australian people expect.

What I find equally galling in this budget is that there is apparently $6 million for two of Mr Rudd’s officials to work in Kabul to resettle those Afghanis that have been rejected here for asylum. Two officials and $6 million for the people that were sent home and told, ‘No, you are not allowed here, because you are not a refugee.’ It beggars belief. This is a government that is completely out of control. It is spending Australian taxpayers’ money flying people around the country in VIP jets, putting them up in resort hotel accommodation and then giving them counselling when they send them home. There is something severely wrong with these priorities. If people are coming here and they are not found to be genuine refugees and they are being sent home, is it really Australia’s responsibility? These are people who have lied to the Australian public; they are lying to officials. Clearly they are not genuine refugees and they claim to be. We are spending $6 million on two officials, according to press reports. Nice work if you can get it.

The coalition has had a commitment to strong border protection right through its time in office. When we realised there was a problem and the problem was getting out of hand, we took tough measures to do it. And we copped a lot of pain for it: the inflamed rhetoric on the other side about cruel and inhumane treatment, about people having to wait for quite significant amounts of time to get temporary protection visas or to have their status assessed. It is far less cruel than having people floating across the ocean in an esky—we had a couple of arrivals by esky. People conveniently forget that. We have those that jump off their leaky boats and try and swim to safety and are never seen again. What sort of a government do we have when they think that is the humane thing and the appropriate thing to do? As Senator McGauran said in his earlier comments, the moral thing to do is to put in place policies that will stop the boats from coming. We do not want more people in peril. This goes a little way towards it. It makes a joke and a mockery of all the government’s arguments about how it is not their fault. It makes a joke of all of that, but it is a start. But if it takes them three years of denial to realise that they have a responsibility to the Australian people to secure Australia’s borders, how long is it going to take them to implement a policy that is actually going to stop the boats from coming?

I fear for the future of our nation if this government is re-elected for another term. I fear it on a number of fronts. We see the nationalisation of industry, we see the great sovereign risk attached to their rapid changes in the business and commercial environment with regard to broadband, to mining tax. We have seen them undermine the value of trademarks and branding through their ill-considered plain packaging for cigarettes. We have seen them have smash-and-grab raids on anything that makes a profit. We have seen them squander tens of billions of Australian taxpayers’ hard-earned dollars on ridiculous schemes. And still the ministers are not accountable for it. The failed Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme—a dud, ditched. We had to lead the world. It was the great moral issue of our time. I would suggest that the great moral issue of our time is stopping people risking their lives coming here in leaky boats.

That is the great moral challenge for this government. Have they got the intestinal fortitude to do that? History would suggest they do not. History would suggest that this government takes politically expedient decisions, not decisions that are in the best interests of Australia. It does not take the decisions that are in the best interests of our national security, our balance sheet security, our food security or our environmental security. Those opposite takes the decisions that are in what they perceive to be in the interests of their political security, and that is the wrong approach for any government to take. The people of Australian know it. They know they have a fake, a phoney, a fraud, a toxic bore in charge of the government. They know that the ministers do not even have a decision about what their policies are; they are just puppets. It is all controlled out of Mr Rudd’s central casting office. That is where the decisions are made and they are dutifully given their piece of paper and out they have to come with it. They are stoic in their defence. Senator Wong has got the basket case portfolio now. We know that. That will be rapidly filling up with even more policies as it continues. Because the minister for immigration has clearly failed in securing Australia’s borders and managing Australia’s unauthorised arrivals, that portfolio I am sure will be shifting into the basket of failure that Senator Wong manages. And she is very competent at managing those failures, I have to say. This is a tragedy for Australians. It is an acknowledgement that this government is failing. This government needs to be changed, and this bill indicates that that should be the case.